en promenad i stockholm...

Empty the street in morning twilight

slithers, pushes into the distance,

gropes its way along city blocks,

cuts and crosses house lots and alleys...

*****

Rows of houses, grey-brown walls,

mouldings, drainpipes, balconies, railings,

baker's pretzels and grocery bushes;

level sidewalk stones as margins...

*****

Now, far off on the brow of the hill 

rises up a head that is moving,

and two hands wrapped around a cane -

like a mirage it rises up...

*****

 

But over there, and even higher

hovers the smoke-blue city skyline

there is the sun, the cottages gleam,

there is the breeze, flapping the flags...

*****

*selected verses from "Street Pictures" by August STRINDBERG (1849-1912), translated from the swedish by Lotta M. Lofgren, 2002.

 

stockholm standards

 ...Sweden is a hauled-up, unrigged ship. Her masts stand stark in the twilight. And twilight lasts longer than day. The way here is stony: daylight waits until noon to reveal winter's coliseum, lit by unreal clouds.*

[*selected lines from 'Epilogue' by Tomas TRANSTROMER, as translated from the swedish by May Swenson]

...and so Stockholm stands tall even on land - the slender verticals of the thousands of masts around her many islands are replicated in the lamp posts, the soaring columns, the flag standards...and certainly no less than in the statuesque bearing of her fair citizens!

around skeppsholmen...

The STF Vandrarhem AF Chapman & Skeppsholmen is a highly rated hostel on board and on land in a prominent location on the island of Skeppsholmen with a view of the charming medieval town of Gamla Stan...

[there was no room available on board when we were there, so we stayed at the lovely Hotel Skeppsholmen instead] 

some of the many romantic and eccentric vintage boats [each with its own information plaque of its provenance and seafaring history] moored along the shores of the island...

The towboat is freckled with rust...

It is a heavy extinguished lamp in the cold.

But the trees have wild colors: signals to the other shore.

As if people wanted to be fetched. 

[selected lines from the first verse of 'Sketch in October' by Tomas TRANSTROMER, from Paths, 1973 - this poem translated from the swedish by Robin Fulton]

[on the flight over (in October!), I read of Tomas Transtromer being finally awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 80 - he was born (and still lives) in Stockholm, publishing his first book of poems in 1954 and has since published many more volumes. I am liking what I am reading in translation but wish that I could read his poetry as he wrote them in swedish!]

 working boatyards on the more rustic side of Skeppsholmen...

Dejeuner sur l'herbe by Pablo PICASSO, 1962

[sculptural installation in the shady back garden of the Moderna Museet]

 The Royal Institute of Art [Kungliga Konsthogskolan]

[with the very cool Hotel Skeppsholmen in the background]

[this is one institute where I would love to be an art student again - while staying at that hotel!]

the absolute skeppsholmen

 Skeppsholmen dangles preciously, a bejewelled drop earring from the epilobe of central Stockholm...
the lustrous breath of an autumnal sun stirs the air, sparks the waters, flecks the trees - their leaves shimmering a thousand shades of gold...

the light-dappled writhe-morphous sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely guide the way to the lovely and idyllic Hotel Skeppsholmen...
where the dashing naval officers no longer stride down the long hallways or gaze out the wide windows, lost in reveries of exotic shores and maritime feats and clear calm seas...

we survey the gilded foliage from the serenity of room 245 [dedicated to the first president of the Swedish Royal Naval Society who had lived here with his wife from 1773 to 1776]
across the park, the Museum of Modern Art [Moderna Museet] beckons with a luminously absorbing exhibit of the later paintings of Turner, Monet and Twombly...
the darkening atmospheric sublimity of Turner's Peace - Burial at Sea drifts emotively into my painter's eye, while Monet's Matinée sur la Seine, Giverny effuses my visual field with sensually nostalgic intimations...
and Twombly's Quattro Stagioni looms grandly over my effects with the vigoroso impact of a multi-hued bloodbath...
...I eventually escape to the rational materiality of the rigidly solid structural formations in the Swedish Museum of Architecture [Arkitektur Museet] next door!

the artful light installations within the hotel's hallways lead me back to my room - without running into any of the pensive ghosts of landlocked swedish sailors, regrettably...

 Skeppsholmen, the morning after...

shading off...

"Le voyageur marchant sur son ombre écrit

sans attendre que le ciel marque minuit

sous le bataille de plumes la pierre sonne."

[last verse from "Sonnet" by Alfred JARRY (1873-1907)]

[translation from the french by Francis Scarfe:: 

"The striding traveller writes his shadow down;

not waiting for the sky to strike midnight

the feathers hammer on the chiming stone."]

 

along a swedish river...

the Gota flows through Gothenburg, Sweden's largest port city, and where we were staying near the mouth of the widening river, we could observe much maritime traffic to and from the harbour...
on an overcast Sunday afternoon we walked along the southern riverfront going under the Alvsborgsbron bridge, with views of the massive industrial sites across the river...

the enormous ferries sailed in from Norway and Germany...

past the lone red rock - the namesake of the Roda Sten Art Centre below, exhibiting international contemporary art...

a regatta of old sailing vessels floated by in the late afternoon, contrasting leisure with industry...

left behind - the ubiquitous IKEA rug as beach blanket...

a carefully embedded mosaic eye looks out onto the river and out towards the ice blue sea...

danish vernacular

Not that there is any one particular stylistic vernacular in the architecture of Copenhagen encompassing buildings from over several centuries, but on the whole the city's skyline is unobtrusively low and fairly harmonious...
The ones that caught my attention on this short visit have been mostly paired in contrasting styles and circumstances, such as the one above of one of the four identical rococo palaces at Amalienborg, residences for the Danish Royal Family since the 18th century, with the mixed modern flats in long extended blocks for their non-royal subjects...

***

The ornate brick and stone patterned façade of a 17th century house with the geometrically tiled surfaces of a 20th century planetarium, as they both project unconventional profiles upwards...

***

The batten-boarded and gable-roofed upper stories of this ivy-clad institutional building provide a traditional, almost warm and homey, feel to the school it now houses, while the sharply delineated corner glass windows of the apartments in the building below bestow a coldly hard-edged chevron design to an otherwise unadorned bare brick block...

***

The 21st century state of the art Copenhagen Opera House floats on an island in the harbour and is perfectly aligned with the axis that runs through the octagonal plaza of the Amalienborg palaces across the water, while the perfectly scaled and thoughtfully built duckhouse floats tranquilly in the pond of the Royal Library courtyard [watched over by the statue of Soren Kierkegaard no less!]...

***

A few kilometers north of Copenhagen on the way to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art located in the quiet seaside village of Humlebaek, the country vernacular manifests in tiny red cottages with picket fences and overgrown rose bushes and in larger thatched homes with well-tended gardens...all still as fresh and wholesome as in simpler times...

danish flourishes

 The young thinker ambles through the narrow streets of his assembled city, his mind churning constant flourishes of philosophical abstracts - sticking his leather gloved finger into the soiled commons of existence, and smelling nothing, he sequesters the questionnaire eternal, the gilded irony of an earnest life...

 He sits awhile on the curved stone bench, sheltered from pithy elemental assaults - but not the stench of abject humanity - and yet the textual flourishes assail from behind, the backward comprehension of things that cannot be understood but for a curious twist of the fountainhead...

 He passes by a grand portal of bronzed archaic contortions and observes the exuberant youth as yet uncrushed by the storms of life - they who smile their expectant smiles, with no need for the nightwatch explanation of the flourishes of profane love...

 "Inasmuch as in being published it is in a figurative sense starting a journey. I let my eyes follow it for a little while. I saw how it wended its way down solitary paths or walked solitary on public roads... - On the other hand, inasmuch as in being published it actually remains quiet without moving from the spot, I let my eyes rest on it for a little while. It stood there like a humble little flower under the cover of the great forest, sought neither for its splendor nor its fragrance..." Copenhagen, May 5, 1843
[the above partial quote is excerpted from the Preface to 'Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses' by Soren Kierkegaard (1843-44), as translated by Howard V. Hong (1990)]

 "once you label me you negate me"

[he continues to sit in the tranquil courtyard garden of the Royal Library where the birch trees still flourish into the late fall and where youth's exuberant expectancy passes him by daily in its unceasing attempt to understand which are the things that cannot be understood...]