[Janice D. Soderling]

Post 19 above.

Just a belated side note on Södergran's "Till fots / fick jag gå genom solsystemen": it's been pointed out by some observers that although Edith Södergran came from a Finland-Swedish family and wrote much of her mature work in Swedish, this was not the literary language in which she felt most at home. Her early poetry was written almost exclusively in German, and she was educated at a German-language school in Russia. Her grasp of Swedish grammar and orthography was sometimes shaky, and there are a number of strange usages in her deployment of the Swedish language. Some have suggested that "solsystemen" (the solar systems) may well be a mistake, and that what she meant to write was "solsystemet" (the solar system). See Gunnar Tideström's biography for more information about E.S.'s relation to Swedish.

William, welome to Eratosphere.

I lean to the supposition that the "observing someones" have not read Gunnar Tideström's biography but are referring to some quoted extract. (My reference in the below is p. 25 of the 1960 Aldusbok paperback edition of the biography "Edith Södergran", first printed in 1949.)

Here one finds that (I'm translating and paraphrasing on-the-fly) Edith Södergran's juvenilia consists of 225 poems of which fewer than one tenth were written in Swedish. Except for one in Russian and five in French all are written in German.

GT goes on to say admiringly that this tells us where the schoolgirl had her most important literary models. (End of GT reference.)

Edith Södergran's mother tongue was Swedish. If you know the history of Finland, you will be aware that it was once part of the kingdom of Sweden, lost to Russia in war (and also earlier gained by Sweden through war) and only in modern times has been it a sovereign nation with Finnish and Swedish accorded equal status as national languages. Edith Södergran was descended on both sides from Swedish-speaking families.

Her juvenilia is collected in Vaxdukshäftet: Edith Södergrans ungdomsdiktning selected and commented by Ebba Witt-Brattström http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebba_Witt-Brattstr%C3%B6m . This book's translations to Swedish from Russian are by Ulrika Wallenström, the Russian and French poems are translated by Horace Engdahl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Engdahl (member of the Swedish Academy and for ten years its permanent secretary. H.E. is moreover the spouse of Ebba Witt Brattström.)

EWB says in this book (Vaxdukshäftet p. 9, paperback edition 1997 publishing house Norstedts Förlag AB) the following (another on-the-fly translation):

Edith Irene Södergran was born 1892 in Russia, had Swedish as her mother tongue and attended the perhaps finest of the cosmopolitan St. Petersburg German schools, S:t Petrischule, located on the fashionable Nevsky Prospekt. (…) [Her education] was in German, French, Russian and English and [she was required to read] world literature in the original language. Therefore the young Edith had perfect command of meter and she methodically [uses various meters in her juvenilia]. (end of reference to EWB).

Edith Södergran was not adrift in the Swedish language. It is however true that as an adult, she developed her own poetic language style but do not be deceived to think that she didn't know singular from plural. This is not the place to expand the subject, but other Finnish modernists of that period were Elmer Diktonius, Gunnar Björling and Rabbe Enckell, all of whom (like Söderström) were published by the bilingual literary magazine Ultra. I strongly suspect that no linguistic lapse would have bypassed this crowd of friends, poets and editors to the extent that such a singular/plural error would be made permanent.

I might add here that it was EBs individualistic literary style combined with her mysticism which adds to interpretive ambiguity, that led me to make the more serious of my two mistakes. The other error was just a stupid embellishment, but the two mistakes together allow the poem to be traced from the Eratosphere board to the German blogger to CW.

Alas, the German blogger seems no longer to be available on line, this occurred in (I think) 2007. So I can't provide that missing link, you will just have to take my word for it--or not. I did however have some correspondence about the matter (with the Loch Raven Review editors, with Alex P,, with Maryann C.) The Loch Raven editors reacted expeditiously—as I recall Jim Doss took down both translations immediately after it came to their attention. They were in touch with CW, I don't know the details of that as it wasn't my business.

I was also in touch with some other editors who were personal friends of mine and who had published CWs "translations" and gave them my findings about the Google and changed translations. Some contacted him and asked for an explanation. To the best of my knowledge he did not reply, The poems were subsequently removed online though he continued to use the journals as a reference. In those cases where I did not have a viable previous relationship with editors I did not contact them.

I want to say again that I would not have publicized this incident were it not for the bluff tactics used by CW. In fact I feel rather sorry for his lack on confidence in himself in the current Helen Mort incident. CW can probably write decent poetry on his own, it is needless to ruin a reputation by subjecting himself to possible scandal.

Someone posed the question above as to what the motive might be.

I remember reading, possibly on his blog (around the time this incident occurred) that he planned to pursue a doctorate. If one plans to go the career route in poetry, then the more credits the better. It is the path to getting accepted to post-grad and post-doc education and teaching positions, to tenure, to ever more lofty magazines who pay celeb poets for publication, and there are other pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. The Nobel Prize is not to be sneezed at.

I'm happy to see a new member. William, and I hope you will stick around and take part.