”Jag satt till bords med de bästa”. Interkulturella möten i Vilhelm Ekelunds verk

Abstract

The Swedish poet, essayist and aphorist Vilhelm Ekelund wrote extensively on the topic of foreign authors. Some of these writers represent the Greek and Roman cultural heritage; some belong to the modern-day literary canon. This article investigates the nature of these “intercultural encounters” in Ekelund’s body of work. By processing data from Andar i den Ekelundska sfären (1989) and Konkordans till Vilhelm Ekelunds skrifter (2000), we have been able to count all references made to the most important individuals appearing in Ekelund’s texts. At the top end of the table we find such prominent writers as Goethe (1343 references), Nietzsche (985) and Plato (503 references). We show that Ekelund’s oeuvre is largely dominated by male authors and philosophers of Western cultural heritage: the most prominently figured foreign nationalities being German (20,7%), Greek (10,1%), French (9,2%) and Roman (5,4%) writers. The quantitative method applied in our study is a good complement to more textcentered approaches to literature. In this case, it allows us to determine, with a great deal of accuracy, the extent and nature of the intercultural encounters in Vilhelm Ekelund’s body of work.