Queer Places:
Roshchino, Leningrad Oblast, Russia, 188820
Edith
Irene Södergran (4 April 1892 – 24 June 1923) was a Swedish-speaking
Finnish poet. One of the first modernists within Swedish-language
literature, her influences came from French Symbolism, German
expressionism, and Russian futurism. At the age of 24 she released her
first collection of poetry entitled Dikter ("Poems"). Södergran died at the age of 31, having contracted
tuberculosis as a teenager. She did not live to experience the worldwide
appreciation of her poetry, which has influenced many lyrical poets.
Södergran is considered to have been one of the greatest modern
Swedish-language poets, and her work continues to influence
Swedish-language poetry and musical lyrics, for example, in the works of
Mare Kandre, Gunnar Harding, Eva Runefelt and Eva Dahlgren.
Södergran lived most of her life in Raivola, a village in eastern
Finland, in the area which Finland lost to the Soviet Union in World War
II. Södergran went to school in the cosmopolitan city of Viborg. At the
age of 16 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis – her father had died of
tuberculosis only a year before – and she spent part of her young years at
various sanatoria in Finland and in Switzerland.
In her early years Södergran became inspired by
Friedrich Nietzsche's
philosophy; later she was interested in Anthroposophy and in Christianity.
She was a pioneer in modernist poetry in Finland. Her poetic self is a
powerful, self-conscious woman with an androgynous dimension. In one of
her bestknown poems, ‘Vierge Moderne’, she wrote: ‘I am no woman. I am a
neuter. / I am a child, a page-boy, and a bold decision, / I am a laughing
streak of scarlet sun …’ (trans. Stina Katchadourian). Contemporary
critics were mostly negative. One irritated male critic wrote that even if
someone is mad it does not mean that she is a genius.
Södergran found a literary supporter in
Hagar Olsson (1893– 1978), a
young woman writer and critic. Their friendship began through
correspondence in January 1919. Biographers have been almost neurotically
keen on Södergran having a potential male lover and they have ended up
describing Olsson and Södergran's relationship only as intellectual
friendship, yet other interpretations can be made as well. Södergran and
Olsson met for the first time in February 1919, when Olsson visited
Södergran's place in Raivola. Södergran was ravished. Inspired by Olsson,
she wrote a series of ‘sisterhood-poems’ in her third poetry collection,
Rosenaltaret (The Altar of Roses, 1919). Olsson and Södergran met only six
times. In her letters Södergran begged Olsson to visit Raivola again,
since Södergran's financial and health problems limited her own
travelling. But Olsson was occupied with her work in Helsinki, where she
also had other affairs during these years, both heterosexual and
homosexual.
In the summer of 1923 Olsson was travelling in Italy when she received
word of Södergran's death. Olsson has described it as a shock because she
was not aware of the critical state of Södergran's health, and feelings of
guilt were to follow Olsson all her life. Södergran had given Olsson a
ring that she called ‘the ring of sisterhood’. Olsson would carry the ring
all her life, and she also wished to be buried with it. As her heritage
for later generations of lesbian readers, Södergran has left the poems of
sisterhood, where longing, jealousy and love between two women were given
a virtuous expression.
My published books:
BBACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_S%C3%B6dergran
- Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon. Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian
History Vol.1: From Antiquity to the Mid-Twentieth Century: From
Antiquity to the Mid-twentieth Century Vol 1 (p.410). Taylor and
Francis. Edizione del Kindle.