Johannes Edfelts hand

En motivstudie

Abstract

The Hand of Johannes Edfelt: The Study of a Motif

This is a study of the hand as a frequent motif in the poetry of Johannes Edfelt (1904–1997), one of the leading Swedish poets of his generation and a member of the Swedish Academy. The hand motif in Edfelt´s poetry sometimes tends to be a vital theme and can be interpreted as a symbol, though flexible and ambiguous. From a rhetorical point of view it is more often than not handled as a synecdoche, more specifically as a pars pro toto referring to fate, the whole of mankind, or life itself. From a hermeneutic point of view it can manifest itself as a magic hand; as such, its origin is not merely biblical, but obviously also deeply connected to primitive art and especially to ancient petroglyphs and cave paintings, which began to inspire modernist writers and artists all around Europe in the 1920’s. Edfelt was devoted to the hand motif over the course of more than seven decades, from his first collection of poetry in 1923, to his last in 1996.