SOURCE: "Now and Absence in the Early Ekelöf," in Scandinavian Studies Vol. 62, No. 3, Summer, 1990, pp. 319-30.

In the following excerpt, Fioretos focuses on "osynlig närvaro" ("invisible presence"), a poem which appears in Late Arrival on Earth, as a pioneering example of Swedish modernism.

Gunnar Ekelöf's poem "osynlig närvaro" ("invisible presence"), first published as the fourth entry in sent på jorden (1932; late on earth), bears upon questions of poetic articulation. As such, it must be understood to express concerns that generate the texts of Ekelöf's debut collection in general. Demonstrating a paradoxical relationship between visibility and invisibility, the poem conveys a disturbingly impenetrable presence. The lack of a substantial core in this presence, intimated by the title and recurring in other late on earth poems, permits a rotating motion of polarities, such as those of sight and sound, interior and exterior, presence and absence...