Knut Ahnlund, born 24 May 1923 in Stockholm. Literary historian, translator and writer. He was elected to the Swedish Academy on 10 March 1983 and admitted on 20 December 1983. Ahnlund succeeded the writer Karl Ragnar Gierow to Chair number 7. Since 1996 he has not participated in the work of the Academy. He was awarded the Schück Prize in 1964, the Kellgren Prize in 1988 and Axel Hirsch’s Prize in 1997.
Knut Ahnlund started his studies at Stockholm University College as a Romanist but later became a literary historian. Between 1947 and 1950 he was literary adviser at Norstedts publishing house, and in 1951 he started to contribute to the national daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet as a critic and journalist. In 1952 he became a Licentiate of Arts, in 1956 Doctor of Philosophy and in 1957 Assistant Professor of Literary History with poetics at Stockholm University College.
His voluminous doctoral thesis Henrik Pontoppidan was presented in May 1956. As the subtitle ‘Five main lines in his authorship’ indicates, the thesis treats five central aspects of the work of the Danish author Henrik Pontoppidan (1857–1943). The aim was to modify the current view of the author as an extrovert naturalist. When the thesis was translated into Danish in 1972 Ahnlund had already been working in Denmark for some years.
Following his doctoral thesis – and his fiction debut in 1963 with the novel Vännerna (‘The friends’), a “story from home and school” – Knut Ahnlund continued his Danish research. In 1964 the book Den unge Gustav Wied (‘Young Gustav Wied’) came out, on Pontoppidan’s contemporary and fellow-writer Gustav Wied (1858–1914). Hence it was fairly logical for Ahnlund to move to Denmark in 1966, as Professor of Nordic Literary History, at Århus University. In 1969 he returned to Sweden and in 1970 became associated with the Nobel Institute of the Swedish Academy as literary-historical expert.
His Danish work culminated in the editorship of the literary-historical anthology, Omkring Lykke-Per (1971; ‘Around Lykke-Per’), on Pontoppidan’s great work, the monumental personality novel Lykke-Per, which in eight volumes treats the idealist’s confrontation with reality.
Ahnlund continued his writing with lyrical impressions from Sri Lanka (“Singhalese memories and myths”) in Jordens skönhet (1979; ‘The beauty of the Earth’). He also started all-round translation including works by, primarily, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Czeslaw Milosz and Camilo José Cela. In addition he wrote monographs, starting with Singer, “the most entertaining author in the world”: Isaac Bashevis Singer – hans språk och hans värld (1978; ‘Isaac Bashevis Singer – his language and his world’). This work was followed up with important works on Octavio Paz (1990) and, particularly, Sven Lidman (1996).
Ahnlund’s election to the Swedish Academy in 1983 was preceded by the collection of essays Diktarliv i Norden (1981; ‘A poet’s life in the North’) in which his Nordic commitment was elucidated. The essay on Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s exile, “Love, litet bättre än sitt rykte” (‘Love, somewhat better than his reputation’), summarises the new research on Almqvist’s possible guilt. The volume also includes essays on Harry Martinson, Herman Bang, August Strindberg, Karl Gjellerup, Knut Hamsun and his faithful companions Pontoppidan and Wied – and of course Sven Lidman.
A large part of Knut Ahnlund’s later work is associated with Sven Lidman, including the publication of the latter’s novel Stensborg in the Academy’s series of editions of Swedish classics. The above 550-page monograph of 1996 may possibly be seen as the culmination of Ahnlund’s life’s work. Sven Lidman – Ett livsdrama (‘Sven Lidman – a life drama’) gives an extremely varied portrait of the charismatic author: “His life with its impetuous changes and shifts of scene, with its noisily blazoned paganism and its assured proclamation of faith in God, its progression from childhood innocence via the provocative amoral bravado of youth, towards the sectarian Christian conviction of manhood, to the new anxiety and remorse of old age possesses something grandiose and at the same time old-fashioned and timeless, a morality or a mystery play with garish effects but also with tender and affecting scenes.”
Jan Arnald
(Translated by Tim Crosfield)