A Close Reading of Tomas Tranströmer's poem "Seeing through the Ground," translated by Patty Crane
I don't read Swedish, so I'm very glad that Patty does, because I wouldn't want to miss out on Tranströmer.
When my copy of The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer arrived, it felt to me like I was holding my high school biology textbook — it’s a massive volume, hardbound, with a striking wraparound cover.
In truth, The Blue House is actually a much more attractive volume than my high school biology textbook, and it represents a monumental achievement on behalf of the poet and translator Patty Crane, as she bent her brilliance to the page in service of rendering the Nobel-winning Swedish psychologist & poet Tranströmer’s work into English. The book is doubly beautiful to me, as it includes both the Swedish originals and Patty’s deft translations side by side, allowing the linguistic nerd in me to pick through the Swedish and try to parse out the decisions that allowed renderings in English that capture Tranströmer so well. How do I know that it has been done well? Steven Cramer, the biggest Tranströmer fan I know — aside from Patty, that is — has shared with me his full-throated endorsement of these translations, and I believe him.
Patty and Steven will actually be reading together for What The Universe Is on July 10, 2024, at 7:30pm Eastern. I hope you’ll tune in to hear some Tranströmer read by Patty, and some of Steven’s Departures from Rilke. It’s a translation special, if you will, and you can register easily at bit.ly/WTUIJul2024.
I thought I’d take a spin at a close reading of Patty’s translation of Tranströmer’s poem “Ljuset Strömmar In” (“The Light Streams In”), which Copper Canyon has kindly included in both Swedish and English on their page for the book. (I’ve included both here, but I’ll only be doing a close reading of the English version for reasons that I hope you understand.)
LJUSET STRÖMMAR IN Utanför fönstret är vårens långa djur den genomskinliga draken av solsken rinner förbi som ett ändlöst förortståg – vi hann aldrig se huvudet. Strandvillorna flyttar sig i sidled de är stolta som krabbor. Solen får statyerna att blinka. Det rasande eldhavet ute i rymden transjorderas till en smekning. Nedräkningen har börjat. THE LIGHT STREAMS IN Outside the window is spring’s long animal, the diaphanous dragon of sunshine flowing past like an endless commuter train—we never managed to see its head. The seaside villas scuttle sideways and are as proud as crabs. The sun causes the statues to blink. The raging conflagration out in space is transforming into a caress. The countdown has begun.
There’s a real audacity in this poem’s images that I think is born out of the extended cold and dark of Swedish winters; the “spring’s long animal” suggests to me that this is not the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it spring of New England in the 2020s, but rather a gradual warming up — a gentle awakening, if you will. It seems so gradual as to almost be unnoticed or taken for granted; after all, it’s “flowing past like an endless / commuter train” whose head “we never managed to see.”
In the second stanza the use of animal imagery continues, and it does so in a way I find absolutely fascinating. “The seaside villas scuttle sideways” seeds the idea of crabs in the reader’s mind — crabs scuttle, and they live at the seaside — but crabs aren’t invoked until the simile in the second line of the stanza, “and are as proud as crabs.” This is, to me at least, a quietly radical inversion of expectation; similes usually start with a comparative statement (for instance, “Proud as crabs”) and then build on the initial comparison. I can’t recall many in which the simile arrives after a dose of figurative language that alludes to the core component of the comparison. A more traditional English-language approach might read “As proud as crabs, / the seaside villas scuttle sideways,” though this feels to me like it has lost some of the flavor or charm the inversion invokes.
I will admit that it is entirely possible that this is a Swedish construction or habit that Patty has preserved in her translation; I’d love to hear from anyone who speaks that language and is able to provide insight. (I will probably ask Patty herself after the reading if I can remember to do so.)
The final line of the stanza seems at first to be quite simple by comparison: “The sun causes the statues to blink.” It’s a pretty quotidian sort of surrealism, nothing absolutely astonishing, but it serves to refocus the poem on the power of the light that, as the title says, “streams in.” I’d suggest that this line serves as a bridge between the animal imagery of the previous lines and the stanza that comes next; it’s a small leap of sorts that sets up the major action that closes out the poem:
The raging conflagration out in space
is transforming into a caress.
The countdown has begun.
In the space of a stanza break, we go from the sun making statues blink to recognizing it as “[t]he raging conflagration out in space” — an accurate depiction of our star if ever there was, and also a surprising turn for a poem that has thus far had solar light being a “diaphonous dragon,” “like a commuter train,” and causing statues to blink. But now we’re at the roiling, nuclear-powered source, and that source “is transforming into a caress.” The light is “streaming in” from this source, traveling 8 light-minutes (about 94 million miles, give or take) and over the course of that distance it is taking on a sort of tenderness, a familiarity, an affection that warms the planet on which we live. Again, coming out of a Swedish winter, this must indeed be what it feels like to have light and warmth increase gradually.
And the absolute killer last line? “The countdown has begun.” It’s sinister, it’s honest, and it’s a reminder that the light and warmth won’t last forever. I’d suggest that Tranströmer’s speaker has folded layer upon layer of existential dread into this line. Not only do they know that the spring will turn to summer and the summer to fall and the fall will turn to the cold & dark winter, but I think they’re also aware that the sun will eventually burn out and any life on Earth at that moment will be deprived of its sustaining force. (Or maybe it’s just me that worries about such things…though I suspect the thought had crossed Tranströmer’s mind at least once or twice.)
Come hang with us on Wednesday, July 10 at 7:30pm Eastern to hear more of Patty’s brilliant translations of Tranströmer and to hear Steven Cramer read his riffs on Rilke. Register at bit.ly/WTUIJul2024, and thank you for reading!