Childhood Martinson was born in
Jämshög,
Blekinge County in south-eastern Sweden. Born Harry Edmund Olofsson, he was the fifth child of
middle class parents who ran a small shop in the village Nyteboda and had four older and two younger sisters. At a young age he lost both his parents, his father died of
tuberculosis in 1910 and a year later his mother emigrated to
Portland, Oregon leaving behind her children, whereafter Martinson was placed as a foster child (
Kommunalbarn) in the Swedish countryside. Martinson would later depict his childhood in the novel
Flowering Nettle (1935), and its continuation
Vägen ut ('The Way Out', 1936).
Years at sea and vagrancy (1920–1927) At the age of sixteen Harry Martinson, as he now called himself, had run away and signed onto a ship in
Gothenburg as an
able seaman. The
steam ship's journey reached France, Ireland and Scotland, but after returning to Stockholm Martinson signed off as he could not afford the necessary winter clothes. He then spent eighteen months as a
vagrant, eventually reaching as far as
Umeå in north-east Sweden and then
Tromsø in northern Norway. In June 1921 he was arrested for vagrancy in
Lundagård park,
Lund. In March 1922 he signed on as a
stoker on a steam ship that sailed to Norway and Iceland, but after two months he ran away in Belgium. He stayed in
Antwerpen, Belgium for a while before signing on to a ship destined for USA, where he hoped to meet his mother, and then to a Greek ship sailing to
South America. He spent some time as a seaman in
Brazil and then signed on to a ship that sailed from
Rio de Janeiro to
Cape Town, and then further to
Bombay. In Bombay he again ran away, before signing on to another ship that sailed back to Europe. Martinson would later depict his years as a seaman in several acclaimed books, including
Kap farväl! (1933), which was a critical and commercial success and the first of his books to be translated to English (
Cape Farewell, 1934).
Literary career in 1958, with authors
Eyvind Johnson (left) and
Gabriel Jönsson (right). Around 1927, Martinson began his literary career and had several poems published in different publications. The same year he met
Artur Lundkvist, who introduced him to
modernist poets such as
Elmer Diktonius,
Carl Sandburg and
Edgar Lee Masters. In September 1929, Martinson's first book of poems called
Spökskepp ("Ghost Ship") was published by
Albert Bonniers förlag. Together with Lundkvist,
Gustav Sandgren,
Erik Asklund and
Josef Kjellgren he authored the anthology
Fem unga (Five Youths), which introduced
modernism in Swedish literature. His next collection of poems,
Nomad (1931) featured a wide scope of themes and literary styles, including nature poems, impressions from his sea travels and childhood memories and mixed traditional
rhymed verse with modernist
free verse and epic
prose poems. It was widely acclaimed by contemporary critics and is regarded as Martinson's literary breakthrough. It was followed by two prose books in which Martinson recalled his years as a seaman,
Resor utan mål ("Aimless Journeys", 1932) and
Kap farväl! (
Cape Farewell, 1933) which further established Martinson as one of the leading Swedish authors of his generation. After a poorly received collection of poems,
Natur ("Nature", 1934), Martinson found great success as a
novelist with the semi-autobiographical
Nässlorna blomma (
Flowering Nettle) in 1935, in which he depicted his childhood. It was a critical and widely read success that at the end of 1935 had been published in three editions, and has since been translated into more than thirty languages. The story was continued in the novel
Vägen ut ("The Way Out") in 1936, which was another critical and commercial success. The commercial success of his recent books and several scholarships awarded for his writing allowed Martinson to buy a
farm in
Södermanland, where he lived with his wife, the
proletarian novelist
Moa Martinson, and her sons. During this time he wrote a trilogy of essay books that focused on nature:
Svärmare och harkrank (1937),
Midsommardalen (1938) and
Det enkla och det svåra (1939). In late 1939, Martinson was engaged in the Finland
Winter War as a representative of the Swedish
Finland Committee. In winter 1940 he travelled in Sweden and Finland together with five other Swedish authors in a campaign to recruit volunteers to the Finnish army. Martinson himself took part as a volunteer in the war. In March 1940 he spent nine days at the heavily attacked front in
Salla as a
courier for the Finnish troops. Martinson wrote about his experiences in the book
Verklighet till döds ("Reality to Death"), which was published in 1941.
Passad (1945), influenced by
Chinese poetry, was Martinson's first collection of poems in eleven years, became a critical and commercial success and his most successful book of poems to date. The novel
Vägen till Klockrike (
The Road to Klockrike, 1948) was another huge success, and in 1949 Martinson became the first proletarian writer to be elected a member of the
Swedish Academy. Much of the collection featured familiar themes in Martinson's writing such as nature,
didactic poems and criticism of the modern society, but the last section in the book was something new. The cycle "Sången om Doris och Mima" ("The Song About Doris and Mima"), a
science fiction like story of a
spacecraft evacuating people from the destroyed earth which loses its course and subsequently floats on without destination. Martinson would later expand the cycle to his most famous work,
Aniara.
Aniara was published in October 1956 to unanimous critical acclaim and much public interest. It was later adapted to
an opera by
Karl-Birger Blomdahl and
Erik Lindegren, and the 2018 film
Aniara. Martinson worked on a follow-up to
Aniara called
Doriderna which was going to be about the people left on earth. In the meantime he published
Gräsen i Thule ("The Grass in Thule", 1958), a collection of mainly nature poems that was also well received by contemporary critics and readers. His next book
Vagnen ("The Wagon", 1960), a collection of poems which largely was a criticism of the modern society and its technology, was however not well received by contemporary critics. Sensitive to criticism, Martinson declared that no more of his poems would be published during his lifetime, but a few other works were published in the 1960's, such as the play
Tre knivar från Wei ("Three Knives from Wei", 1964) set in 7th century
China, which was staged by
Ingmar Bergman in the
Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in 1964. In 1971 Martinson returned as a poet with
Dikter om ljus och mörker (
Poems About Light and Darkness), which was followed by a collection of nature poems
Tuvor (
Tufts) in 1973.
Nobel Prize in Literature On 3 October 1974 the
Swedish Academy announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature that year should be awarded jointly to Harry Martinson and
Eyvind Johnson. Harry Martinson was awarded with the citation "for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos." The prize decision sparked heavy criticism in the Swedish press against the Swedish Academy for awarding the Nobel Prize to two of its own members. Although there were also positive reactions to the prize decision, the sensitive Martinson took the negative comments aimed at the Academy personally and found it hard to enjoy the recognition.
Personal life From 1929 to 1940, he was married to novelist
Moa Martinson, prominent as a feminist and proletarian author, whom he met through a Stockholm anarchist newspaper,
Brand. The sensitive Martinson found it hard to cope with the criticism following his 1974 Nobel Prize award in Literature, and died by suicide on 11February 1978 at the
Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm after cutting his stomach open with a pair of scissors in what has been described as a "
hara-kiri-like manner". He was buried in
Sollentuna on 24 February 1978. ==Literary themes==