Ivar Lo-Johansson - Downtown Stockholm - Stockholm, Sweden
N 59° 20.160 E 018° 04.053
34V E 333203 N 6581139
This plaque with three lines from Ivar Lo-Johansson's novel "Kungsgatan" is located on a support column for an overpass in downtown Stockholm, Sweden. It is appropriately located on Kungsgatan, a street in the downtown area.
Waymark Code: WMPE57
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Date Posted: 08/16/2015
Views: 4
The plaque reads:
Det Litterära Stockholm
"Genom Kungsgatan, denna bördiga kanyon som börjar på gränsen till Östermalm och slutar på den fattiga Kungsholmen, sugs allt levande från ett helt land. Dess stenar har en dragningskraft som om de vore av platina eller guld. Om Kungsgatan drömmer barn om nätterna, när de i drömmen sparkar av sig täcket, när de vill gå hemifrån."
Ur romanen "Kungsgatan". 1935.
Av Ivar Lo-Johansson. 1901-1990.
Hit till Kungsgatan drogs bondsonen Adrian som kommit till Stockholm för att söka storstadens frihet.
[ENGLISH TRANSLATION]
The Literary Stockholm
"By Kungsgatan, this fertile canyon that begins on the verge of Östermalm and ends at the poor Kungsholmen, sucked all life from an entire country. Its stones have appeal as if they were made of platinum or gold. On Kungsgatan dreaming children at night, when they dream of kicking off the covers, when they want to go home."
From the novel "Kungsgatan". In 1935.
By Ivar Lo-Johansson. 1901-1990.
Hit to Kungsgatan pulled farmer's son Adrian who come to Stockholm to seek big city freedom.
The following information about author Ivar Lo-Johansson is from Wikipedia:
"Ivar Lo-Johansson (23 February 1901 – 11 April 1990) was a Swedish writer of the proletarian school. His autobiographical 1979 memoir, Pubertet (Puberty) won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1979.
Biography
Lo-Johansson was born in Ösmo in a family of tied agricultural labourers. He wrote over 50 proletarian novels and short-stories, all of which carried vivid portrayals of working-class people. He described the situation of the Swedish land-workers, statare, in his novels, short stories and journalism, which encouraged the adoption of certain land reforms in Sweden. He also caused much controversy with his features on old-age pensioners, gypsies and other non-privileged people. He died, aged 89, in Stockholm.
Lo-Johansson first came to the literary fore in the mid-1930s with the publication of his short story collections. His stories were infused with realistic and detailed depictions of the plight of landless Swedish peasants, known as statare. The first of his short stories collection to be published was Statarna I–II (1936–37; The Sharecroppers), followed by his Jordproletärerna (1941; Proletarians of the Earth, a novel. Autobiographical to a large extent, these works were nevertheless more than one man's story. They were a potent attack on the prevalent social conditions, especially the inequality in Swedish society. Lo-Johansson's books combined political astuteness and literary craftsmanship to such a competent degree that they are regarded as the stimulant behind the labor movement that ultimately led to the abolition of indentured farm labor in 1945.
Lo-Johansson is best known for his vivid recollections of the life in Swedish trade-unionist and literary circles of the twenties, thirties and forties. He also continued throughout his long life to insist that literature should face the world from the under-dog's perspective.
Lo-Johansson's works are characterized by a vivid expression of individual human suffering. A great example of this motif is character of the farm servant’s wife in Only A Mother (1939). He also explored the conflict between individualism and collectivism extensively in his autobiographical series of eight novels. He published the series in the 1950s with The Illiterate (1951). He published the last book in the series, The Proletarian Writer in 1960. In the 1970s he wrote numerous short stories dealing with the seven deadly sins. In the 1980s he wrote several memoirs."