Karin Boye

Karin Boye as a child.

Boye was born in Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden in a wealthy family and moved with her family to Stockholm in 1909, eventually settling in a house in Huddinge. In Stockholm, she studied at the Åhlinska skolan until 1920. She then attended Södra seminariet, a teacher-training programme, in order to become a school teacher. She studied at Uppsala University from 1921 to 1926 and debuted in 1922 with a collection of poems, "Clouds" (Swedish: Moln). During her time in Uppsala and until 1930, Boye was a member of the Swedish Clarté League, a socialist group that was strongly antifascist.[2] She was also a member of the women's organization Nya Idun.[3]

In 1931, Boye, together with Erik Mesterton and Josef Riwkin, founded the poetry magazine Spektrum, introducing T. S. Eliot and the Surrealists to Swedish readers. She translated many of Eliot's works into Swedish; she and Mesterton translated "The Waste Land".[2]

Boye is perhaps most famous for her poems, the most well-known of which are "Yes, of course it hurts" (Swedish: Ja visst gör det ont)[4] and "In motion" (I rörelse) from her collections of poems "The Hearths" (Härdarna), 1927, and "For the sake of the tree" (För trädets skull), 1935. She was also a member of the Swedish literary institution Samfundet De Nio (The Nine Society) from 1931 until her death in 1941.

Boye's 1931 novel Astarte was a criticism of the bourgeois culture, and won a Nordic novel prize. Her novel "Crisis" (Kris) depicts her religious crisis and lesbianism. In her novels "Merit awakens" (Merit vaknar) and "Too little" (För lite) she explores male and female role-playing.[2]

Outside Sweden, her best-known work is probably the novel Kallocain. Inspired by her visit to Germany during the rise of Nazism, it was a portrayal of a dystopian society in the vein of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (though written almost a decade before Orwell's magnum opus). In the novel, an idealistic scientist named Leo Kall invents Kallocain, a kind of truth serum. The novel was filmed in Sweden in 1981 and was the main influence on the movie Equilibrium.[5]

The statue of Boye on Kungsportsavenyn, outside the Gothenburg City Library (Stadsbiblioteket)

Between 1929 and 1932, Boye was married to another Clarté member, Leif Björck. The marriage was apparently a friendship union. In 1932, after separating from her husband, she had a lesbian relationship with Gunnel Bergström, who left her husband, poet Gunnar Ekelöf, for Boye. Following a bout of depression she left Stockholm for Berlin, where she went through psycho-analysis and affirmed her homosexuality.[2] During the stay in Berlin in 1932–1933 she met Margot Hanel (7 April 1912 – 30 May 1941), whom she lived with for the rest of her life, and referred to as "her wife".[6]

As Boye had resigned as editor of Spektrum she earned her living from translations and writing short stories for weekly magazines. From 1936-1938 Boye was employed as teacher at Viggbyholm school, but suffered from periods of depression and suicide attempts.[2]

Boye died by suicide on 23 April 1941. She overdosed on sleeping pills.[1] She was found (according to the police report at the Regional Archives in Gothenburg) on 27 April, curled up at a boulder on a hill with a view just north of Alingsås, near Bolltorpsvägen, by a farmer who was going for a walk. The boulder is now a memorial stone. Margot Hanel also died by suicide shortly thereafter.[7]

• Astarte, 1931
• Merit vaknar, 1933
• Kris, 1934
• För lite, 1936
• Kallocain, 1940

• Moln, 1922
• Gömda land, 1924
• Härdarna, 1927
• För trädets skull, 1935
• De sju dödssynderna, 1941 (not completed, posthumously published)
• Complete Poems in English translation by David McDuff, Bloodaxe Books, 1994 ISBN 9781852241094