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Göran Tunström (1937-2000) |
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Swedish novelist and poet, who depicted his native region, Sunne, in several novels. Among Göran Tunström's best-known works is Juloratoriet (1983, The Christmas Oratorio), a Nordic tour de force in magic realism. The book was translated into twenty languages and filmed in 1996. "All stories, at the same moment as they are told, are true. As stories," Tunström once said. Memories, autobiographical material, and dreams are often combined in his writings, which gives them a nostalgic tone. "Det finns ingen gud. Men det finns de gudar vi skapar av våra behov. Det finns ingen liv efter detta. Det finns de liv vår inbillning kan förse oss med. Fickor i tiden. Ögonblick som brinner. Ögonblick som stilla fladdar. Veteaxets ögonblick. Det finns ingen tingens enhet, annat än den enhet vårt hjärta längtar efter. Det finns inte – ur kosmisk synpunkt – något framåtskridande, inte ens – annat än ur biologist synpunkt – någon mening med vår liv." (from Under tiden by Göran Tunström, Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1993, p. 17) Göran Tunström was born in Karlstad, but he grew up in Sunne,
Värmland. His father was a Protestant minister; he died when Göran was
12. This loss is one of the central issues in Tunström's work, the
dialogue between a father and a son which was never finished. From the
vicarage the family moved to a small apartment. During these years
Tunström started to write. His first "'novel" was a thriller, 32 pages
long, which he wrote in his teens. The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca had a profound impact on
him. Tunström even attended a Spanish language course. Periodically Tunström lived in
Billingsfors with his maternal grandfather Oskar Persson, whom he later
described in Prästungen (1976, The Priest's Son). In 1957
Tunström graduated from a high school in Uppsala. Inringnin,
his first collection of poems, came out in 1958.
Maskrosbollen (1962, The Dandelion Clock), a story about a young man named Bernard
Ottosson, known as Bastiano, his early love affairs, and his way
out of Sunne, marked Tunström's breakthrough as a novelist, but he was
angry about his fate: if one comes from a place like Sunne, one had
nothing to tell. In 1964 Tunströ,
married the artist Lena Cronqvist, who illustrated among others their
travel book Indien, en vinterresa (1984). Tunström also
dedicated his poetry collection Dikter till Lena (1978)
to his wife; their marriage and love was a basic theme in Tunström's
poetry. When Tunström was still an aspiring
writer, he
meet the singer and poet Leonard Cohen in Hydra, a Greek island, where
he had lived since the late 1950s and worked as a tourist guide; the
two remained friend through the decades. Both wrote poetry, loved
Lorca's work, and had lost their fathers at an early age. Hydra was populated by
writers, artists, and intellectuals from around the world. The
small expat colony, around fifty in number, was run by George Johnston
and Charmian Clift; both were
journalists. Cohen had an affair with the wife of the Norwegian writer
Axel Jensen; she was his muse and inspired the song 'So Long,
Marianne.' With Staffan Söderblom, Tunström translated a selection Cohen's poems under the title Dikter från ett rum, published by Norstedt in 1972. Cohen donated a lithograph, 'Good Greek Coffee,' to Sunne in 2010. The self-portrait was placed in the local public library. "Ingenting binder en, livet är ett provisorium, en leda. Man är fången i nånting man aldrig valt." (Prästungen: berättelse) Tunström's early Sunne novels include De heliga geograferna (1973, The Holy Geographers), Guddöttrarna (1975, The Goddaughter), and Prästungen, which follows the life of the narrator, Göran, from childhood to his early twenties. In the first two novels the central characters are the
minister
Hans-Christian Wermelin and his wife Paula, loosely based on Tunström's
parents, and the third concerns their son in search for his
deceased father. "Alla historier, i och med att de berättas, är sanna.
Som historier. Och för att du tvivlade, skall jag förelägga de in den
verkligaste av alla verkligheter." (De heliga geograferna: roman) At first, Tunström labelled as a regional novelist, expressing his nostalgia for a supposedly simpler and more authentic way of life. However, with the success of Juloratoriet and Tjuven (1986, The Thief) critics realized that Sunne is Tunström's Macondo, an existential setting for his characters' loneliness, guilty conscience, dreams and hopes. Tjuven blended fantasy, humor and mythology. It
depicted an
unconventional pair, Ida and Fredrik Jonsson Lök, and their 12
children. The story of the thirteenth child, Johan, followed the
journey of an Swedish Orpheus into the Underworld to reclaim his
Eurydice, called now Hedvig. Johan believes that he can rise from
poverty and help Hedvig by stealing the Codex Argenteus, a national
treasure. A strong Christian interest became apparent in Ökenbrevet (1978,
Letter from the Wilderness),
Jesus' account of his life before he enters upon his public mission.
"Öräkneliga är de krav människan ställer på människan." Like Nikos
Kazantzakis in The
Last Temptation of Christ
(1955),
Tunström
focused on Jesus' inner struggles to understand his true self. Upon
accepting who his real father is and understanding what has once taken
place in one's life, it will always be part of it, Jesus finds the
meaning of his life. "Bravely, Tunström has chosen to write about
Jesus, but the novel is for anyone who has pondered the meaning of
life, thought about good and evil, about suffering and most of all,
about love." ('Göran Tunström (born 1937)' by Charlotte
Whittingham, in Aspects of Modern Swedish Literature, edited by Irene Scobbie, London: Norvik Press, third
edition, 2022, p. 397) The idea for Juloratoriet (The Christmas Oratorio)
was born
in Nepal. There the author met a Swedish foreign aid worker, who
rehearsed Thursdays with other Westerners Bach's Christmas oratorio.
Tunström's novel centers on the characters and the destinies of three
generations of Nordensson men, united by death and sorrow,
music and fantasy. Also Marc Chagall, Selma
Lagerlöf, Sunne's most famous author, and the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, also born in Sunne, appear in the
story. Juloratorioet opens with an accident, that casts its shadow far in the future. Aron Nordensson, a farmer, loses his beloved wife, Solveig – she is due to sing Bach's Christmas music in a church but she falls with her bicycle and dies. Through his DX hobby Aron gets in contact with Tessa, who lives in New Zealand. They exchange letters and Aron travels to meet her on the other side of the earth. Before they see each other, Aron takes his life – he throws himself overboard – when he realizes that he is chasing after a dream: Tessa is not Solveig. Tessa waits for Aron without knowing his fate and loses her mind. Years later Aron's son Sidner meets Tessa. She learns what happened to Aron and regains her own lost past. Sidner's son Victor Udde, the narrator, becomes a musician and he returns to Sunne to direct Bach's famous Christmas oratorio. The story ends in the soothing words of a choral: "You shepherd folk, be not afeared, / because the angel tells you: / this weak babe / shall be our comfort and joy, / thereto subdue the devil / and bring peace at last." Because his father had died of a heart attack at the age of 54, Tunström had been decades afraid that he would not pass that age. "Men döden har jag alltid grubblat över, ända sedan min far dog då jag var tolv år. Jag har inte varit besatt av döden, men tanken på den har alltid funnits med mig genom livet." ('Göran Tunström om sina upplevelser som patient: "Ronden känns som en förödmjukelse"' by Kajsa Giesecke, Läkartidningen, Vol. 97, No. 41, 1997, p. 3580) The play Chang Eng (1987) was about the Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, who were exploited by the promoter P.T. Barnum, famous for the quote, "There's a sucker born every minute." From the late 1980s Tunström suffered from a writer's block. He was in three car accidents and had a lung cancer operated. While traveling in Portugal in 1991, he had a heart infarction. Tunström's crisis ended with
the novel Skimmer (1996,
Glittering), which was set in Iceland. In the imaginative story of
Pétur and his father Halldór Tunström continued to explore his personal
theme. Pétur, the first-person narrator, travels to Paris, where the
life of his aging and ill father is coming to an end. In Berömda
män som varit i Sunne
(1998) the author again returned to his native region. Göran Tunström
died in
Stockholm on February 5, 2000, at the age of 63. He was buried near the
east gable of Sunne Church During his career, Tunström received several literary awards, including the Nordic Literature Prize (1984) for The Christmas Oratorio, Selma Lagerlöf Prize (1987), August Prize (1998), and Tegnér Prize (1999).
Selected works:
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