Background
Elmer Rafael Diktonius was born on January 20, 1896, in Helsinki, Finland. He was the son of August Viktor Diktonius, a printer, and Adelaide Adele Maria (Malmstrom) Diktonius.
5WCJ + JX Helsinki, Finland
From 1913 to 1918, Diktonius attended Helsinki Music Institute.
Elmer Rafael Diktonius was born on January 20, 1896, in Helsinki, Finland. He was the son of August Viktor Diktonius, a printer, and Adelaide Adele Maria (Malmstrom) Diktonius.
In his mid-teens, Diktonius, who developed fluency in both Swedish and Finnish, abruptly ceased his formal education and began reading extensively. He also pursued training as a violinist and studied composition at the Helsinki Music Institute where he studied from 1913 to 1918. He continued his music studies in England and France before deciding to undertake a literary career.
In 1921 Elmer Diktonius produced his first publication, Min dikt (My Poem), which featured aphoristic verse. In 1922 Diktonius produced a second work, Hårda Sånger (Hard Songs). Diktonius followed Hårda Sånger with a second volume, Brödet Och Elden (The Bread and the Fire). During the remainder of the 1920s he completed two more poetry collections, Taggiga Lågor (Barbed Flames), which includes admiring portraits of such figures as Friedrich Nietzsche and August Strindberg, and which expresses political radicalism. In addition to these works, Diktonius issued Onnela, a prose account of Finnish peasants, and Ingenting, och andra novellistiska skisser, a collection of such tales as “Häng dej pojkfan!,” wherein an acrobat risks his life to satisfy a drunken mob. Diktonius also served as translator of the verse anthology, Ungt hav: ny dikt i övers.
During the 1930s Diktonius established himself as a humorist poet, and also proved adept at both pastoral and patriotic verse. Among his publications from this decade are Jordisk ömhet (Earthly Tenderness), which shows his interest in nature, and Janne Kubik: ett träsnitt i ord (Janne Kubik: A Woodcut in Words), a novel that serves to exemplify Diktonius’s patriotism.
In the ensuing decades Diktonius continued to publish regularly. According to various reviewers, the writing quality ranged from eloquent to sloppy, in poetry collections such as Annorlunda (Otherwise: Poems) and Novembervår (November Spring). In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and works for the stage, Diktonius published various writings on music. In 1933, for example, he produced Opus 12: Musik, a collection of reviews previously supplied to the periodical Arhetarbladet.
Diktonius died in 1961, after ten years of suffering what George C. Schoolfield, in his biography Elmer Diktonius, described as “severe nervous disorders.” Schoolfield, who related that Diktonius had written about his own mental health as early as 1949, disclosed that the poet had entered a mental hospital in 1952 and again in 1957. He remained there until his death five years later.
With Edith Södergran, Gunnar Björling, Rabbe Enckell and Henry Parland, Diktonius was a member of a new avant-garde school of Swedish-speaking poets, who were interested in experimenting with new ideas and stylistic means.
Diktonius was a member of the Swedish Authors’ Union.
Diktonius’s attempt to revive the political radicalism of the 1920s has been perceived as an indication of what Schoolfield, writing in World Literature Today, termed “mental decline.” But Schoolfield, reviewing the verse collection Samlade dikter, concluded that “Diktonius possessed a lyrical wholeheartedness and enthusiasm that makes his work unmistakable, for better and for worse.”
In 1923, Elmer Rafael Diktonius married Meri Marttinen, a singer, but they divorced in 1926. On July 19, 1929, he married Anna-Helena Leena Jaykka. Diktonius had a daughter from the second marriage, Silja Maria.