Friday, October 7, 2011

My hero / Tomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson

Tomas Transtrômer



Tomas Tranströmer – My Nobel prize-winning hero


The literature prize means the world of poetry can finally raise a glass to salute this humble man

Robin Robertson
Friday 7 October 2011 13.28 BST
E
very October, for decades, a group of reporters and photographers have gathered in the stairwell of an apartment block in a quiet district of Stockholm, waiting to hear if the poet upstairs has finally won the Nobel prize for literature. The poet's wife, Monica, would bring them tea and biscuits while they stood around – but they would always leave, around lunchtime, as the news came in that the prize had gone to someone else. Annually, the name of Tomas Tranströmer comes up, and with every year one felt a growing sense that he would never receive this highest literary honour from his own country. The vigil is over now, with Thursday's wonderful news.

The landscape of Tranströmer's poetry – the jagged coastland of his native Sweden, with its dark spruce and pine forests, sudden light and sudden storm, restless seas and endless winters – is mirrored by his direct, plain-speaking style and arresting, unforgettable images. The master-poet of anxiety, of stress, he explores the vulnerability of the human in the face of the irrational – intrigued by polarities and how we respond to finding ourselves amid epiphanies, at pivotal points, at the fulcrum of a moment: "The sun is scorching. The plane comes in low, / throwing a shadow in the shape of a giant cross, rushing over the ground. / A man crouches over something in the field. / The shadow reaches him. / For a split-second he is in the middle of the cross. // I have seen the cross that hangs from cool church arches. / Sometimes it seems like a snapshot / of frenzy." ("Out in the Open")
Tranströmer is not only Scandinavia's greatest living poet, he is a writer of world stature. It is an honour to know this man, and to have translated some of his work – and a huge happiness to me that this work will now reach so many new readers. The world of poetry can finally raise a glass to salute this humble man, this magnificent poet.
The Deleted World by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Robertson, is published by Enitharmon.

THE GUARDIAN




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016

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