SOURCE: "Early Scandinavian Symbolism by Leif Sjöberg (Stony Brook) and N. L. Jensen (Aarhus)," in The Symbolist Movement in the Literature of European Languages, edited by Anna Balakian, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982, pp. 580-84.

In the following essay, Sjöberg and Jensen discuss how Ekelund was influenced by early Swedish avant-garde poets.

While avant garde Symbolist and Decadent coteries were forming in Paris after 1880, August Strindberg (1849-1912) and Ola Hansson (1860-1925) made great headway in developing an avant garde in Sweden, where by 1900 there were several counterparts to Parisian groups. Students at Uppsala University joined to form Les quatre diables, to which belonged Sigfrid Siwertz (1882-1960) and Sigurd Agrell (1881-1937). This group exhibited their predilection for French poets, Arthur Rimbaud in particular, after he had been introduced in Svenska Dagbladet by Oscar Levertin (1862-1906). The poetic production of this period was later resolutely rejected by the poets themselves...