Henry Parland

My translation of Henry Parland's "Idealrealisation" (in my translation "Ideals Clearance") can now be bought at SPD.

Parland (1908-1930) was born in Russia but his family moved to Finland early in his youth, and in his late teens joined in with the Finland Swedish modernists operating in Helsinki at the time. He formed a particularly close and tumultuous relationship with Gunnar Bjorling (who called him "the most modern poet in all of Europe"). Together with Bjorling, Parland brought Dada to the Swedish language (though it took several decades for the Swedish literary establishment to discover his work). In 1929 his controversial book "Ideals Clearance" was published in Helsinki. However, at the time his parents had sent him to live with his uncle in Kaunas, Lithuania, where he was introduced to and wrote extensively about Russian Formalism and cinema. Unfortunately, he caught Scarlet Fever and died at the age of 22.