Karin Boye
Encyclopedia
Swedish literature
Swedish literature refers to literature written in the Swedish language or by writers from Sweden.The first literary text from Sweden is the Rök Runestone, carved during the Viking Age circa 800 AD. With the conversion of the land to Christianity around 1100 AD, Sweden entered the Middle Ages,...
.
Career
Boye was born in GothenburgGothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
(Göteborg), Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
and moved with her family to Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
in 1909. She studied at Uppsala University
Uppsala University
Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477. It consistently ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of...
from 1921 to 1926 and debuted in 1922 with a collection of poems, "Clouds" (Swedish: Moln). During her time in Uppsala and until 1930, Boye was a member of the Swedish Clarté League, a socialist group in those days very anti-Fascist.
In 1931 Boye, together with Erik Mesterton
Erik Mesterton
Erik Mesterton was a Swedish author, literature critic and translator. Together with poet Karin Boye he was editor for the influential culture magazine Spektrum in the 1930s, where Modernist and Freudian readings of literature were introduced...
and Josef Riwkin, founded the poetry magazine Spektrum, introducing T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
and the Surrealists to Swedish readers. She translated many of Eliot's works into Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
; she and Mesterton translated "The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
".
Boye is perhaps most famous for her poems, of which the most well-known ought to be "Yes, of course it hurts" (Swedish: Ja visst gör det ont) and "In motion" (I rörelse) from her collections of poems "The Hearths" (Härdarna), 1927, and "For the sake of the tree" (För trädets skull), 1935. She was also a member of the Swedish literary institution Samfundet De Nio
Samfundet De Nio
Samfundet De Nio is a Swedish literary society founded on 14 February 1913 in Stockholm by a testamentary donation from writer Lotten von Kraemer. The society has nine members who are elected for life. Its purpose is to promote Swedish literature, peace and women's issues. It mainly presents a...
(chair number 6) from 1931 until her death in 1941.
Boye's novel "Crisis" (Kris) depicts her religious crisis and lesbianism. In her novels "Merit awakens" (Merit vaknar) and "Too little" (För lite) she explores male and female role-playing.
Outside Sweden, her best-known work is probably the novel Kallocain
Kallocain
Kallocain is a classic 1940 Swedish dystopian novel which envisions a future of drab terror. Seen through the eyes of idealistic scientist Leo Kall, Kallocain's depiction of a totalitarian world state draws on what novelist Karin Boye observed or sensed about the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany of...
. Inspired by her visit to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1928 and her visit to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
during the rise of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, it was a portrayal of a dystopian society in the vein of George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
and Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
(though written almost a decade before Orwell's magnum opus). In the novel, an idealistic scientist named Leo Kall invents Kallocain, a kind of truth serum
Truth Serum
Truth Serum is an independent comic book series created, written and drawn by author Jon Adams.-Overview:Originally published as a mini comic in 2001 and given away for free, it appeared as a three-issue mini series published by Slave Labor Graphics in 2002...
. The novel was filmed in Sweden in 1981 and was the main influence on the movie Equilibrium
Equilibrium (film)
Equilibrium is a 2002 American science fiction action film written and directed by Kurt Wimmer. It stars Christian Bale as John Preston, a warrior-priest and enforcement officer in a future dystopia where both feelings and artistic expression are outlawed and citizens take daily injections of drugs...
.
Later life
Between 1929 and 1932 Boye was married to another Clarté member, Leif Björck. The marriage was apparently a friendship unionLavender marriage
Lavender marriage is a type of male-female marriage of convenience in which the couple are not both heterosexual and conceal the homosexual or bisexual orientation of one or both spouses...
. In 1932, after separating from her husband, she had a lesbian relationship with Gunnel Bergström, who left her husband, poet Gunnar Ekelöf
Gunnar Ekelöf
Gunnar Ekelöf was a Swedish poet and writer. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1958. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate in philosophy by Uppsala University in 1958...
, for Boye. During a stay in Berlin 1932-1933 she met Margot Hanel, whom she lived with for the rest of her life, and referred to as "her wife".
Boye died in an apparent suicide when swallowing sleeping pills after leaving home on 23 April 1941. She was found, according to the police report at the Regional Archives in Gothenburg, on April 27, curled up at a boulder on a hill with a view just north of Alingsås
Alingsås
Alingsås is a locality and the seat of Alingsås Municipality in Västra Götaland County, Sweden. It had 22,919 inhabitants in 2005.-Geography:...
, near Bolltorpsvägen, by a farmer who was going for a walk. The boulder is now a memorial stone. Margot Hanel committed suicide shortly thereafter.
Karin Boye was given two very different epitaphs. The best-known is the poem "Dead Amazon" (Död amazon) by Hjalmar Gullberg
Hjalmar Gullberg
Hjalmar Gullberg was a Swedish writer, poet and translator of Greek drama into Swedish.Gullberg was born in Malmö, Skåne. As a student at Lund University, he was the editor of the student magazine Lundagård. He was the manager of the Swedish Radio Theatre 1936-1950...
, in which she is depicted as "Very dark and with large eyes". Another poem was written by her close friend Ebbe Linde and is entitled "Dead friend" (Död kamrat). Here, she is depicted not as a heroic Amazon
Amazons
The Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...
but as an ordinary human, small and grey in death, released from battles and pain.
A literary association dedicated to her work was created in 1983, keeping her work alive by spreading it among new readers. In 2004, one of the branches of the Uppsala University Library
Uppsala University Library
Uppsala University Library at Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden, consists of 12 subject libraries, one of which is housed in the old main library building, Carolina Rediviva...
was named in her honour.
Works
Novels:- Astarte, 1931
- Merit vaknar, 1933
- Kris, 1934
- För lite, 1936
- KallocainKallocainKallocain is a classic 1940 Swedish dystopian novel which envisions a future of drab terror. Seen through the eyes of idealistic scientist Leo Kall, Kallocain's depiction of a totalitarian world state draws on what novelist Karin Boye observed or sensed about the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany of...
, 1940
Collections of poems:
- Moln, 1922
- Gömda land, 1924
- Härdarna, 1927
- För trädets skull, 1935
- De sju dödssynderna, 1941 (not completed, posthumously published)
- Complete Poems in English translation by David McDuff, Bloodaxe Books, 1994 ISBN 1852241098