Tomas Tranströmer

Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (Swedish pronunciation: [¹tʊmːas ²jœsːta ²trɑːnˌstrœmːɛr]; 15 April 1931 – 26 March 2015) was a Swedish writer, poet, translator and recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Tomas Tranströmer in 2008

Quotes

För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996

Translated by Joanna Bankier, Robert Bly, Samuel Charters, Robin Fulton, and Malena Morling

• I was, however, more interested in steam engines than in electric ones. In other words, I was more romantic than technical.
  • 29.

• The scientific method I was closest to was the Linnaean: discover, collect, examine.
  • 30.

• We always feel younger than we are. I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains its rings. The sum of them is me. The mirror sees only my latest face, while I know all my previous ones.
  • 40.

• My total experience of school was mixed, with more darkness than light. Just as my image of society has become.
  • 42.

• As when you were a child and some tremendous hurt
  Was pulled over your head like a sack-
  Glints of sunshine through the mesh
  And the hum of the cherry trees.

  But it doesn’t help, the great hurt
  Covers head and torso and knees
  And though you are able to move sometimes
  Spring brings no happiness.

  Yes, shimmering wool cap, pull it down over your face
  Stare through the mesh.
  Out on the bay, the rings of water multiply soundlessly
  Green leaves darken the earth.

  • As When You Were a Child.

Selected Poems, Edited by Robert Hass, 1987 Harpercollins

• Above ground,
  in tropical flood, earth's greenery
  stands with lifted arms, as if listening
  to the beat of invisible pistons.
  • p. 3.