Septemberlyran : Dikter by Edith Södergran

Septemberlyran by Edith Södergran is a collection of lyric poems written in the early 20th century. The book is a modernist, visionary poetry cycle that likely centers on ecstatic self-assertion, nature’s grandeur, mythic imagery, and the spiritual and cultural upheavals of war and renewal. After a brief preface declaring freedom from strict meter and a trust in instinct, the poems move through blazing mountain vistas, storms, sunsets, and twilight to voice a cosmic “I” that exalts existence, challenges fate, and seeks union with the divine. The speaker prays, prophesies, and admonishes: she honors Nietzsche at his grave, rejects material treasure for longing and spirit, and casts war as an apocalyptic force that belongs to the song’s genius. Love appears as destiny and trial (a counsel to a young woman, a vow to return as a lover’s inescapable fate), while myths and symbols recur—Orpheus taming beasts with a lyre, a healing rose in the Virgin’s hands, a bull that never charges, moonlit omens of blood, and trains of the future demanding grander gates. Across assertive hymns like “Triumph to exist,” elegiac scenes (“The maiden’s death”), and visionary fragments of Petersburg and alpine Engadin, the sequence builds toward a final call to forget the self, face beauty’s terrible demand, and unite with the boundless cosmos. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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About this eBook

Author Södergran, Edith, 1892-1923
Title Septemberlyran : Dikter
Original Publication Helsingfors: Holger Schildts Förlagsaktiebolag, 1918.
Credits Tuula Temonen and Tapio Riikonen
Language Swedish
LoC Class PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures
Subject Swedish poetry -- 20th century
Category Text
EBook-No. 77949
Release Date
Copyright Status Public domain in the USA.
Downloads 211 downloads in the last 30 days.
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