Volume 132, 2011

This article aims to examine how the theme of revolution has been the subject of literary treatment in Western literature from the days of the French revolution up until the early 20th Century. Through examples from Shelley, Stendhal, Hugo, Balzac, Heine, Büchner, Dostoyevsky, Conrad and many others it is demonstrated how the theme of revolution has undergone several significant changes during the period, and how literary treatment of the subject at times has concurred with, and at times ran counter to, the main political and social trends of the surrounding society. In conclusion revolution stands out as an important and hitherto far from fully explored theme in 19th-Century literature.

Norwegian literary philhellenism 1821–1832 and its Swedish contrast

Philhellenism in literature denotes written support for the insurrection against Osman sovereignity during the Greek war of liberation (1821–1830). Of Norwegian writers only Henrik Wergeland counts as a philhellene during the time of the conflict, which he understands as a chapter in his world-defining left-wing narrative, akin to the French and American national, republican revolutions. His contemporary rival J. S. Welhaven in 1832 published translations of so-called "klephtic" Greek folk poetry, which might count as a philhellenic contribution a posteriori, although his simultaneously published notes come forth as apolitical.

By contrast to Wergeland, Swedish philhellenic authors assume a right-wing perspective on the war, focusing on the defense of Christianity and Western civilisation against Islam. Greater talents such as Esaias Tegnér, E. G. Geijer and P. D. A. Atterbom should be noted for their silence on the issue rather than for active support, despite philhellenic opinions voiced in private. After the Greek victory, Atterbom seems to have modified more than one of his poems so as to express retrospective support for the Greeks.

This essay examines a lesser known poetic cycle by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926): Aus dem Nachlaß des Grafen C. W. ("Posthumous Poems by Count C. W."). Written in November, 1920 (Part I), and March, 1921 (Part II), when Rilke for some months was staying in an old mansion ("Schloß Berg") in the northwestern part of Switzerland, this poetic cycle remained unpub­lished until 1950.

Aus dem Nachlaß des Grafen C. W. has been interpreted in different ways. One scholar (I. Schnack) suggests that it is a cycle of love poems, inspired by Rilke’s affair with Baladine Klossowska; other critics have argued that the cycle reflects hallucinations and occult experiences; some critics, however, regard Rilke’s text as simple written exercises, a preparatory to The Duino Elegies, completed in January, 1922.

My study focuses on the levels of meaning, the structure and poetic form of Aus dem Nachlaß des Grafen C. W. I have interpreted the poems as linguistic and poetical experiments, in which one can observe a playful oscillation between fictive and autobiographical elements and strata.

Through Rilke’s poetical method in these texts a strange gliding between levels of time and identities is established: a tension, an insecurity, observable i. a. in the intermingling of language; the fictive, pseudonymous count “C. W.”:s naïve vocabulary and coquettish, old-fashioned versemaking is continually contrasted with the main themes and symbolism of Rilkean poetry.

As a genre, the collective novel is highly elusive. This has lead to the widespread acceptance of a reduced definition: the collective novel is a novel about a more or less solid group of individuals, situated at a specific place, and staged in a specific time.

This is shown to be a definition too narrow for the understanding of the collectivity of Ivar Lo-Johansson’s novel Traktorn. Lo-Johansson put a lot of effort in trying to create a collective novel. For him, the collective novel was something more than an easily applicable formula. It is this surplus that the reduced definition has been cleared of, and thus it has been made inoperative.

My examination of Traktorn targets on this surplus. Rather than reading the novel as an example of the collective novel, I use my discussion of the genre as an entry-point to widen the understanding of Traktorn. Thus, my reading aims not only at opening up the specific novel, but also to provide a deeper understanding of the collective novel as a genre.