Birgitta Trotzig (11 September 1929 – 14 May 2011)[1] was a
Swedish writer who was elected to the
Swedish Academy in 1993.[2] She was one of Sweden's most celebrated authors, and wrote
prose fiction and non-fiction, as well as
prose poetry.
Biography
Trotzig was born in
Gothenburg, Sweden, as an only child. The family lived initially with her maternal grandparents in Gothenburg, later moving to the small southern city of Kristianstad, where her parents' parents worked as teachers. She graduated from grammar/high school in 1948.[3] Trotzig returned to Gothenburg and studied literary history. She began writing for the national newspaper Aftonbladet and for the literary magazine Bonniers Litterära Magasin.[4] She married artist and sculptor
Ulf Trotzig[5] and lived in
Paris from 1955 to 1969[6] with her husband; during this period she converted to
Roman Catholicism. Through her conversion, she gained access to various aspects of
French culture and to
Christian and
Jewish mysticism; she became very interested in
San Juan de la Cruz and
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.[4]
Birgitta Trotzig was the recipient of many literary prizes, amongst others the
Övralid Prize in 1997. Birgitta Trotzig lived in
Lund and remained active in public life and with the various projects of the Swedish Academy for much of her later life.[4]
On 15 May 2011,
Peter Englund published the news of Trotzig's death in the evening of 14 May after a long illness.[7]
Literary career
Trotzig was one of
Sweden's most renowned modern writers,[8] having written several novels in which she gave voice to her
Catholic faith (though her perspective is said to have been
existential rather than Christian[6]) and her dark visions. Returning themes are the
death and
resurrection of
love. Among her novels are Sjukdomen ("The Illness") (made into the movie Kejsaren, "The Emperor," in 1979) and Dykungens dotter ("The Mud King's daughter") (1985). She also wrote
essays and articles on
poetry, and works of prose poems: Anima (1982) and Sammanhang ("Contexts") (1996).
Bibliography
Prose fiction
Ur de älskandes liv (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1951, "From the Life of Those Who Love")
Bilder (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1954)
De utsatta: En legend (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1957, "The Exposed")
Ett landskap: Dagbok, fragment 54-58 (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1959)
En berättelse från kusten (1961, "A Tale from the Coast")
Utkast och förslag (Helsinki: Söderström, 1962; Stockholm: Bonnier, 1962)
Levande och döda: Tre berättelser (Helsinki: Söderström, 1964; Stockholm: Bonnier, 1964)
Sveket (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1966)
Ordgränser (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1968)
Teresa (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1969)
Sjukdomen (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1972)
I kejsarens tid: Sagor (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1975, "In the Time of the Emperor")
Berättelser (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1977, "Stories")
Jaget och världen (Stockholm: Författarförlaget, 1977)
Anima: Prosadikter (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1982)
Dykungens dotter: En barnhistoria (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1985)
Porträtt: Ur tidshistorien (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1993)
Sammanhang: Material (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1996)
Dubbelheten: tre sagor (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1998, "Doubleness: Three Tales")
Gösta Oswald (Stockholm: Norstedt, 2000)
Essay collections
Utkast och förslag (1962, "Sketches and Ideas")
Jaget och världen (1977, "The Ego and the World")
With Ulf Trotzig
Dialog: om Ulf Trotzigs konstnärsskap (Stockholm: Arena, 1996)
^
abcSondrup, Steven P. (2002). Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams (ed.). Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 257: Twentieth-Century Swedish Writers After World War II. The Gale Group. pp. 291–96.
^Sondrup, Steven (22 September 2000). "Birgitta Trotzig and the Language of Religious and Literary Experience". Scandinavian Studies. University of Illinois Press.
^Forsås-Scott, Helena (1997). Swedish women's writing, 1850-1995. London, United Kingdom: Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 149–169.
ISBN978-0-485-92003-1.