Recent reading

[luzula]

Stockholm, städerna och resten by Arne Müller (Stockholm, the towns and the rest, only in Swedish)
Continuing the theme of the city vs countryside divide. This one is much better than the last one I read on the topic! It's solid journalism that digs down on the topic, looking at relevant government policy since the fifties, along with various statistics. Also an in-depth look at Sorsele, a countryside community in Norrland. It reaches the conclusion that urbanization and de-population of the countryside is an expected effect of capitalism combined with faster transports, which sounds reasonable to me. Should probably read David Harvey if I want to dig into this more.

Aniara by Harry Martinsson (Swedish, available in English translation but not in print)
Long narrative SF poetry from the fifties. This is a Swedish classic that I hadn't read before--it's about a spaceship that's supposed to go from a ravaged Earth to Mars, but it's thrown off course and just keeps going out into space. As you might expect from that description, it's fairly gloomy, but I do like the poetry. Didn't expect it to be so male-gazey though.

Comments

[auroracloud]

I've been meaning to give Aniara a try. The Finnish translator (by a Finnish poet who has a very beautiful and thoughtful way with words) is supposed to be gorgeous. Good to know about the male-gazeyness, though.

[luzula]

I do recommend it! Listen to this, for example:

Jag frågade mig själv men glömde svara.
Jag drömde mig ett liv men glömde vara.
Jag reste alltet runt men glömde fara -
ty jag satt fånge här på Aniara.

But as happens on generation spaceships, various cults appear, one of which is sex-related. There's a lot of descriptions of men looking at (semi)naked women, but none of naked men. But there's also a female pilot, so it's not like women are only sex objects.

[auroracloud]

Ooh, that sounds gorgeous! Maybe I should try it in Swedish after all. My Swedish could use brushing up, and I'm much more likely to read something I'm interested in. Or maybe I'll try it in both. Side by side, maybe, that could be a novel experience.

Yay for female pilots, at least. It's not like I'm a stranger to having to filter out male gaze when reading, though it's better when I don't have to.

[antisoppist]

Who is the Finnish poet? - I do read Finnish, that's not just idle curiosity :-)

[auroracloud]

Aila Meriluoto. She's one of the best of our modernist poets who started in the late 40's - 50's and went on, though some of her later stuff gets a bit too dense and philosophical for me - I usually like poetry more... impressionist, I guess? But I love our female modernists, and she has a gorgeous way with words.

[antisoppist]

Ooh, the urbanisation book sounds really interesting. I've been translating urban development stuff for Stockholm and got hold of Deyan Sudic's The Language of Cities but that is more to do with how cities work and urban planning and design. It would be cool to look at why we get them in the first place.

Also relevant on the ground here as our bus service has been cut, they are trying to close our library again, and our MP's reaction to all of this was that it was our fault for living in the countryside.

[luzula]

Well, I wouldn't say it tackles the question of why we get cities in the first place--it's looking at the Swedish situation from the fifties and on. It cites David Harvey (among others) for the theoretical stuff, which is why I should maybe read him next.

And yeah, it's not just happening in Sweden...

[toft]

I always forget that SF poetry exists, and then am startled by its existence.

[luzula]

I'm not sure how much Aniara is related to other SF poetry? The Wikipedia article says SF poetry began in pulp SF magazines in the US, but I don't know if Harry Martinsson had read those when he wrote Aniara in the fifties? He was more a nature writer and a political writer, and I think this was his one foray into SF.