Bloomsbury

Long-time readers of this blog know of my fondness for Gunnar Ekelöf, often described as Sweden’s first surrealist poet. 

The other week, I stumbled upon a review in Svenska Dagbladet which sparked my interest in a new book about Tora Dahl’s diaries from the 1930’s and the early 1940’s, clearly written in a darkening time but also an era of literary experimentation. In the review, it is suggested that the group around Tora, which included Ekelöf but also people like Harry Martinson, Ivar Lo-Johansson, and Nils Ferlin, would have “made the Bloomsbury group seem prudish”, a claim that obviously cannot be left unexamined ;-) Thus, equipped with a froosh-Bellini, I am thrown back to a Stockholm full of violent labour disputes, reckless financial speculation, and disintegrating cosmopolitan worlds.