Lost in Buddhist space

“Aniara: En revy om människan i tid och rum” is a poetic work by Swedish writer Harry Martinson. A shorter version was published in 1953, a longer variety (the canonical one) in 1956. Martinson got the literature prize in 1974 to a large extent because of “Aniara”. The choice was controversial, since Martinson was a member of the Swedish Academy, the very exclusive club which awards the literature prizes! Four years later, Martinson suffered a breakdown and committed suicide, apparently triggered by all the negative reactions. Yet, his work “Aniara” has survived and is still considered a masterpiece by many, being turned into an opera (sic) and a feature film (which I haven´t seen). Since I haven´t read any official analysis of “Aniara”, the following review is somewhat tentative. Nor have I read the English translations – translating the poem into another language must be quite the challenge, since every other word is a neologism coined by Martinson himself. I´m almost tempted to call the language Martinsonese or Aniarish!

Poetry never made me excited, so I only managed to digest about half of “Aniara”, and skimmed the rest. (Imagine skimming poetry.) One important clue to the immensely pessimistic work is that Martinson claimed to be a Buddhist. Another is that it was written during the 1950´s. The existential threats to humanity mentioned in the poem include nuclear war, environmental destruction and totalitarianism. Interestingly, another thing that influenced “Aniara” was a shamanistic trance experienced by Martinson when looking at the Andromeda Galaxy through an amateur telescope! This could explain why the author chose a science fiction back story to his poetical musings. It might perhaps also explain why the poem feels so “spaced out” at times (pun intended).

The “plot” of “Aniara”, the little there is of such, is set in a not-too-distant future in which humanity has mastered space flight and controls the solar system. In an ironic reversal of the cornucopian dreams about space colonies solving human overpopulation, “Aniara” describes a dystopian society which does indeed transfer humans to both Venus and Mars to lessen the pressures on a dying Earth, but it´s not clear whether the colonists are appreciably better off at their new locations. Probably not, since Mars is referred to as an enormous tundra where almost nothing ever grows, while Venus is a vast swampland. Our destiny in the stars turns out to be “more of the same”. Nor is it entirely clear whether the “emigrants”, as they are called, are really voluntary. Originally, Mars seems to have been a dumping ground for criminals (or perhaps thought-criminals?) from an increasingly totalitarian Earth, but later waves of colonists are presumably volunteers or perhaps chosen by lot. Some have experienced nuclear warfare. Indeed, the wars seem to continue throughout the evacuation, since a later “song” reveals that an entire city on Earth, or perhaps Earth itself, has been completely destroyed.

The narrator of “Aniara”, called Mimaroben in Martinsonese, serves onboard one of the spaceships, named Aniara, which for years have traveled between Earth and Mars. This time, something goes wrong. Aniara collides with an asteroid named Hondo (apparently another name for Honshu – supposedly a hidden reference to Hiroshima) and goes off course. It soon finds itself outside the solar system, propelled towards the far-away constellation of Lyra by a mysterious force. (The last thing the crew sees before being forced off course is a gigantic torus.) The crew and the emigrants have to cope with being forever lost in space, with zero chance of ever being rescued or getting out alive. The rest of the poem deals with various strategies the lost emigrants use to cope with their situation. 

It´s obvious that Aniara is really a symbol of human existence in general, with Martinson criticizing essentially every human endeavor as being ultimately futile in the face of death and destruction: religions both pagan and Christian, sexual hedonism, belief in progress, mysticism, political fanaticism, and what have you. Somewhat unexpectedly, science isn´t attacked. Perhaps the reason is that science is pictured as strictly objective when confronting the human condition. It never offers any false hope or illusions, just brute facts. Mimaroben is secretly in love with Isagel, the cold and otherworldly female pilot of Aniara, who is also a scientist. At one point, Isagel tells Mimaroben that a mathematical analysis has proven that so-called miracles are really just chance events!

The most interesting entity onboard Aniara is called Miman in the poem´s garbled Swedish. Miman is a kind of super-computer with almost miraculous powers. The emigrants worship Miman as a god, and run amuck when the computer eventually self-destroys. The name obviously refers to Mimir in Norse mythology, the all-knowing deity who guarded the font of all wisdom. Miman has the power to record and/or remember all historical events, and also picks up alien transmissions from other solar systems, turning everything into holographic pictures for the enjoyment of the emigrants. The closest religious equivalent would be the so-called Akashic chronicle many occultists believe in. Martinson clearly regards Miman as a gigantic distraction. This would square with his Buddhism: *all* human actions, indeed all actions of sentient beings anywhere in the cosmos, are ultimately meaningless.

The last songs of the poem sound like a peculiar blend of atheism, theism and Buddhism. As punishment for turning the earthly paradise into hell, the emigrants are doomed to die in outer space, under Law (karma?) rather than under Grace. God is said to be left on Earth, hurt and insulted. Eventually, everyone dies and is turned into sinless dust, but Aniara nevertheless continues its flight towards Lyra for another 15,000 years. The very last line is that “the wave of Nirvana” swept through everyone, but we are left to wonder whether this is good or bad...

I readily admit that I don´t vibrate with the pessimistic perspective of “Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space”. As already indicated, the work essentially suggests that nothing we do is meaningful. But perhaps there is one little escape clause even in Samsara according to Harry Martinson. It is the character of Nobia or Nobby, who lives a life combining ethical self-sacrifice, aesthetic enjoyment and love. Nobby has the ability to see beauty even on the near desolate Martian tundra, she is unaffected by the brutality of the human colonists, and tries to help the refugees onboard the spaceships as much as she possibly can. Her detractors claim that she can´t possibly have been that saintly all her life, but the temporary narrator replacing Mimaroben who tells her story (presumably Nobby´s lover), insists otherwise. Perhaps Nobia is a true Buddhist castaway in this samsaric universe. It´s also interesting to note that Martinson constantly implies that humanity is being punished for its sins by God. At one point, the poet exclaims that God is inside the nuclear blast that destroys a certain city on Earth. But this, of course, is illogical unless there *is* a meaning behind everything, after all. There must also be a meaning to Nobia´s saintly life.

It´s interesting that Martinson, when describing that meaning, had to resort to the anthropomorphic picture of the Biblical God, either the wrathful deity of the Old Testament (or the Apocalypse) or the long-suffering Christ of the Gospels.

With that reflection, I end my review of “Aniara”.