Editing Aniara

{{Short description|1956 poem by Harry Martinson}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Infobox poem
|name                = ''Aniara''
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|author              = [[Harry Martinson]]
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|country             = Sweden
|language            = Swedish
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|genre               = [[Science fiction]]
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|publication_date    = {{Start date|1956|10|13|df=y}}<ref name="samedayreview">[[Dagens Nyheter]], 13 Oct 1956, page A4, review by [[Olof Lagercrantz]] (in Swedish)</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://bonnierskonsthall.se/en/utstallning/susan-philipsz/harry-martinson/articles-about-aniara/|title=Articles about Aniara|first=Bonniers|last=Konsthall|website=Bonniers Konsthall}}</ref>
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{{Italic title}}
'''''Aniara''''' ({{langx|sv|'''Aniara: en revy om människan i tid och rum'''}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=Harry Martinson – Bibliography |url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1974/martinson-bibl.html}} Martinson's bibliography at Nobel Foundation's website</ref>) is a book-length [[epic poetry|epic]] [[speculative poetry|science fiction]] [[poem]] written by Swedish [[List of Nobel laureates|Nobel laureate]] [[Harry Martinson]] from 1953 to 1956. It narrates the tragedy of a large passenger spacecraft carrying a cargo of colonists escaping destruction on Earth veering off course, leaving the Solar System and entering into an existential struggle. The style is symbolic, sweeping and innovative for its time, with creative use of neologisms to suggest the science fictional setting. It was published in its final form on 13{{nbsp}}October 1956.

''Aniara'' has been translated to around twenty languages. It was adapted into an [[Aniara (opera)|opera]] in 1959 and a Swedish [[Aniara (film)|feature film]] in 2018.

Aniara, published in October 1956, was met with public interest and enthusiasm from literary critics and readers. The work was praised for its lyrical storytelling, profound thought, and its portrayal of human greatness turning into humiliation and powerlessness. Aniara has influenced other works of science fiction, such as ''[[Tau Zero]]'' (1970) by [[Poul Anderson]] and ''[[A Fire Upon the Deep]]'' (1992) by [[Vernor Vinge]]. The poem has become a landmark literary work and is often used as the basis for planetarium shows in Sweden. In 2019, the extrasolar planet [[HD 102956 b]] was named after Isagel, a character from the story, and its star was named Aniara.

==Title==
In a 1997 Swedish edition of ''Aniara,'' literary scholar [[Johan Wrede]] writes that the [[neologism]] “Aniara” is Harry Martinson's own invention.<ref name="Wrede">{{Cite book |last=Martinson |first=Harry |title=Aniara |date=1997 |publisher=Albert Bonniers}}</ref> Martinson came up with the word years before writing the work while reading astronomer [[Arthur Eddington]], then giving it the meaning as the "name for the space in which the atoms move".<ref name="exp">{{Cite web |last=Bannerhead |first=Tomas |date=22 November 2019 |title=Hur kunde det gå så snett? |url=https://www.expressen.se/kultur/dodsskeppet-varnar-oss-om-och-om-igen/ |website=Expressen}}</ref> Others have submitted additional theories as to the origin of the word. A preface to a 2005 Italian edition claims that the title comes from ancient Greek ἀνιαρός, "sad, despairing",<ref>{{LSJ|a)niaro/s|ἀνιαρός|ref}}.</ref> plus special resonances that the sound "a" had for Martinson.<ref name="italian">Preface to {{Cite book |last=Martinson |first=Harry |title=Aniara. Odissea nello spazio |publisher=Scheiwiller |year=2005 |isbn=88-7644-481-5 |editor-last=Lombardi |editor-first=Maria Cristina}}, the Italian edition of ''Aniara''.</ref> Another theory of unclear origin makes up the word "Aniara" from the chemical symbols Ni ([[Nickel]]) and Ar ([[Argon]]) and the negative prefix "a-", and interprets this as the ship being untethered to both earth (Nickel being abundant in the Earth's core) and sky (Argon being abundant in the Earth's atmosphere). Martinson himself is said (by [[Tord Hall]], longtime friend) to have been fond of this interpretation.<ref>{{Cite web |date=February 2019 |title="Jag har alltid varit lockad av att gå nära stup" |url=https://fof.se/tidning/2019/2/artikel/jag-har-alltid-varit-lockad-av-att-ga-nara-stup}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Harry Martinsons efterlämnade papper och manuskript |url=http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-10437 |website=Alvin}}</ref>

==Interpretation==
According to Ott and Broman, ''Aniara'' is an effort to "[mediate] between science and poetry, between the wish to understand and the difficulty to comprehend".<ref name="Ott and Broman">{{Cite web |last1=Ott |first1=Aadu |last2=Broman |first2=Lars |date=1988 |title=Aniara: On a Space Epic and its Author |url=http://www.ips-planetarium.org/?page=a_ottandbroman1988 |publisher=International Planetarium Society, Inc.}}</ref> Martinson translates scientific imagery into the poem: for example, the "curved space" from [[Albert Einstein]]'s [[general theory of relativity]] is likely an inspiration for Martinson's description of the cosmos as "a bowl of glass", according to the Nobel Prize Foundation.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Harry Martinson: Catching the Dewdrop, Reflecting the Cosmos |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1974/martinson-article.html |publisher=Nobel Foundation}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Allén |first=Sture |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/1835 |title=Nobel Lectures in Literature 1968 – 1980 |date=June 1994 |isbn=978-981-02-1174-5 |doi=10.1142/1835}}</ref> Martinson also said he was influenced by [[Paul Dirac]].

==The poem ==
The poem consists of 103 [[canto]]s, each relating the tragedy of a large passenger [[spacecraft]]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Andersson |first=Karl-Olof |title=Harry Martinson: naturens, havens och rymdens diktare |date=2003 |publisher=Bilda i samarbete med Harry Martinson-sällsk. |isbn=91-574-7688-8 |location=Stockholm |page=123 |language=sv |trans-title=Harry Martinsson: poet of nature, sea and space |id={{LIBRIS|9199287}}}}</ref> originally bound for [[Mars]] with a cargo of colonists from the ravaged Earth. After an accident, the ship is ejected from the [[Solar System]] and into an [[existentialism|existential]] struggle.

{{Blockquote|<poem>
We listen daily to the sonic coins
provided every one of us and played
through the Finger-singer worn on the left hand.
We trade coins of diverse denominations:
and all of them play all that they contain
and though a dyma 1 scarcely weighs one grain
it plays out like a cricket on each hand
blanching here in this distraction-land.
</poem>}}

The first 29 [[canto]]s of ''Aniara'' had previously been published in Martinson's collection ''Cikada'' (1953), under the title ''Sången om Doris och Mima'' (''The Song of Doris and Mima''),<ref name="italian" /> relating the departure from Earth, the accidental near-collision with an asteroid (incidentally named [[Honshu|Hondo]], another name for the main Japanese isle where [[Hiroshima]] is situated) and ejection from the solar system, the first few years of increasing despair and distractions of the passengers, until news is received of the destruction of their home port, and perhaps of Earth itself. According to Martinson, he dictated the initial cycle as in a fever after a troubling dream, affected by the [[Cold War]] and the Soviet suppression of the [[1956 Hungarian revolution]]; in another recounting, he said the first 29 cantos were said to be inspired by his observation of the [[Andromeda Galaxy]].<ref name="italian" />

A major theme is that of [[art]], symbolised by the semi-mystical machinery of the ''Mima'', who relieves the ennui of crew and passengers with scenes of far-off times and places, and whose operator is also the sometimes naïve main narrator. The rooms of Mima, according to Martinson, represent different kinds of life styles or forms of consciousness.<ref name="kirjasto">{{Cite web |last=Liukkonen |first=Petri |title=Harry Martinson |url=http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/harrymar.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030409202033/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/harrymar.htm |archive-date=9 April 2003 |website=Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi) |publisher=[[Kuusankoski]] Public Library |location=Finland}}</ref> The accumulated destruction the Mima witnesses impels her to destroy herself in despair, to which she, the machine, is finally moved by the ''white tears of the granite'' melted by the ''phototurb'' which annihilates their home port, the great city of Dorisburg. Without the succour of the Mima, the erstwhile colonists seek distraction in sensual orgies, memories of their own and earlier lives, low comedy, religious cults, observations of strange astronomical phenomena, empty entertainments, science, routine tasks, brutal totalitarianism, and in all kinds of human endeavour, but ultimately cannot face the emptiness outside and inside.

The poems are [[Meter (poetry)|metrical]] and mostly [[rhyme]]d, using both traditional and individual forms, several alluding to a wide range of Swedish and [[Nordic countries|Nordic]] poetry, such as the Finnish [[Kalevala]].

== Translations ==
''Aniara'' has been translated to around twenty languages including French, German, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Czech, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, English, and Esperanto.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://libris.kb.se/hitlist?d=libris&q=tit%3aAniara&f=ext&spell=true&hist=true&p=1 |title=Aniara |publisher=Libris.se }}</ref>

=== English translations ===
''Aniara'' was translated into English as ''Aniara, A Review of Man in Time and Space'' by [[Hugh MacDiarmid]] and E. Harley Schubert in 1963.<ref name="nybooks" /> It was translated again into English by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg for a 1999 edition. Neither edition is {{As of|2020|alt=currently}} in print.<ref name="nybooks" />

[[Geoffrey O'Brien]], writing for the [[New York Review of Books]], compares the two editions and finds the recent Klass Sjöberg edition more faithful to "Martinson's formal schemes" while considering the MacDiarmid Schubert edition "more persuasive" as English poetry.<ref name="nybooks">{{Cite magazine |last=O'Brien |first=Geoffrey |title=There's No Place Like Home |magazine=New York Review of Books |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/08/15/aniara-no-place-like-home/}}</ref> [[Burns Singer]] wrote of the original translation "it may well prove a seminal volume in the history of English letters" in [[Times Literary Supplement]].{{refn|group=nb|His business as a poet does not include the development of new principles of cosmology or the invention of thought systems but is rather concerned with details which will make credible whatever cosmology or thought systems he adopts. (...) (T)here are passages in which his conception justifies itself and the words radiate a kind of austere but delicate simplicity. (...) (I)t was a bold move to translate this work and it may well prove a seminal volume in the history of English letters." - Burns Singer, Times Literary Supplement<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/sverige/martinsonh.htm | title=Aniara - Harry Martinson }}</ref>}}

== Reception ==
The publication of ''Aniara'' in October 1956 was met with much public interest and was enthusiastically received by many Swedish literary critics and readers.<ref name="Wrede" /> Reviewing it in [[Expressen]] in 1956, Bo Strömstedt wrote: "it is a fabulous story, and Harry Martinson tells it with an ingenuity – in substance and in words – that is also quite fabulous; even though most of the songs are written in the same iambic verse, the book never becomes monotonous." "Harry Martinson has not only written a breathtakingly lyrical science fiction story; he has also (...) created a gigantic "Paradise lost", an epic about how human greatness is turned into humiliation and powerlessness".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.expressen.se/kultur/aniara-rec-bo-stromstedt/ |title=Aniara rec Bo Strömstedt|author=Bo Strömstedt |date=22 October 2010 |publisher=Expressen |language=Swedish}}</ref>

The well-known American science fiction writer, [[Theodore Sturgeon]], in reviewing a 1964 American edition for a genre audience, stated that "Martinson's achievement here is an inexpressible, immeasurable sadness. [It] [t]ranscends panic and terror and even despair [and] leaves you in the quiet immensities, with the feeling that you have spent time, and have been permanently tinted, by and with an impersonal larger-than-God force."<ref name="sturgeon196308">{{Cite magazine |last=Sturgeon |first=Theodore |date=August 1963 |title=Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf |url=https://archive.org/stream/Galaxy_v21n06_1963-08#page/n90/mode/1up |magazine=Galaxy Science Fiction |pages=180–182}}</ref>

Writing a guest review for [[The New York Times]], D. Bruce Lockerbie suggested that with ''Aniara'' Martinson had, along with [[C. S. Lewis]], "found that an interplanetary setting, light years removed from mundanity" supplied "the esthetic distance necessary for truly profound thought."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lockerbie |first=D. Bruce |date=10 November 1974 |title=The Trip of Aniara |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/10/archives/the-guest-word-the-trip-of-aniara.html}}</ref>

The poem has also been reviewed more recently. In a 2015 review, [[James Nicoll]] writes "Martinson’s creative approach to astronomy and related matters gives the work an misleadingly archaic feel."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Good not to be always mindful/ Of our torpid transmigration |url=https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/good-not-to-be-always-mindful-of-our-torpid-transmigration |website=James Nicoll Reviews}}</ref> [[Complete Review|M. A. Orthofer]] finds in 2018, the poem "a product of its times, but even as aspects may no longer seem as current, it holds up well in its bleak vision."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Aniara – Harry Martinson |url=https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/sverige/martinsonh.htm |website=www.complete-review.com}}</ref> In his 2019 overview of Martinson's works in the New York Review of Books, Geoffrey O'Brien concludes "Aniara is an epic of extinction, conceived at a moment when extinction had begun to seem not only possible but perhaps imminent."<ref name="nybooks" />

== Legacy ==
''Aniara'' has had an influence on later works of [[science fiction]], such as ''[[Tau Zero]]'' by Danish-American writer  [[Poul Anderson]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Budrys |first=Algis |date=December 1970 |title=Galaxy Bookshelf |magazine=[[Galaxy Science Fiction]]}}</ref>{{rp|93–95; 191–192}}

In the 2004 centennial celebration of the birth of Harry Martinson, the Martinson Society characterized ''Aniara'' as an "epic poem about the spaceship in which we flee the destruction of the earth, the spaceship that drifts off course into an endless universe", and considered the poem to have achieved becoming a legend in their own right, one of the myths people are familiar with without necessarily knowing who created them.<ref>{{Cite web |date=8 February 2013 |title=In English |url=http://harrymartinson.se/in-english/}}</ref>

In December 2019, the extrasolar planet [[HD 102956 b]] was named after a character aboard the spacecraft, the pilot ''Isagel'', as part of the [[IAU]] [[NameExoWorlds]] project. The exoplanet's star was named ''Aniara''.<ref name="ExoWorlds">{{Cite web |date=2019-06-06 |title=Name an exoplanet (press release) |url=http://www.nameexoworlds.iau.org/sweden |access-date=2019-06-13}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://fof.se/artikel/rymddikt-gav-namn-sveriges-exoplanet|title=Rymddikt gav namn åt Sveriges exoplanet|date=17 December 2019|access-date=17 December 2019|archive-date=12 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200112094443/https://fof.se/artikel/rymddikt-gav-namn-sveriges-exoplanet|url-status=dead}}</ref>

== Adaptations ==
An [[opera]] by [[Karl-Birger Blomdahl]] also called ''[[Aniara (opera)|Aniara]]'' premiered in 1959 with a [[libretto]] by [[Erik Lindegren]] based on Martinson's poem; it was staged in Stockholm, Hamburg, Brussels and [[Darmstadt]], and later in Gothenburg and Malmö.<ref name="nobel2">{{Cite web |last=Larsson |first=Ulf |title=Harry Martinson: Catching the Dewdrop, Reflecting the Cosmos |url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1974/martinson-article.html}}</ref> A performance by the [[Royal Swedish Opera]] at the [[Edinburgh International Festival]] was broadcast on the [[BBC Third Programme]] in Sept 1959.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Issue 1868 |url=https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/page/e14a9222c5d74f508bb404a8504166f1 |access-date=2020-08-19 |website=genome.ch.bbc.co.uk}}</ref>

Aniara (1960), a Swedish TV film directed by Arne Arnbom, written by Erik Lindegren and Harry Martinson, and starring Margareta Hallin, Elisabeth Söderström, Erik Sædén and Arne Tyrén. The music was composed by Karl-Birger Blomdahl.

The [[BBC Third Programme]] broadcast an English translation, read over five nights, in November 1962.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Search Results – BBC Genome |url=https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?adv=1&media=radio&order=asc&q=Aniara+&yf=1962#search |access-date=2020-08-19 |website=genome.ch.bbc.co.uk}}</ref>

In Martinsons home country of Sweden, ''Aniara'' has commonly been used as the basis of planetarium shows,<ref name="nybooks" /> the first one set up in 1988 by Björn Stenholm using music by Dmitrij Shostakovich in the planetarium then housed in what is now the [[Lund Observatory|Old Observatory]] in [[Lund]], [[Sweden]]. An English-language show premiered during the [[International Planetarium Society]] conference in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1992.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.ips-planetarium.org/page/a_ottandbroman1988 |title=Aniara: On a Space Epic and its Author |first1=Aadu |last1=Ott |first2=Lars |last2=Broman |date=1988 |website=International Planetarium Society}}</ref>

[[Tommy Körberg]] headlined ''31 songs from Aniara'', a stage concert first set up in [[Olofström]], Sweden in 1997.<ref>{{Cite web |title=31 sånger från Aniara &#124; Välkommen till Dominique Musik! |url=http://dominiquemusik.se/sv/31-sanger-fran-aniara/ |website=dominiquemusik.se}}</ref>

The fourth album from the Swedish [[progressive metal]] band [[Seventh Wonder]] called ''[[The Great Escape (Seventh Wonder album)|The Great Escape]]'' (2010) is based on ''Aniara,'' the title track last 30:21 minutes and relates all the poem from beginning to end.

Swedish musician [[Kleerup]] released an album based on ''Aniara'' in 2012.

A melding of ''Aniara'' and Beethoven's opera ''[[Fidelio]]'' was staged by the [[Opéra de Lyon]] under the direction of American artist [[Gary Hill]] in 2013.<ref name="hill1">{{Cite web |last=Ashley |first=Tim |date=11 August 2013 |title=Fidelio – Edinburgh festival 2013 review |url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/aug/11/fidelio-edinburgh-festival-2013-review |website=The Guardian}}</ref>

''[[Aniara (film)|Aniara]]'', a 2018 Swedish feature film by directors Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, starring [[Emelie Jonsson]], premiered at the [[Toronto International Film Festival]] that year.<ref>{{Cite web |year=2018 |title=Aniara |url=https://2018.tiffr.com/shows/aniara |access-date=2018-09-08}}</ref> Also in 2018, artist Fia Backstrom made the installation '' A Vaudeville on Mankind in Time and Space'', using ''Aniara'' as its point of origin.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Fia Backström "A Vaudeville on Mankind in Time and Space" |url=http://www.nyartbeat.com/event/2018/443A |website=www.nyartbeat.com}}</ref>

''Aniara: Fragments of Time and Space'', a choral theatre work with [[The Crossing (choral ensemble)|The Crossing]], Helsinki’s Klockriketeatern, and composer Robert Maggio was performed in 2019."

== References ==
{{Reflist|30em}}

{{Authority control}}

== External links ==
* [https://gsproject.edublogs.org/gs-texts/texts-used-in-2017/aniara-by-harry-martinson-3/ Text of Klass Sjöberg 1999 edition]
* [https://litteraturbanken.se/f%C3%B6rfattare/MartinsonH/titlar/Aniara/sida/5/etext Aniara ''(in Swedish)''] at [[Swedish Literature Bank|the Swedish Literature Bank]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=nb}}

[[Category:Swedish poems]]
[[Category:Science fiction books]]
[[Category:1956 poems]]
[[Category:Swedish speculative fiction works|A]]
[[Category:Works by Harry Martinson]]
[[Category:Poems adapted into films]]
[[Category:Existentialist works]]
[[Category:Epic poems]]
[[Category:Fiction about generation ships]]