Bellman. Biografin ("Bellman. The Biography") is a 2019 biography of the Swedish 18th-century songwriter and performer Carl Michael Bellman by the novelist and biographer Carina Burman. Bellman is a leading figure in Swedish song, known especially for his song collections Fredman's Epistles and Fredman's Songs.
Burman's book has been described as ambitious by its many reviewers, who have admired its lively style and the detailed academic research on which it is based. Some have found its definitive-sounding title provocative, as it is not the first biography of Bellman; others, that it says little about his music, although he was at once a poet and a musician.
Fredman's Epistles is a collection of 82 poems set to music; it depicts everything from Rococo-themed pastorale with a cast of gods and demigods from classical antiquity to laments for the effects of Brännvin-drinking, tavern-scenes, and apparent improvisations. The lyrics, based on the lives of Bellman's contemporaries in Gustavian-age Sweden, describe a gallery of fictional and semi-fictional characters and events in Stockholm. Jean Fredman, an alcoholic former watchmaker, is the central character and fictional narrator.[1][2]Fredman's Songs is a mixed collection of songs, some on the same themes as the Epistles – love, drinking, and death, some loyally royalist, some to his friends, some pastoral, and some humorously biblical.[1]
Carina Burman is a Swedish novelist and literature scholar. She has researched Swedish 18th and 19th century literature; her novels too have historical motifs.[3]
Book
Publication history
Bellman. Biografin was published in hardback by Albert Bonniers in 2019.[4]
The book is arranged like a play, in three "acts", complete with a dramatis personae listing the "Gentlemen" and "Ladies" in Bellman's life.
In "Act 1 Morning. The Era of Freedom (Frihetstiden[sv]) 1740–1771", Burman describes the career possibilities opening up for the young Bellman, though his financial problems and missed career steps limited his progress.
In "Act 2 Midday. The Light under Gustav III 1771–1789", she narrates how Bellman's contact with the new king gave him a measure of real literary success, but that he limited his future by clinging to the Bacchanalian in his poems, as seen in his 1783 verse drama Bacchi Tempel. He was overtaken by a younger generation of educated literary figures, especially his rival, the poet and critic Johan Henrik Kellgren.
In "Act 3 Evening. The Dark Years 1789–1795", Burman describes Bellman's last years. There was no happy ending: his career continued to decline both financially and socially, reflecting the political changes in the Gustavian age. He died in poverty, of pneumonia. His rivalry with Kellgren had ended with reconciliation, as Kellgren helped him to get Fredman's Epistles published, and wrote a foreword to the book. Burman provides a detailed commentary on the Epistles and how they changed on the way to publication. She describes, too, his wealthy bourgeois patrons, and the women who both inspired him and helped him in his later years, showing how his poems functioned in social terms.
Materials
The biography is illustrated with numerous contemporary paintings and engravings by contemporary artists, often full-page or double-page spreads, in colour and monochrome. The works include portraits, landscapes of Stockholm and other relevant places, and sketches by Bellman and his friends.[5]
The text is supported by a list of Bellman's brothers and sisters and a family tree; by some fifty pages of notes identifying sources and debatable points, together forming a detailed academic apparatus setting out Burman's position vis-a-vis other Bellman scholars and biographers like Lars Lönnroth and Gunnar Hillbom[sv]; a full list of sources; an index to Bellman works cited in the text; and an index of persons mentioned in the text.
Stefan Ekman of the University of Skövde, reviewing the book for 1700-tal: Nordic Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, notes that Bellman has two audiences in the 21st century: researchers and an educated [Scandinavian] public. In his view, Burman's book is aimed at both groups of readers. He comments that the title suggests an ambition to be the definitive biography of Bellman; or perhaps an allusion to the impossibility of making a biography comprehensive, given that Bellman was not the central figure in the Gustavian age, and that he had left few clues to his personal life. Other biographers had attempted to fill in the gaps by assuming that the wildly Bacchanalian life of the characters in Fredman's Epistles reflected Bellman's own life, without taking into account the meaning of the text, its humorous genre, or the public persona of the elderly poet. In Ekman's view, Burman's book avoids such errors. He notes, too, that the detailed academic notes at the end of the book constitute a sustained dialogue with other Bellman scholars, setting out Burman's position with respect to the many sources that she cites.[6]
The translator Paul Norlén, reviewing Bellman. Biografin for the Swedish Book Review, writes that despite the earlier "biographical studies" of Bellman by the poet Lars Huldén in 1964 and by Paul Britten Austin in English in 1967, and the "fictional autobiography" Fukta din aska ('Moisten your Ashes') by Ernst Brunner in 2002, there was no scholarly literary biography, as Brunner had noted in an afterword. In Norlen's view, Burman has written such a book, creating "an engaging and entertaining account of an eighteenth-century life and a legendary literary figure". He notes that Burman's stated purpose was to "paint Bellman’'s portrait based on his surroundings". Bellman, he writes, spent his whole life in a Stockholm of 70,000 people and 700 taverns, barring brief visits to Uppsala and Södermanland (and possibly Norway to escape his creditors). His life can, he notes, be accurately mapped to places in 18th century Stockholm; and he can be followed, too, via his often dire financial situation as his creditors relentlessly pursued him, including to debtor's prison. In Norlén's view, Burman writes "eminently readable" prose, and "she occasionally makes striking comparisons to present-day phenomena", for instance likening the young authors around the king, who was interested in culture, to "teenage girls around a boy band". Bellman was one of those around the king, writing homage pieces like Gustafs skål ('A toast to Gustav'), and relying on him for patronage, including a sinecure job with the state lottery.[7]
Lars Linder, reviewing the book for Dagens Nyheter, writes that it is a large book with a "cocky" title, but that in the end it remains remarkably silent about Bellman himself.[8] Johanna Paulson, in Svenska Dagbladet, calls the book ambitious, and writes that Burman succeeds in bringing the figure of Sweden's national bard to life with a combination of lively writing and detailed knowledge.[9]
Mikael Timm, for Sveriges Radio, states that this is an imposing, definitive book; much has been written about Bellman, and Burman seems to have read all of it, with a "tsunami" of citations. He adds that Bellman wrote more than 1700 poems, with so many dire rhymes that he was astonished, wondering how Bellman's reputation could have survived. He answers his own question by saying that those that are good are simply wonderful. All the same, even when one has been captivated by the poetry, it remains hard to understand the man and his times, and in his view Burman presents these splendidly.[10]
The journalist and translator Nina Lekander[sv], reviewing the book in Expressen, notes that the title had been called "cocky", but in Burman's case the definitive tone was well-merited by this "drop-dead gorgeous and super-thick book", complete with "an almost Russian blizzard of names", and excellent illustrations, such as those by Bellman's friend Johan Tobias Sergel. She finds Burman's language fantasy-rich, full of the sound of the 18th century, as the book depicts the poet whose life was poised between the gutter and genius. She wonders how it was that the king did not welcome him into the Swedish Academy, where Kellgren slipped in so easily. Bellman hesitated, held back from engaging with the authorities, except in his fictional Order of Bacchus. Lekander notes the absurd in Bellman's life – for example, that this humane and witty man, hopeless with numbers, should find a job in the National Bank. She notes that Burman covers it all, down to Bellman's troubadour successors like Cornelis Vreeswijk and Fred Åkerström, though she misses an account of his influence on odd figures like Joakim Pirinen or the poet Gunnar Ekelöf.[11]
Magnus Ringgren, in his review for Aftonbladet, calls it a mammoth beast of a book. He notes that despite the title, there have been at least three Bellman biographies in the past half-century. He respects Burman's scholarship, and observes that the publisher clearly expects an audience beyond the specialist, given the cost of production. He states that the tone is "light and free", and he finds especially good Burman's comparisons between modern times and Bellman's period.[12]
Maria Mi Wegelius, interviewing Burman for the Finnish broadcaster Yle, quotes her as liking Bellman's self-description as "a man of very little depth who doesn't ask if the sun rises or the earth shrugs its shoulders", and joking that Bellman "seems not to have been specially smart, actually". Burman added that Bellman was a fantastic poet, an excellent musician, and not bad at drawing either; he would be the perfect guest at a cocktail party, but too unpredictable to invite to Sweden's National Book Day.[13]
The psychotherapist Jakob Carlander[sv], reviewing the book for Upsala Nya Tidning, writes that in Bellman's world, everything has two sides: on the bright side, intoxication, dance, and love; on the dark side, angst, hangover, and a longing for death. He writes that Bellman was never properly understood, as he belonged to the Baroque in a time when neoclassicism had taken over. In Carlander's view, Burman knows Bellman's time, navigating his literary games with myths, drinking songs and bible texts; she writes with elegance and lucidity, and knows when to exchange her literary glasses for psychological observation, to the voice of the narrator or to "empathic understanding and compassion". In short, Carlander feels that the book may be long but it is a joy to read; it is full of the joy and melancholy of Fredman's Epistles and Songs.[14]
The historian Bo Eriksson[sv] writes that Burman's main strength is in literary analysis, highlighting the "voyeuristic attitude" of the Epistles, and the key role of metamorphosis in his poems. In Burman's words, "Everything is commonly metamorphosed through contact with the divinity - with Ulla [Winblad], but also with the mythological creatures who follow in her footsteps". Eriksson adds that the book is beautifully designed and edited, and richly illustrated.[15]
Hanna Höglund, reviewing the work for Göteborgs-Posten, writes that Burman intended to provide "a high, colourful window" into the cathedral of Bellman research, "where the sun shines in", and that in that aim she had succeeded. But Höglund feels that the book lacks music: in her view, Bellman was both poet and musician, and Burman's plan is "text, text, text". On Bellman's art of song, the reader rarely learns more than that an Epistle was set to "a widely known melody" from an opera, or occasionally perhaps by Bellman himself. Höglund complains that it is page 484 before Burman notes that Bellman contrasts the style of the music he has chosen with the text (of Epistle no. 12, "Gråt Fader Berg och spela"), where some of society's unfortunates seem absurdly to be dancing a courtly minuet, and that she barely touches on the subject again. Höglund wonders why Burman did not cover Bellman's music better, whether she felt it unimportant, did not need mentioning, or that it was beyond her competence.[16]
Related Research Articles
Ulla Winblad is a semi-fictional character in many of Carl Michael Bellman's musical works. She is at once an idealised rococo goddess and a tavern prostitute, and a key figure in Bellman's songs of Fredman's Epistles. The juxtaposition of elegant and low life is humorous, while allowing Bellman to convey a range of emotions. Ulla Winblad has been called "one of the really great female figures in Swedish literature". The character was partly inspired by Maria Kristina Kiellström (1744–1798).
Solen glimmar blank och trind is Epistle No. 48 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The Epistle is subtitled "Hvaruti afmålas Ulla Winblads hemresa från Hessingen i Mälaren en sommarmorgon 1769". One of his best-known and best-loved works, it depicts an early morning on Lake Mälaren, as the Rococo muse Ulla Winblad sails back home to Stockholm after a night spent partying on the lake. The composition is one of Bellman's two Bacchanalian lake-journeys, along with epistle 25, representing a venture into a social realism style.
Hvila vid denna källa is a song by the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman from his 1790 collection, Fredman's Epistles, where it is No. 82, the final Epistle. It is subtitled "Eller Oförmodade avsked, förkunnat vid Ulla Winblads frukost en sommarmorgon i det gröna. Pastoral dedicerad till Kgl. Sekreteraren Leopoldt" . It depicts the Rococo muse Ulla Winblad, as the narrator offers a "little breakfast" of "red wine with burnet, and a newly-shot snipe" in a pastoral setting in the Stockholm countryside.
Så lunka vi så småningom is a song from the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1791 collection, Fredman's Songs, where it is No. 21. The song, written a few months after the death of his son Eli, is addressed to his hosts at a meal. It makes light of death, while presenting it to each person individually, of high or low rank in society. The refrain sings of a pair of gravediggers discussing whether the grave is too deep, taking repeated swigs from a bottle of brandy.
Fader Berg i hornet stöter is Epistle No. 3 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Till en och var av systrarna, men enkannerligen till Ulla Winblad". One of his best-known works, it is both about and mimics the rhythm of playing the horn, while Fredman enjoys the sight of Ulla Winblad dancing in a ruffled dress.
Käraste Bröder Systrar och Vänner is Epistle No. 9 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled with the dedication "Til Gumman på Thermopolium Boreale och hännes Jungfrur.", Barbara Ekenberg. It describes the fictional Jean Fredman's cheerful world of brandy, women, and dance, in the setting of a tavern which is halfway to a brothel. The song ends with Fredman's credo, a celebration of everything that is delightful in life.
Liksom en Herdinna, högtids klädd, is a song by the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman from his 1790 collection, Fredman's Epistles, where it is No. 80. The Epistle is subtitled "Angående Ulla Winblads Lustresa til Första Torpet, utom Kattrumps Tullen". It is a pastorale, starting with a near-paraphrase of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's French guide to the construction of pastoral verse. That doesn't prevent the supposed shepherd and shepherdess from falling into bed drunk at the end of the song. It has been described as lovelier in Swedish than in Boileau's original French. The epistle's humorous depiction of the human condition has been praised by critics.
Vår Ulla låg i sängen och sov is Epistle No. 36 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Rörande Ulla Winblad's flykt". It begins with the innkeeper peeping through the keyhole to her bedroom and whispering with his friends as she sleeps, slowly waking up. Then she dresses ornately and enters the tavern, delighting the menfolk until she is suddenly arrested.
I går såg jag ditt barn, min Fröja, is a ballad from the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 collection, Fredman's Epistles, where it is No. 28. The epistle is subtitled "Om et anstäldt försåt emot Ulla Winblad.". It describes an attempt to arrest the "nymph" Ulla Winblad, based on a real event. The lyrics create a rococo picture of life, blending classical allusion and pastoral description with harsh reality.
Käre bröder, så låtom oss supa i frid is Epistle No. 5 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Til the trogne Bröder på Terra Nova i Gaffelgränden.". The first epistle to be written, it introduces Jean Fredman's fictional world of ragged drunken men in Stockholm's taverns, making music, drinking, and preaching the message of the apostles of brandy, in the style of St Paul's epistles. The composition's approach is simple compared to later epistles, retaining much of the character of a drinking song.
Gråt Fader Berg och spela is No. 12 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Elegi över Slagsmålet på Gröna Lund". It is a lament over a pub brawl, caused by Fredman's drinking a soldier's beer and dancing with someone else's girlfriend. Set to the melody from the aria "The flocks shall leave the mountains" in George Frideric Handel's opera Acis and Galatea, it is the best-known of his poems describing the consequences of brandy-drinking. Bellman used the contrast between the romantic associations of the melody and the brutal reality of heavy drinking to humorous effect.
Stolta stad! is Epistle No. 33 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. One of his best-known works, it combines both spoken and sung sections. In the spoken sections, Bellman, as composer and as performer, imitates a whole crowd of people of many descriptions. It has been described as Swedish literature's most congenial portrait of the country's capital city, Stockholm.
Movitz blåste en konsert is epistle No. 51 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Angående konserten på Tre Byttor", naming a restaurant in Stockholm's Djurgården park. It was written after Bellman had become a court musician to the new King Gustav III in 1773. The melody was borrowed from George Frideric Handel's 1718 opera, Acis and Galatea.
"Träd fram du nattens gud", "Aftonkväde", or Fredmans sånger no. 32 is a nature-lyrical Swedish song by Carl Michael Bellman, a nocturne in the style of Edward Young's Night-Thoughts.
Fader Bergström, stäm upp och klinga is one of the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's songs, from his 1790 collection, Fredman's Epistles, where it is No. 63. The melody is based on a minuet by Carl Envallsson. Bergström was a musician, and the song celebrates dancing and drinking late into the evening. The song, written in 1773, was revised heavily to make it suitable for publication. The initial version, naming Movitz not Bergström as the musician, was an attack on an over-zealous priest who had caused Bellman to be summonsed for an earlier poem that had joked about salvation. The song has been recorded by Bellman interpreters including Fred Åkerström, Fredrik Berg, and Rolf Leanderson.
Fram med basfiolen, knäpp och skruva is Epistle No. 7 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Som synes vara en elegi, skriven vid Ulla Winblads sang, sent om en afton". It describes an attempt by Jean Fredman to make love to Ulla Winblad, set to a tune from a French operetta, narrated with a combination of biblical allusion and suggestive metaphor. The mention of elegy implies that the song is about death, but the subtext is of the "little death" or female orgasm. Scholars have remarked the epistle's ambiguity, enabling it to work both on a high mythological level and a low worldly level. Similarly, the musician's cello serves both as a musical instrument and as a symbol for Ulla Winblad's body, allowing the singer to mime plucking strings and feeling a woman's body.
Kära Syster is No. 24 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Till kära mor på Bruna Dörren" ; its themes are drinking and death. One of his best-known works, it is set to a tune extensively modified from one by Egidio Duni for Louis Anseaume's 1766 song-play La Clochette. Bellman's biographer, Carina Burman, calls it a central epistle.
Hör klockorna med ängsligt dån or Fredman's Song no. 6 is one of the Swedish 18th century poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's Fredman's Songs, written in 1769. It is subtitled Över brännvinsbrännaren Lundholm. It was originally one of the texts for Bellman's Order of Bacchus. It was first performed on 15 October 1769, and quickly became popular, spreading as a transcript. It is structured as a funeral oration for a member of Lundholm's Order, parodying the Swedish system of noble Orders.
Värm mer Öl och Bröd is epistle No. 43 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle, dated 14 November 1771, is subtitled "Till Ulla Winblad, skrifven vid et ömt tilfälle". The source of the melody has not been traced.
Charon i Luren tutar is epistle No. 79 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Afsked til Matronorna, synnerligen til Mor Maja Myra i Solgränden vid Stortorget, Anno 1785". The song describes Jean Fredman's departure from the world.
↑ Britten Austin, Paul (1967). The Life and Songs of Carl Michael Bellman: Genius of the Swedish Rococo. New York: Allhem, Malmö American-Scandinavian Foundation. pp.60–93. ISBN978-3-932759-00-0.
↑ "Carina Burman". Uppsala University. 2002. Archived from the original on 12 November 2006. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
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