Martinson, Helga Maria Moa

Martinson, Helga Maria Moa 

Born Nov. 2, 1890, in Ostergotland; died Aug. 5, 1964, in Sorunda. Swedish writer. Her mother was a textile worker.

Martinson’s first novel was The Woman and the Apple Tree (1933). M. Gorky and M. Andersen-Nexo influenced her artistic method. In the autobiographical tetralogy Mother Gets Married (1936; Russian translation, 1957), Church Wedding (1938), The King’s Roses (1939), and I Meet a Poet (1950), she described’ her youth, which was full of deprivations. The burdensome life of a working-class woman is the theme of the novel Sally’s Sons(1934) and the series of historical novels on the life of the Swedish peasantry in the 18th and 19th centuries, including The Way Under the Stars (1940), Orange Lilies (1941), and Holiday of Life (1950). She is the author of the collections of essays and short stories entitled Behind the Swedish Wall (1944) and Love Between the Wars (1947). During World War II she took an antifascist position. Her creative work, which contains socialist ideas, is akin to the literature of the statare school.

WORKS

Du är den enda. Stockholm, 1952.
Kvinnorna pa Kummelsjö. Stockholm, 1955.
Hemligheten. Stockholm, 1959.
In Russian translation:
“Pelenka i tsvetok.” In the collection Rasskazy skandinavskikh pisatelei. Moscow, 1957.
“Vosem’ let spustia.” In the collection Shvedskaia novella XIX-XX vv. Moscow, 1964.

REFERENCES

Lungina, L. “Glazami rebenka” (review). Inostrannaia literatura, 1958, no. 10.
Oldberg, R. Nutids fdrfattare. Stockholm, 1949.
Runnquist, Å. Arbetarskildrare: Fran Hedenvind till Fridell. Stockholm, 1952.

E. A. SURITS