• 1 “Mellan poesien som bor i ditt hjärta och vallmon finns ett kontrakt / skrivet av vinden och undert (...)
• 2 Harry Martinson, Glädjens art och sorgernas sortering, ed. Paulina Helgeson, Stockholm, Litteraturb (...)

1In the short poem Förbindelse, “Connection”, published in the 1958 collection Gräsen i Thule (“Grasses in Thule”), the Swedish poet Harry Martinson came back to the necessary bond between nature and humans again, “between the poetry which lives in your heart and the flower poppy there is a contract / written by the wind and signed by decay. / It is written with the feather of a crane / dipped in the blood of a mayfly”1. The poppy is well established in poetic tradition, with a varying range of literary uses, spanning from Greek and Latin sources to the contemporary Western canon. The flower is a symbol of fertility and rebirth and is connected to the Ceres cult (as in Virgil, Georgics, I, 212, named as “Cereale papaver”, “Ceres’ poppy”). It holds indeed a reference to sleep and death, as again in Virgil’s Aeneid, where it is named as part of Dido’s complex suicidal ritual (Aeneid, IV, 486, “soporiferum papaver”, “soporific poppy”). Martinson names the flower also in Vilseskog: “Sorgmantelfjärilen har klätt sig färdig för flyktigheten och döden. / Vallmon bär i blommans mitt, mellan flyktiga blad en begravningsurna” “The mourning cloak butterfly has dressed itself for transience and death. / The poppy carries a funeral urn in the centre of the flower, between fleeting leaves”2.

• 3 “Relativitetsteorin måste därför kompletteras med en gyralitetsteori, grundad på en biocentrisk vär (...)
• 4 “Livet djupast sett existerar uteslutande genom den gyralitet det begåvats med, och som gör att det (...)

2To nature had Martinson turned from previous diverse inspiration, choosing the idyllic meeting with the environment as poetic drive. Man and nature are enveloped in an association, which brings inspiration and consolation, sealed together by a “contract” that intertwines their destinies. This pledge of association, called gyralitet, establishes a physical balance between the elements on Earth and in space: “Relativity must therefore be complemented by a theory of gyrality, based on a biocentric world and its manifestations”3. This unifying driving force connects with the Universe and functions in celestial harmony: “at its deepest level, life exists exclusively through the gyrality with which it has been endowed, and which enables it to be, to maintain itself, to propagate and to develop within its own gyral world: in a gyral setting in which even the cradle of science stood”4.

• 5 “[Miljörättvisa] handlar om alla människors lika rätt till en trygg boende- och livsmiljö, det vill (...)

3Outside this agreement, the balance is lost; as noted by Pia Maria Albäck, the contract metaphor seeks to establish a sense of environmental justice between the present generation and nature: “it is about the equal right of all people to an adequate living environment, i.e. an environment that is not so degraded and polluted that it is directly detrimental to human life”5. The contract bonds poetry and nature in Martinson’s work and interconnects life and the universe through the cyclical nature of gyrality.

• 6 Michel Serres, Le contrat naturel, Paris, François Bourin, 1990.
• 7 “Livet är en specifik och säregen manifestation av den kosmiska benägenheten att anordna sig”, Harr (...)

4Michel Serres also posited that a “natural” contract, as opposed to a social one, could have been a crucial element in resolving man’s conflict with the environment6. As Albäck also notes, nature is not bound by any “contractual” obligation and does not engage in negotiations to address the potential exploitation of its resources. The loss of such a connection between man and nature is a loss of order and meaning: “Life is a specific and peculiar manifestation of the cosmic propensity to organise itself”7.

• 8 “Provisoriska absoluten är självbevarelsedriftens och sammanhållningdriftens omedvetna formuleringa (...)

5In all his literary production, Martinson aimed to reestablish the assemblage, strengthen the moral bond between man and nature, preserving “the contract” which binds poetry and environment and highlighting the importance of human-nature nearness and the ominous mingling between the two elements. In connection with nature, the ontological constitution of impermanent absolute (“provisoriska absoluten”), “the unconscious formulations of self-preservation and cohesion drives in life emerge”8.

• 9 The term Aniara, presented in normal font, denotes the name of the spaceship. Conversely, Aniara, p (...)
• 10 The film premiered at Toronto film festival in September 2018 and was released in Sweden in Februar (...)

6Connection with nature is though lost in Martinson’s long epos Aniara, published in 1956. Aniara is the name of a spacecraft travelling from corrupted and poisoned Earth to Mars9. It eventually falls off course and journeys outside routes of civilization in the hostile and dark un-nature of silent cosmic space: alone in the dark nature passengers of Aniara spaceship linger of the missing contact with earthly nature and build on further connections and meanings of their bygone paradise. In 2019 Aniara has been adapted as film by directors Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, providing appalling visualization to Martinson’s odyssey in space10.

• 11 See Arne Engelstad, Fra bok til film. Om adaptasjoner av litterære tekster, Oslo, Cappelen Damm, 20 (...)

7The aim of this article is to examine the implications of the dissolution of “contract” between humanity and the natural world in both versions of Aniara. Martinson’s poem is concerned with the threat to nature posed by technology and the nuclear arms race in the early 1950s. Instead, Kågerman and Lilja’s adaptation insists on the consequences of the over-exploitation of nature and the fate of humanity in the context of resource depletion. Despite the divergence between the poem and the film, I seek to analyze the overarching condition of man deprived of nature, which connects both works. My reading will be informed by an ecocritical perspective, which is an interdisciplinary approach that integrates literary criticism with ecological thinking. This study also aims to examine the interconnections between the human and natural realms, with particular emphasis on the posthumanist interpretation of the selected poem in the context of the Anthropocene. In my article, I will also employ ideas and concepts from theoretical reflection on space. Moreover, I aim to use intertexuality and intermedial criticism to reason on how different media portray the main themes in both the poem and the adaptation11.

• 12 Timothy Morton, Ecology without Nature. Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics, Cambridge and London, (...)

8The following section will examine the condition of Aniara, adrift in space, where the bond and contract with nature have been severed. In light of the aforementioned content, I will proceed to reflect on the connections between Aniara, in-progress reasoning about the concept of Anthropocene, and the theory of enmeshment, which argues for un-separateness of all things12. The third segment of this paper examines the role of technology in mediating images of nature and the central position of the Machine-God Mima. The fourth section considers the healing power of illusions, art and poetry. The final section offers a final consideration of Aniara’s journey, pointing towards a posthumanist reading.

• 13 “τεθνάμεναι γὰρ καλὸν ἐνὶ προμάχοισι πεσόντα ἄνδρ᾽ ἀγαθὸν περὶ ᾗ πατρίδι μαρνάμενον· τὴν δ᾽ αὐτοῦ π (...)
• 14 “χρήματα δ’ ἐγκαταθῆις πόλλ’ ἀνιηρὰ παθών”, West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, Vo (...)

9The poem Aniara is the result of a further expansion of Martinson’s core project Cikada (“Cicada”), published in 1953. Martinson decided to expand the lyrical epos and compose more songs, which eventually were published in the 1956 edition, with the name Aniara. The word ἀνιαρά, aniarà, can be intended as plural nominative neuter of the adjective ἀνιαρός, aniaròs, whose meaning is “grievous” or “troublesome”, if intended for people. Two of the few occurrences of the adjective can be of interest for an interpretation, given that Martinson himself did not disclose an ultimate clarification. In Fragment 10 West, 4, Tyrtaeus, ἀνιηρότατον, aniēròtaton, the superlative degree neuter accusative form, is translatable as “the most miserable” in the line “it is a fair thing for a good man to fall and die fighting for his native land, whereas to leave his city and his rich fields and go wandering is of all things the most miserable”13. In Theognis, 276, ἀνιηρὰ, aniērà, recurs as “the worst of evils”14. Aniara wanders in the dark space and its disentanglement from nature’s rich fields is for sure deemed as the most miserable condition.

• 15 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 35; “Vid fältet Sari-sexton uppgav v (...)
• 16 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, trans. Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg, (...)

10The journey of the spaceship commences as a routine trip from Earth to Mars. Following maneuvers to clear the Hondo asteroid, the spaceship deviates from its intended trajectory and subsequently becomes adrift in space “in the Field of Sari-sixteen we gave up attempts to turn around”15. Martinson refers to the extreme consequences of atomic threat, suggesting Earth has “become unclean with toxic radiation” and “is accorded a time of calm, repose and quarantine”16. The film instead emphasizes the depletion of natural resources as reason for the journey: the first shots visualize natural disasters, fires, flood and a public demonstration where one of the participants holds up a sign reading “There’s no planet B”. The cinematic adaptation overturns the genre perspective of the poem: the male narrator in the poem becomes the female protagonist in the film. The extensive polyphony of the poem in the film is furthermore distilled to the perspective of the protagonist. This necessitates the elimination or reduction of certain passages and characters from Martinson’s epic, such as the Blind Woman or the worship of Light or the many side stories, such as the one narrated in “The song of Karelia”. The film’s chronology is more precise than that of the source material, with the passage of time depicted through the decay of the interior of Aniara.

• 17 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, New York, State University of New York Pre (...)
• 18 Jeff E. Malpas, Place and Experience. A Philosophical Topography, Cambridge, Cambridge University P (...)
• 19 “Mänskligheten alltmera avlägsnande sig från det naturliga och det enkla, men också den enskilda mä (...)

11The first understanding of Aniara’s pointless journey is clearly existential: the ship wanders without any direction in a mute and hostile un-nature, heading towards its own end. In this sense, it is a poem on man’s temporality. Onboard, refugees are deprived of a common ground. To say it with Heidegger, humanity lacks its “being-in” in the world (Dasein), eradicated from “the sense of familiar and heedful association with the being belonging to beings encountered in the world”17. Aniara is a non-place, deprived of a “structure and possibility of experience” as its Dasein is corrupted by emptiness18. Nature is vanished and appears, in the negative, to be part of an “extended self” of humans. Not a place where one finds restoration and recreation, but the common ground, a part of “being-in”, as noted by Olof Lagercrantz in an early review where he mourned “mankind furthermore moving away from the natural and the plain, but also from the single man”19.

• 20 “Aniara handlar till stor del om vad människan skulle vara utan vår jord. Därför ville vi arbeta me (...)
• 21 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 49; “Trä var ett sällsynt ämne. Hade (...)

12The sense of loss and rootlessness is enforced in the film adaptation, where the spaceship’s closed spaces remind us of the deprivation of freedom to roam. As the film set designer recalls: “Aniara is mostly about what human would be without our Earth, which explains why we wanted to work with imitation materials. In the beginning they are reassuring, but they eventually become a reminder to passengers about what they have lost”20. In the poem, Song 14 names wood as memento of the past: “Wood was a rare material. Had existed in pre-goldondic times, but later dwindled steadily through nuclear catastrophes”21.

• 22 Eric Prieto, Literature, Geography and the Postmodern Poetics of Place, New York, Palgrave Macmilla (...)
• 23 Tim Cresswell, Place. A Short Introduction, Malden, Blackwell, 2008, p. 7.

13Cosmic space functions as negation of an encounter between man and nature. In the first sequences, passengers are transported from shuttles to the main spacecraft, as if there is still a sense of belonging and a larger community to be part of. The removal of the spaceship from the last bastions of humanity underlines the transition to a space uprooted from territoriality and nature. This transition marks a shift away from the traditional concept of territory and nature, as, instead, humanity finds itself isolated in the vast, black expanse of the cosmos. Undifferentiated space replaces the experience of place: this is designated as “any geographical site (of any size, scale, or type) that is meaningful to someone, for whatever reason”22. As Cresswell pinpoints, “places must have some relationship to humans and the human capacity to produce and consume meaning”23. In the film, the initial connection between Mima and Mimaroben, the operator of the god-machine, is conveyed through the visualisation of images of forests and greenery. Mimaroben aspires to traverse the forest and become one with it, a process that involves a panicky integration of auditory and sensory stimuli. This inspiration and meaning are lost in the regularly shaped alleys of Aniara: the dreamed forest is far away. Indeed, the word “forest” has its etymological roots in the Latin adverb “foris”, meaning “outside”: nature is detached and unreachably “outside” aboard Aniara. Furthermore, the loss of a sense of place and connection to nature also entails a diminution of subjectivity, which consequently results in the loss of one’s own identity.

• 24 “Harry Martinsons bruk av metaforer och metaforiska berättelser […] har samband med diktarens förho (...)

14Refugees have lost an all-encompassing wholeness: life is deconstructed in single-piece experiences and lacks a general plan. Also Johan Wrede points to mankind’s longing to be in closer connection with nature in a more recent review of the poem, “Harry Martinson’s use of metaphors and metaphorical narration is related to the poet’s hope for our humanity to be dependent on everything, on life, for nature to be unfolded in our conscience, alive, touching, committing”24.

• 25 “Har ni hört talas om cikadan, sångsyrsan, sångstriten? […] Cikadan finns i de varma länderna, och (...)
• 26 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 59; “Det finnes skydd mot nästan all (...)

15Aniara signals a transformation in Martinson’s poetical goals: not to lyricize nature as sacred other, in contemplation from a distance, but rather celebrate the elusive, but determinant interdependence between mankind and environment when that interconnection is lost. In the conversation with Johan Wrede about the forthcoming publication of Cikada, Martinson hinted at a peculiar correlation between nature and mankind in ante-Aniara works: “Have you ever heard of the cicada, the song cricket, the song thrush? [...] The cicada is found in the hot countries, and in China it is caged as a kind of canary of the insect world”25. The point of observation is reversed in Aniara, because, onboard the spaceship, mankind is abandoned in a glass cage open to the infinite universe and nature has vanished. Humankind is deadly doomed by its own weapon of unlimited progress, and unrelented resource depletion. Here, the “contract” between poetry and nature appears to be terminated: “there is protection from near everything, from fire and damages by storm and frost […], but there is no protection form mankind”26.

• 27 Harry Martinson, “Vi måste äntligen lyssna”, Vi, 1949, 1, p. 3-4, p. 3.
• 28 Gunnar Tideström, Ombord på Aniara, Stockholm, Aldus, 1975, p. 41.
• 29 Dirac postulated the existence of an infinite sea of electrons with negative energy, in which indet (...)
• 30 In the film, Isagel initiates a long-lasting relationship with Mimaroben, which culminates in the b (...)
• 31 Harry Martinson, “Vi måste äntligen lyssna”, p. 4.

16Outside Aniara lies the unfathomable universe. Science and knowledge always try to unfold its mysteries: from pronomina cosmica, the spiritual force running the laws of deep space in the harmony of gyrality, research can learn more and push forward awareness27. Martinson is strongly convinced that mankind doesn’t possess the absolute truth but works continuously for a never-ending process of approximation. The uncertainty principle introduced by Werner Heisenberg is the proof, according to Martinson, of the many possible interpretations of the physical-philosophical conundrum which is life28. The interplay between matter and antimatter, as suggested by Paul Dirac in the theorization of the electron vacuum, also reinforces the idea of the elusive essence of physical reality: there is no complete knowledge such as that29. Approximation always leaves room to further explications and additional research. This is exemplified by Aniara’s pilot Isagel, whose pure mathematical mind prompts her to seek further understanding. Devoted to knowledge, she tries to push forward research, to figure out a solution, but her attempts are extemporary onboard: there’s nothing to win for refugees on the spaceship, fate is doomed, and knowledge is useless. For this reason, Isagel lately commits suicide30: the interaction between research, poetry and science – considered by Martinson as central in human history – brings no more results31. There is no further explanation to seek: the ship is lost, journey is wrecked, hope is dead.

• 32 The concept of nearness is employed in this context in reference to Heidegger’s thought and relates (...)

17The poem’s depiction of separation from nature suggests then a loss of equilibrium between the forces driving life. Aniara’s isolation evokes Mankind’s transition from nearness to emptiness32. The film underscores the repercussions of the destruction of nature in the context of the debate on the Anthropocene.

• 33 Judith Meurer-Bondgardt, “Den finlandssvenska Modernismen – en tidig litteratur i Antropocenens tec (...)

18The theme of separation of man from nature is a well-established topic in Swedish literature. As Judith Meurer-Bondgard notes, ecocritical content can be traced back to the early 1900s, with examples including poetry by Elmer Diktonius and Henry Parland33.

• 34 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place. The Perspective of Experience, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Pr (...)

19Separation is reinforced not only by severe exploitation though, but also by considering nature as other, as an undifferentiated space opposed to place, where, to say it with Tuan, an “an organized world of meaning” is located34. Here nature undergoes a process of objectification.

• 35 Harry Martinson, “Självförsvar”, Fronten, 8, 1932, p. 301.

20Also the canonization of natural beauty as omen of divine presence is coherent to the objectification discourse. Martinson himself alluded to an experience of God while accounting on his travel to South-America and to a sense of holiness in every encounter with the environment35.

• 37 “Det handlar om att lösgöra sig från föreställningar om hierarkier och rigida kategorier, och inse (...)
• 38 Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham; London, Duke Uni (...)
• 39 Arne Næss, Økologi, samfunn og livsstil: utkast til en økosofi, Oslo, Universitetsforlaget, 1976, p (...)

22Contemporary contributors to Anthropocene critique work against separation and towards a theory of enmeshment: according to scholars such as Timothy Morton, nature envelopes mankind and environment in a shared ontology, intertwined in a common fate. All forms of life are connected: “it is about freeing from representation of hierarchies and rigid categorizations and realizing that there are neither clear borders nor center”37. This, to say it with Haraway, implies living “as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings”38. Nature is an “expanded self”, which is impossible to detach from human experience39. The transition from a condition of separateness to a consistent assemblage of intertwined ecosystems becomes necessary to think of strategies to withstand global consumption of natural resources and to contrast the escalating power of Anthropocene.

• 40 Will Steffen; Paul J. Crutzen; John R. McNeill, “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the (...)
• 41 Timothy Clark, Ecocriticism on the Edge. The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept, London; New York, (...)
• 42 Will Steffen; Paul J. Crutzen; John McNeill, ‘The Anthropocene’, p. 614-21, p. 614. Other scholars (...)

23The term Anthropocene has been widely used in ecological studies since its first definition provided by Steffen, Crutzen and McNeill40. The effect human activities have on the environment is deemed as powerful as geological forces and sets the start for an era where “largely unplanned human impacts on the planet’s basic ecological systems have passed a dangerous, if imponderable, threshold”41. Anthropocene “suggests that the Earth has now left its natural geological epoch, the present interglacial state called the Holocene. Human activities have become so pervasive and profound that they rival the great forces of nature and are pushing the Earth into planetary terra incognita”42.

• 43 Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects. Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Minneapolis; Londo (...)
• 44 The sequence is readable in two ways: the mother utters this sentence to calm her child; the viewer (...)

24The film adaptation of Aniara hints at an environmental apocalypse clearly. In the film nature is no longer a fetish object to be worshipped or lyricized, but a lost paradise, detached form human experience as the consequence of the “great acceleration” of Anthropocene43. In the sequence onboard the shuttle to Aniara, in an opening shot of the film, one of the passengers asks her son “to wave goodbye to Earth”44. Graphic visualizations on Aniara’s computer screens depict Earth as barren and scorched. In the final sequence, set in year 5.981.407 after the departure, the spaceship is a remnant of technological dead debris adrift in the vastity of the universe, with an Earth-like planet at the backdrop, an image that symbolizes the last broken pieces of economic-driven society (the Capitalocene) afloat after the end of civilization.

• 45 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space; p. 37-38; “Vår trogna Mima gör allt hon (...)

26The primary source of inspiration for the passengers on the fictional spaceship Aniara is the sentient machine Mima, which plays a pivotal role in the poem. The film visualizes Mima as a giant screen which casts fluctuant imageries and projects memories and sketches of nature. In the poem it is described as a visor, which is equipped with its own sensitivity, “our faithful Mima does all she can and searches searches searches”45.

• 46 Sophie Wennerscheid, “Things Don’t Cry, Do They? Emotional Attachment between Humans, Technology an (...)
• 47 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space; Harry Martinson, p. 40; “Och för en tid (...)

27Mima is operated by a loyal technician, Mimaroben, who is also the narrator of the poem. The interrelation between Mimaroben and Mima anticipates a “new interaction between human and non-human”46. Mimaroben officiates secular service for users and worshippers of Mima: he becomes clergy of an oracular source, who speaks in sibylline words, knows everything, and visualizes everyone’s deep memories. Mima is more than μίμησις, mimesis: it doesn’t imitate life, but ignites human feelings, relates images to intimate sensing. Nor is Mima a copycat of Mimir, although it shares with the Norse giant a touch of divine grace: “for a while she can relieve the strain and rout the memories from the shores of Doris. For frequently the world that Mima shows us blots out the world remembered and abandoned”47.

• 48 “Vår plikt just nu är att våga se också det mörka, att göra oss förtrogna också med mörka fantasins (...)
• 49 Eric O. Johannesson, “Aniara: Poetry and the Poet in the Modern World”, Scandinavian Studies, 32, 1 (...)
• 50 Habermas encompasses in moral-cognitive reason governmental policies and questions about “how to li (...)

28The question concerning technology had long been of strong interest for Martinson. In an article published in 1955, he highlighted the many positive aspects of technology, but also showed his concerns for its pervasiveness: “our duty now is to dare to see also the dark side, and make ourselves aware also of the dark fantasy’s images of the cloud of destruction”48. Undoubtedly, Martison is afraid of the prison of “a one-sided cult of the intellect, of knowledge, and of certainty as truth”49. The poet fears a world without myths or, to say it with Jürgen Habermas, deprived of moral-practical and aesthetics-expressive reasons, limited to cognitive-instrumental rationality only interested in facts and data, in effectivity, in recurrent patterns, not open to speculation or poetry50. Technology must be human-driven, otherwise it becomes inhuman.

• 51 Linda Haverty Rugg, “Displacing Crimes against Nature: Scandinavian Ecocrime Fiction”, Scandinavian (...)
• 52 Sophie Wennerscheid, “Things Don’t Cry, Do They?”, p. 37. The spaceship also serves as artificial p (...)

29Mima’s power is instated by controlling evocative images of nature. In the film, Mima screens personal accounts of experience of nature, making refugees collapse into a narcotic condition, in a womb of procured self-deception. The directors stress how the power of Mima increases after refugees onboard discover that Aniara is not coming back to the original course. Mima works to relieve passengers of the burden of their pointless journey, it is a displacement and deferral of the ultimate destiny to which the spaceship is travelling51. In the poem, it strives to find forms of life in the mute universe, in the film it brings the passenger to happy albeit fictitious places, which take the shape of an artificial paradise52.

• 53 Johan Lundberg, “Döden, drömmen och dikten. En linje i Harry Martinsons epik – Från Nässlorna blomm (...)
• 54 Stephen Klass, “Introduction”, in Harry Martinson, Aniara. A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 17
• 55 Jan Stensson, “Aniara, Mimicry and Aspect-Seeing”, International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 16, 2006, (...)
• 56 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 39; “emigranter har börjat lära sig (...)

30Mima uses nature as a tool to hold the position of moral entity: it doesn’t imitate, “rather paradoxically, it emerges as a symbol for an anti-mimetic aestheticism”53. Mima mediates nature through its screens, objectifies environment and doubles the distance between mankind and its green milieu: Earth is lost, and its landscapes and sceneries are recoverable only through machines. Mima, “perverted into a shipboard movie studio” shows a double reference: not only is it a benign and sovereign entity to which devoted worshippers ordain themselves, but also a machine that subjectifies itself54. Its “auto-plastic adaptation” point to a complete subjectification55. Indeed, Mima is responsible for narrativization of past Earth memories in form of epic and melancholic accounts from Gaia; in its unremitting search for new stories and new forms of life to be screened to refugees, he reshapes life in a demiurgic effort to recreate a new home-away-from-home for those who lost their grounded Dasein: “all these emigrants are realizing that […] the only world which we are given is this world in Mima”56. Its nature is at the same time that of a Machine-God which through a techno-poiesis rebuilds its own world, and a sentient subject which is eventually crushed by the pervasiveness of war-like Anthropocene.

• 57 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 43; “Uppfinnaren var själv fullständ (...)
• 58 Octavia J. Cade, “‘I Close the Mima’: The Role of Narrative in Harry Martinson’s Aniara”, Scandinav (...)
• 59 Manuela Rossini, “Figurations of Posthumanity in Contemporary Science/Fiction – All Too Human(ist)? (...)

31Mima is indeed its own creator: “The inventor [of Mima] was himself dumbstruck the day he found that one half of the Mima he’d invented lay beyond analysis. That the Mima had invented half herself”57. Its auto-poiesis is evocative of the self-generating approach commonly observed in contemporary AI systems. It questions superiority for humans, as Olivia Cade notes, as it “has greater sensory capacity than that of the human passengers”58. It is the final evolutionary stage, beyond homo sapiens59.

• 60 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 59; “Då bländas miman av ett blixtbl (...)
• 61 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 63; “Ett blixtblått sken slog fram u (...)
• 62 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 62; “Hon hade hört dem ropa på stena (...)

32Ultimate evidence of subjectification of Mima and therefore objectification of nature is Mima’s choice to terminate its existence. As a sentient machine, it fulfils the humanist attitude to feel pain and to act consequently to relieve the burden of despair. In Poem 26 Mimaroben accounts of the destruction of Dorisburg, “Mima’s blinded by a bluish bolt and I am dumbstruck at events that pour on wretched Earth”60. This predicts Mima’s self-inflicted extinction: “A bolt-blue light flashed from Mima’s screens; across Mima’s halls a rumbling rolled like booming thunder back in Dorisworld”61. Earth and Mima’s annihilations mirror in a common cry of despair. Mima’s suicide, as concrete act of humanity, sanctions mankind’s destination to loneliness, detached from nature, and abandoned by the God-Machine, which had been more human than humans. Sheer terror spreads onboard at Mima’s death, in a sequence that resembles the ghastly instants of doomsday in Guernica: everything and everyone is gripped by despair. At the moment of destruction of Dorisburg, Mima is struck by stones’ anguish: “She heard them cry, their stonely cries in distant Dorisvale. She had behelded the granite’s white-hot weeping when stone and ore were vaporized to mist. She’d been much troubled by those stone’s travail”62.

• 63 “Even here are the rewards of praise, here are the tears of things as they touch mortals’ mind”.
• 64 David Wharton, “Sunt Lacrimae Rerum: An Exploration in Meaning”, The Classical Journal, 103, 2008, (...)
• 65 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things, Durham; London, Duke University Press, (...)

33A similar sequence occurs in Aeneid, when Virgil introduces a scene with Aeneas and Achates who together visit Juno’s temple in Carthage, “Sunt hic etiam sua praemia laudi, sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt”63. The two men from Troy bemoan the destruction of the city and comment on history that leaves only dust of past existences. Diverse interpretations have spread about the words “sunt lacrimae rerum”: as Wharton, amongst others, observes, the verse is deliberately ambiguous64. “Rerum” can be translated rather as “everything” or “of all things”, but the interpretation as “the tears of the things” shows interesting and evocative connections with Martinson’s poem, as pain and anguish appear as universal forms of state of suffering. This comprehensive despair shows the interconnectedness of all things. The sentient Machine/God vibrates with a proper vitality “not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans but also to act as quasi agent or force with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own”65.

• 66 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space; p. 47: “Förskrämd av denna klarhet flyr (...)

35In the dark times during Aniara’s off course journey, many are the consolations humans create to counterbalance desperation. One is obviously Daisy Doody, as Mimaroben explains: “Chilled at such certitude, I take flight out of the Mima-hall to the ruddy light filling the dance-hall and, finding Daisy there, I seek admission to her womb of hair in her savior-arms I beg a tryst where death’s cold certitude does not exist”66. Other forms are the many religious cults and the distraction brought by arch-comic Sandon.

• 67 ”Dikten är till för att trösta och berika de dödliga individerna”, Harry Martinson, ‘Biologien och (...)
• 68 “Livet är kort, men just därför att så är, kräver det en konstrikt arbetad tydning och mycken tanke (...)
• 69 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 41; “Vår själ förnöts av drömmar, st (...)
• 70 Eric O. Johannesson, “Aniara: Poetry and the Poet in the Modern World”, p. 199.
• 71 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space; p. 102: “En religion som tävlar starkt (...)

36Literature though is the most relevant source of consolation since it is: “made to console and enrich the mortals”67. It counterpowers the continuing process of creation and destruction which is implicated in nature, from which humans still infer a meaning: “life is short, but just because it is so short, it needs an artistically charged interpretation and a lot of thought and dream for making it meaningful”68. Consolation and art are intertwined in a productive connection with nature and reality: “Our soul is spent on dreams, we’re ever rubbing dream on dream for want of something real”69. Together visions, literary imagery and nature fill in the book of the World: for these reasons the poetess of Rind in Aniara is “able to live in a world of life-sustaining myths, probably because she is blind, an outward sign of the fact that she draws her spiritual strength from the unconscious mind”70. The ability to create, to link nature with narration, is a strategy of humanist resistance against the threatening darkness looming over refugees, hence the poetess of Rind is chosen to be minister: “A rival religion to the Cult arose which the strain and torment of the dark inspire. They worship Light as concept and as flame: the goddess of this new cult is a fire. Their chosen priestess was the maid from Rind”71.

• 72 “All’ombra de’ cipressi e dentro l’urne confortate di pianto è forse il sonno della morte men duro? (...)
• 73 Tord Hall, Vår tids stjärnsång: en naturvetenskaplig studie omkring Harry Martinsons Aniara, Stockh (...)

37Imageries and fantasies are illusions, but still they console and instill hope, as also Ugo Foscolo alluded in the opening verse of 1806 poem Dei sepolcri (“Sepulchers”): “Shaded by cypresses and within the graves consoled by affection, is the sleep of death less hard?”72. Extinction is no less real, answers the Italian poet, but to keep memory of the past is to comfort those who are alive, as does poetry which succeeds in providing form and meaning to the pointless accumulation of life and death which is existence. In order to generate inspiring and comforting illusions following Mima’s demise, Mimaroben endeavours to install screens on the exterior of the spaceship (song 61). These screens display images from the pre-civilisation era, and the resulting illusion, in the form of these fictional images, provides effective consolation. 73.

• 74 “När ungefärligheten på alla områden hotas till livet av den tyranniska exaktheten på alla områden, (...)
• 75 “Helvetande mannen steg upp ur det brinnande träsket. Helvetande mannen bröt han i stycken sin nyvu (...)

38Poetry again, combined with knowledge, continuously pushes forward the innate thirst of experience. The loss of unity leads to perilous consequences: “When approximation in every field is threatened by tyrannical exactness in every field, then the huge war between poet and engineer has begun”74. Approximation leaves room for experimentation, contributes to newer illusions: the plain clarity, the absolute possession of knowledge limits space for inventions and fantasies dramatically, as Martinson writes in Förstöraren, included in Gräsen i Thule. In the poem man is helvetande, a pun that links hel, hell, and vetande, knowledge, in a neologism that could point to helt-vetande: “The man who knows everything rose from the bruning swamp, knowing-all pulled into pieces his new-found certainty. It would take him forever to transform his wanderings, to drive his ideas forever towards the fields of reality [...] Soon the clarity with which he feeds his boredom would once again prepare a death by certainty for the riddle”75.

• 76 “Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per seguir virtute e canosce (...)
• 77 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space, p. 47; “en liten blåsa i Guds andes gla (...)

39The moral drive to knowledge and fantasy is in Martison’s opinion a human entitlement: “Consider your origin. You were not made to live as mindless beasts, but to go in search of virtue and true knowledge”, as Dante wrote in Inferno, XXVI, 118-120.76 Instability is the reason to move forward, both with knowledge and fantasy. Aboard movement is arrested, and illusions are dead: Aniara proceeds slowly, “a little bubble in the glass of Godhead”77.

• 78 Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space; p. 76: “Då är som hörde man det sista l (...)
• 79 “Tanto in ogni opera sua la natura è intenta e indirizzata alla morte […]. Ogni parte dell’universo (...)

41Being self-sufficient, Aniara restates the detachment of mankind from nature. Man doesn’t need nature anymore to feed himself. Nature is then no longer a consoling realm, but the continuing process of creation and destruction. The scaring figure of the Crow from iced tundra in Song 40 is a symbol of that never-ending consumption which is existence: according to the Crow it is “as though you listened to the last bolt shut on life’s capacity for pulling through”78. Crow is indifferent to mankind as Wild Cock is in Giacomo Leopardi’s short prose “The song of the Wild Cock”: “Thus, in all her works, nature is intent and pointed towards death. […] Every part of the universe hastens untiringly, with diligence and wonderful celerity, towards death”79. Disconnected from nature, in which Martinson seemed to find consolation and faith, humans fall in meaninglessness; deprived of the meaning-productive connection poetry-knowledge-nature there is only a fatal destiny of “erosion”, “corrosion”, and “decay” (“förvittringen, förgängelsen, förruttnelse”) as it emerges in “Song of Erosion” (83).

• 80 For a review on postenvironmentalism, Erle Ellis, “The Planet of No Return”, in Love Your Monsters. (...)
• 81 Renee Lertzman, Environmental Melancholia. Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement, London and New  (...)

42Denied of the regenerative power of the multitude and plenitude of nature, ultimately detached from any belonging, Man is finally lost in his dark eco melancholia, in a post-environmental condition which is that depicted in Aniara80. The concept of eco-melancholia, based on Renée Lertzman’s findings about the emotional and unconscious bond between humans and nature, develops this link: the environment is a sought-after refuge, providing a meaningful sense of belonging, but is constantly threatened by destruction, overexploitation or occasional catastrophe81. In nature, exhilaration and a looming sense of annihilation meet, birth and death coexist.

• 82 “Posthumanismen per definition innebär ett upplösande av dualism och dikotomier såsom indelningen a (...)

43The final condition of humankind in Aniara is after civilization: “posthumanism per se entails a dissolution of dualism and dichotomies as well as a division in a natural and cultural sphere”82. Dualism and dichotomies are indeed dissolved in the final stanzas of the poem: only the human dimension is left.

• 83 Jacques Rancière et al., “You Can’t Anticipate Explosions: Jacques Rancière in Conversation with Ch (...)
• 84 “Parimente del mondo intero, e delle infinite vicende e calamità delle cose create, non rimarrà pur (...)

44In an “alien, solitary universe”, last step of Anthropocene is a posthumanist condition where all connections and sense of belonging are resected, being humankind, a wandering form of exobiology pushed outside the rim of nature, dis-assembled from other fellow forms of life, left alone in the nature dark, succumbing to their all too much frailty83. Nothing will remain: “Likewise of the whole world and of the infinite events and catastrophes of created things, there won’t be a vestige left, only naked silence and utter calm shall fill the vast space”84.