034 - The Water Sprite
Ernst Josephson, Romanticism
It is a strange feeling to write this letter to you. Given all that’s around in the news and everywhere, this feels such a trivial exercise. But I am in pursuit of some calm. All I truly want to do is grab a book of some different world and be lost in it. I hope this letter takes you to some such place.
Ernst Josephson - The Poet
I can’t recall the last time I spent hours trying to look for a complete translation of a poem as much this one above - St. John’s Eve, by Ernst Josephson. I chanced upon the translation of the first stanza once:
St John’s Eve, floral feast of the North,
Lightest of light nights,
When waterfalls roar from the fell,
And in the valley fiddles and dancing cast their spell.
The alliterative rhythm, the landscape, the sound and the atmosphere in this one stanza was too much to leave alone. Sadly, I don’t know the rest of it. But in the process I learnt a lot about Josephson’s life and work. And since then he remained a prized secret. Two days ago was his 160th birth anniversary.
Ernst Josephson - The Painter
Josephson once remarked - “I will become Sweden’s Rembrandt or die”[^2]. (This in turn was the title of a 1990 documentary on his life). Instead, as syphilis led to a mental breakdown he moved into Van Gogh and Munch territory. Josephson art though vilified initially would go on to have an immense influence on Swedish culture in the following century.
He was at the vanguard of the shift from realism to romanticism in Swedish art and one of his seminal work is The Water Sprite.
Water Sprite as Painting
The roaring waterfall, the fiddler, the entranced dancers, the North, in the St. John’s eve poem are fully realised in his greatest and most influential work - The Three Water Sprite paintings.
What started as salon sketches punctuated around times of great personal losses and loneliness, the Water Sprite series morphed into the work defining both his life and his creative philosophy.
Leaving the streets of Paris and Rome, where he honed his skills on realistic method, the shift to the northern waterfalls of Sweden wasn’t just a change in scenery, but a shift in perspective on what art ought to be.
(Josephson’s realism in Paris)
In painting the Water Sprite, a Nordic folk lore demon, in a Swedish setting Josephson eventually sparked the Swedish Romanticism. The painting gave a peek into the symbolic abstractions of expressionism that followed his time. It showcased Josephson’s philosophy on the artist’s role - that artists should mimic the creative power of nature, rather than mimic the creations of nature. That the artists role is to not just represent nature, but to put his imagination to work.
Water Sprite as Poetry
In his concluding decades, Josephson continued to delve deeper into his world of Water Sprites and frothy waterfalls. The scenery became his point of seances. Even before his mind capitulated to schizophrenia (then diagnosed as paranoia), he would envision the water sprite as his deceased sister, and later as himself. Josephson’s poetry of the Nacken speaks, not as a caption, but as an extension to his paintings, taking us further into his world.
Näcken [^1]
Deep was the colour on fir tree and stone,
Fir trees and stones scatter their shadows,
Amid the foaming silver and gold.In the wide embrace of the shadow
sits a black haired youth, pallid as a ghost,
Scraping the string with his bow.The water sprite's gold harp strikes up a dance,
The fiddler trails behind and loses its senses
For the fairy elf king with his silver beard.The youth was just my own imagination.
The water sprite was the waterfall, which roared by
Splashing my cheek with its foam
The waterfall, the rivers and mountains, the folklore motifs of elves and sprites, continued to be a constant theme in many of his poetic works. Josephson’s paintings suffused imaginative symbolism, while his poetry was filled with these vivid metaphors. In the paintings and poetry of the Nacken, Josephson perhaps paints his own portrait - the way he imagined it to be. The Nacken’s own story, the elf, the idea of home, the Swedish mountains of the north, all are facets of this portrait.
Romanticism
In the growing modernity of Stockholm, Paris and Rome, Josephson found himself alienated. The move to the folklore of his home, the landscape of his home was as much inspired by 19th century of European Romanticism as it was an inspiration for the 20th century Swedish one.
Romanticism as an art and cultural movement eventually influenced both liberalism and conservatism, and in its exalted view of folklore and nature, gave wings to nationalism. I find it funny, now in this 21st century, to see how what was solace to the alienated, is now the fulcrum of mass alienation in itself.
There is a chance to think however, that in the collective myths and folklore, of our common history, we may find, like Ernst Josephson did, a path to send our troubled minds on.
Endnotes
The translation is one of three that I have read, and found it to be the most similar to the quality of the St John’s Eve poem’s verses. You can read the original alongside another English version of it here. It is part of a collection called Black Roses
This essay on Josephson and the Sprite is a great place to start to know more about him. Then there is this profile as well.
A lot of the reference work for this letter came from to these two pieces