AKA Tomas Gösta Tranströmer

Born: 15-Apr-1931
Birthplace: Stockholm, Sweden
Died: 26-Mar-2015
Location of death: Stockholm, Sweden
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Poet, Psychologist

Nationality: Sweden
Executive summary: Scandinavian poet

Prominent Swedish poet and psychologist, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature. Widely influential in and beyond Scandinavia, with minimalist style and delicate language suggesting extensive imagery and emotion in very few words. His works have been translated into dozens of languages, and are best known in English through translations by his friend and colleague, Robert Bly. His name is pronounced TRAWN-stroh-mur.

One of Tranströmer's better-known works, "The Couple," as translated by Bly:

They turn the light off, and its white globe glows
an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet
in a glass of darkness. Then arising.
The hotel walls shoot up into heaven’s darkness.

Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,
but their most secret thoughts begin to meet
like two colors that meet and run together
on the wet paper in a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer
tonight. With its windows turned off. Houses have come.
They stand packed and waiting very near,
a mob of people with blank faces.

Father: Gösta Tranströmer (journalist)
Mother: Helmy Westberg (teacher, div. 1934)
Wife: Monica Bladh
Daughter: Paula

    High School: Södra Latin School, Stockholm, Sweden
    University: BA Psychology, Stockholm University
    University: MS Psychology, Stockholm University
    University: PhD Psychology, Stockholm University (1956)

    Nobel Prize for Literature (2011)
    Swedish Ancestry
    Stroke (1990)

Author of books:
17 Dikter (Seventeen Poems) (1954, poetry)
Hemligheter på Vägen (Secrets of the Road) (1958, poetry)
Den Halvfärdiga Himlen (The Semi-Finished Heaven) (1962, poetry)
15 Dikter (Fifteen Poems) (1966, poetry)
Klanger och Spår (Sounds and Songs) (1966, poetry)
Kvartett (Quartet) (1967, poetry)
Windows & Stones: Selected Poems (1969, poetry)
Mörkerseende (Night Vision) (1970, poetry)
Twenty Poems of Tomas Tranströmer (1970, poetry)
Stigar (Trails) (1973, poetry)
Ostersjöar (Baltics) (1974, poetry)
Selected Poems (1974, poetry, with Paavo Haavikko)
Friends, You Drank Some Darkness (1975, with Gunnar Ekelöf, Harry Martinson)
Sanningsbarriären (The Truth Barrier) (1978, poetry)
Hur senhösten Night Romanen börjar (How the Late Autumn Night Novel Begins) (1980, poetry)
PS (1980, poetry)
Selected Poems (1980, poetry)
Det Vilda Torget (The Wild Marketplace (1983, poetry)
Det Blå Huset (The Blue House) (1987, poetry)
Collected Poems (1987, poetry)
För Levande och Döda (For the Living and the Dead) (1989, poetry)
Tikkuja = Stickor = Sticks (1992, poetry)
Minnena Ser Mig (Memories Look at Me) (1993, memoir)
Sorgegondolen (The Sorrow Gondola) (1996, poetry)
Dikter, 1954-1989 (Poems, 1954-89) (1997, poetry)
Air Mail: brev, 1964-90 (Air Mail: Letters, 1964-90) (2007, letters, with Robert Bly)
Den Stora Gåtan (The Big Mystery) (2004, poetry)
Deleted World (2006, poetry)
Klangen Säger att Friheten Finns (Music & Freedom) (2010, poetry)
Dikter och Prosa, 1954-2004 (Poems & Prose, 1954-2004) (2010, poetry)
Tranströmers Ungdomsdikter (Tranströmers' Youthful Poems) (2011, poetry)

Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile

Copyright ©2019 Soylent Communications