Aniara

Harry Martinson

1956

March, 2023

6/10

An interesting approach to telling a story through poetry. This makes it often difficult understand what exactly is going on or who is who, but the "ethereal" quality the poetry gives makes up for this.

There are still typical "event-based" constructs in the poems. However, more attention is given to the feeling of events rather than the "what".

I have no complaints about the English translation. I only wonder what the reading experience is like in the native Swedish.

Still, I felt that a lot could have been better. The story elements detracted from the poetry, and the poetry detracted from the story. Together, they created a unique experience, but I was left wishing for more on both ends. More than anything, I just wanted to know what was actually happening in the story and what all the different nouns referred to (people, planets, cities, languages, technology, times, religions... what was what?). A lot of esoteric knowledge is required which I lacked.

Nevertheless, my preference is for philosophical constructs to be expressed in isolation. There's nothing wrong with requiring a strong, even esoteric foundation, but Aniara takes it a bit too far for me.