Edith Södergran in St. Petersburg. Seven poems from Waxcloth Notebook. In memoriam Edith Södergran (1892–1923)

Abstract

The article deals with youth lyrics of Edith Södergran — a prominent poet-modernist of Swedish descent who was born and went to school in St. Petersburg. Edith Södergrans’ professional oeuvres were written in the Swedish language and published in Finland, her earliest poems being composed in several languages: German, French, Swedish and Russian yet never published in her lifetime. It was at St Peter’s School — Sankt-Petri-Schule that Edith Södergran commenced poetic exercises. Waxcloth Notebook from 1907–1909 — Vaxvukshäftet — where she recorded her first uneven, and heterogeneous in form and metrics, verses is decisive in comprehending her mature modernist lyrics of world value. The article suggests that some of the poems have a character of exercises associated with the curriculum in versification. Poetry chosen is composed in various versification systems. Analysis of seven poems from Waxcloth Notebook demonstrates Södergran’s natural ease for drawing emphatical images and for discovering inner feelings at the same time. Her quick eye and rooted insight combined with native ability and cleverness to render colors and to bring dynamic movement or slow it down is highly convincing in verses dedicated to her native St. Petersburg in German and in her first poems in Swedish. Her unschooled talent evolved by early poetic experiments and aesthetic sense advanced by St. Petersburg prepared further transformation of Södergran as self-sustained word painter and reformer of versification in the Swedish language.