Brokiga iakttagelser by Edith Södergran

Brokiga iakttagelser by Edith Södergran is a collection of aphorisms written in the early 20th century. The book offers terse, modernist reflections on human nature, morality, art, society, and the divine, sketching a bold, contrarian outlook on how people think, act, and create. The text unfolds as a chain of pointed observations: it doubts free will, prizes form-creating imagination, and treats virtue as something that ripens with intellect. It scorns vanity, herd patriotism, and hysterical pleasure-seeking, and argues that true reform changes outer conditions to reshape the inner life. Truth appears in brief, broken pieces, while misunderstanding wields immense power; guilt signals weakness more than actual fault. The book weighs the strong and the small, the masses and the genius; praises realism and fatalism; and invokes Napoleon as the audacious doer, alongside Nietzsche’s vision of eternal return. Art is judged by inner law and destined to become cosmic, beyond neat divisions of good and evil or ugly and beautiful. Critics should name a book’s value plainly; poverty, solitude, and suffering are gifts to the wise; narrow feelings must be widened; and hearts should be handled as holy things. In closing, the voice turns to quiet reverence: prayer becomes wordless adoration, the mind steps aside, and even prejudice against God must be overcome. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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About this eBook

Author Södergran, Edith, 1892-1923
Title Brokiga iakttagelser
Original Publication Helsingfors: Holger Schildts Förlagaktiebolag, 1919.
Credits Tuula Temonen
Language Swedish
LoC Class PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures
Subject Aphorisms and apothegms
Category Text
EBook-No. 77972
Release Date
Copyright Status Public domain in the USA.
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