Swedish literature was left yesterday without one of its most versatile representatives, as well as one of the greatest connoisseurs of its history and its mechanisms, while some of the main cultural and artistic institutions of the same country lost one of their facilitators and ambassadors of reference for decades. Kjell Espmark, translated into more than twenty languages, had served on the board of the Swedish Writers Foundation from 1975 to 1983 and of the Royal Dramatic Theater from 1991 to 1996, had chaired the Nobel Committee from 1987 to 2004, and from 1981 It was part of the Swedish Academy.
Especially celebrated for his poetic work, he made his debut in 1956 with the collection of poems The Assassination of Benjamin and in the following five years he published two others, The World Through the Eye of the Camera and Microcosm, which formally evidenced the influences of other artistic disciplines. such as music, cinema or photography, while in the thematic they resorted to concerns of an earthly order -such as social inequalities, the oppression of the individual and the criticism of power- as well as spiritual -standing out their analysis of memory, guilt , responsibility or melancholy, among other themes, and in particular the tension between determinism and free will–, all of which were not at odds with a ludic and playful spirit. Of the rest of his lyrical production, it is worth mentioning titles such as Voces sin tumba
However, Epsmark’s literary palette expanded far beyond verse, publishing novels –there is a Spanish translation in Bassarai Ediciones de Béla Bartok contra el Tercer Reich–, short novels –seven of them, published between 1987 and 1997, were brought together in a single volume, Tiempo de olvido, considered one of the most comprehensive and accurate x-rays of contemporary Swedish society of its lyrics–, collections of essays –those dedicated to modern poetry are canonical–, studies devoted to the history of literature – with special attention to the work of his compatriots–, plays and some memoirs. His vast knowledge also led him to serve as Professor of Comparative Literature at Stockholm University between 1978 and 1995.
The reader in Spanish interested in the ins and outs of the Swedish Academy has the essential The Nobel Prize for Literature One hundred years with the mission (Nordic), history of the most prestigious literary award in the world with the particularity of containing information until now reserved about how deliberations of the institution take place. In its pages, Espmark declassifies confidential resolutions of the Nobel Committee, correspondence between its members, reports from experts outside the institution, candidate proposals conveyed through various channels… that provide guidance on the criteria followed to recognize or not the work of a writer , for which it contextualizes omissions as historically scandalous as those of Tolstoy, Joyce, Proust, Kafka or Ibsen. In the spring of 2018, Espmark announced his departure from the Swedish Academy, along with two colleagues, in the face of the corruption and abuse scandals that surrounded the institution, but ended up reconsidering his position, citing his willingness to help reform it from within. His ideas on the changes to be implemented were reflected in the book Nobelpriset i litteratur – ett nytt sekel (The Nobel Prize for Literature – a New Century), published in 2021.
