Tomas Transtromer

"Fantastic to feel how my poem is growing

while I myself am shrinking.

It's getting bigger, it's taking my place,

it's pressing against me.

It has shoved me out of the nest.

The poem is finished."

— Tomas Transtromer

Swedish Poet

1931 - 

Every writer and painter knows when the work takes control and pushes the artist out of the picture.  We are simply vessels through which creativity flows.  The muses are in charge and are dictating their visions.  Have you learned how to give up control and let the creative spirit flow through you?

Here is a poem by Tomas Transtromer, the 2011 Nobel Prize winner for Literature.

Track

2 A.M.: moonlight. The train has stopped

out in a field. Far off sparks of light from town,

flickering coldly on the horizon.

As when a man goes deep into his dream

he will never remember that he was there

when he returns again to his room.

Or when a person goes so deep into a sickness

that his days all become some flickering sparks, a swarm,

feeble and cold on the horizon.

The train is entirely motionless.

2 o'clock:  strong moonlight, few stars.

(by Tomas Transtromer

Translated by Robert Bly)

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Henning Mankell

"Deep down he understood his father.  One should stay faithful to one's dreams.  How faithful had he been to his own?"

— Henning Mankell

Swedish Novelist

1948 -

These sentences come from the short story, The Pyramid, by one of my favorite authors, Henning Mankell.  The main character, Kurt Wallander, has flown to Egypt to rescue his father who was jailed for attempting to climb a pyramid.  Climbing the pyramids was his father's dream.  When Wallander sees the pyramids for the first time, he begins to understand what motivates his father.

I bet your parents also had dreams.  Do you know what those dreams were?  Did they achieve them?  I never knew my father's dreams.  My mother wanted to be a school teacher, but her father never let her go to high school.  Parents influence the dreams of their children.  Sometimes parents force their children down paths they don't want to take.  I was fortunate because my parents allowed me to find my own way.  The flip side is also true.  Children can influence and change the dreams of their parents.  

Have you been faithful to your dreams?  Or are you letting them slip away?  Don't give up on your dreams.  Stay focused and dream big.  Some day you too may climb the pyramids.  

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Henning Mankell

"To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child."

Henning Mankell

Swedish Novelist

1948 - 

I watch the three-year-old child that my wife and I are raising and I am amazed at the creative powers of her mind to imagine worlds that I cannot see.  To invent stories and stories within stories.  What happens to us as we grow up and take on the cloaks of the adult world?  Where does our inventiveness go?  What worlds of the imagination have we forgotten?

What do you do to keep your mind young?  Do you play with children?  Do you enter their worlds?  Or does the path you walk become narrower with each passing day?  Do you still think as a child or have you given up childish things?  Are you young at heart?  Or are the arteries of your imagination clogged?

I recently finished Mankell's excellent novel, The Man From Beijing.  Here is a video of Henning Mankell discussing the novel at Strand Bookstore.

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Dag Hammarskjold

"What is one to do on a bleak day but drift for a while through the streets — drift with the stream."

— Dag Hammarskjold

Swedish Diplomat/Author

1905 - 1961

Drifting is an art that many of us have never learned.  In our fast pace world where we seek to climb the ladder of success and produce more and more artistic work, we never stop and rest.  Even our vacations are full of doing.  We joke about going back to work in order to rest from our vacation.

In farming, there is a concept of letting the field lay fallow for a year — not to plant any crops.  The soil needs a break in order to replenish itself.  And the same is true of artists and writers.  We must learn to rest — to drift without direction or purpose, to lay fallow in order to replenish and restore our souls.  We must learn to enjoy a warm autumn afternoon simply for the sake of enjoying.  

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