SOURCE: "Gunnar Ekelöf's A Mölna Elegy: The Attempted Reconstruction of a Moment," in Comparative Criticism: A Yearbook, Vol. 1, 1979, pp. 199-214.

In the following excerpt, Sjöberg analyzes literary allusions modern as well as Classical in The Mölna Elegy and discusses the poem's predominant theme of time.

Muriel Rukeyser's translation marks the first English publication of Gunnar Ekelöf's En Mölna-elegi (Stockholm, 1960). Classified as 'work in progress' for more than twenty years prior to its publication, the Elegy demanded nearly a decade for the location and identification of its learned allusions and borrowings and nearly two decades for its publication in entirety in the English language.

Ekelöf's poem 'concerns itself with the relativity of time and time-experience, perhaps also with a kind of Lebensstimmung. It is not a description of a time lapse but (theoretically) is supposed to occur in one moment. In other...