ANIARA

Author: Harry Martinson
Year: 1974 (1956)
Publisher: Bokförlaget Aldus
Language: Swedish

In a distant future where Earth has been laid to waste by pollution and war, a project of resettlement to Mars is underway. Scores of advanced interplanetary vessels navigate through the void transporting refugees from the once beautiful blue planet to its desolate red neighbour, which now, in comparison, despite its barren surface is more hospitable than Earth, or Doris as Earth is now known.

One of these vessels is the Aniara, carrying eight thousand souls. A carrier of hope embarking on a routine journey from chaos to order. Alas, shortly after Aniara leaves Earth’s atmosphere a wayward meteor forces her to veer from her plotted course and due to an irreparable malfunction, which renders the ship uncontrollable but otherwise undamaged, she drifts off helplessly into the cosmic dance of the stars. With her, the eight thousand captives encapsulated in the contourless fabric of eternity, trapped like “a little bubble in the glass of Godhead”.

As all hope evaporates, the denizens of Aniara form an earthly microcosm. A replica, or more accurately, an offshoot of society, with all the petty quarrels, personal ambition, sexuality, betrayal, and identity struggle that we recognise from our planet in our time. In their loss of direction, they turn to the ship’s computer, the Mima, for guidance and comfort. The Mima keeps record of all that ever happened on Doris and upon demand, shows the passengers bits and pieces of Doris, as it used to be. Seeing the long-lost beauty of their home planet gives the people a sense of security and belonging. In time, the humans begin to treat the Mima like a deity, including a cult complete with rituals and anniversaries, until one day, burdened with the anguish, regret, inadequacy, and wickedness of mankind, it exhibits the final destruction of Doris to the people on the ship who turn on it and demand it be switched off. The Mima, in a final decision of defiance, decides to incapacitate itself permanently to avoid being exposed to people ever again.

“There is protection from near everything,
from fire and damages by storm and frost,
oh, add whichever blows may come to mind.
But there is no protection from mankind.” Song 26

And thus abandoned they press on, aimlessly in the general direction of the Lyra constellation. The Lyra, the god Apollo’s sacred instrument, tuned to praise the Apollonian virtues of self-consciousness and moderation, while at the same time the society on Aniara is rife with denial and indulgence.

The author, Harry Martinson, one of Sweden’s most beloved 20^th century writers, captures the fate of the Aniara and the passengers incarcerated inside her gut, in the format of an epic poem. Across a total of 103 songs the fates of Aniara, but also some of the individuals that are doomed to live out their lives on her decks, are described in verse. The meter is indistinct, fleeting and free without boundaries or rules. Sometimes resting in an iambic blank verse only to eject into a perfectly free format which only briefly produces a rhythm or a rhyme as if to tease or test the reader. By making up words of his own, Martinson pushes the limits of poetry even further.

“The richest of the languages we know,
Xinombric, has three million words,
but then the galaxy you’re gazing into now
has more than ninety billion suns,
Has there ever been a brain that mastered all the words
in the Xinombric language?
Not a one.
Now you see.
And do not see.” Song 85

Martinson several times declared his distaste for Sartre’s iteration of existentialism and it could be argued that Aniara is an attempt to make a case in favour of absurdism as opposite to existentialism. While he seems to agree with the existentialist worldview that actions come from nothing, it is difficult to find traces of an end goal of the actions of the passengers on the tumbling spaceship. Man’s freedom, a key concept in Sartres theory of Bad Faith, is severely curtailed. All purpose eradicated. All meaning nullified. Options expunged. The most respected person on the uncontrollable Aniara is at the same time the most useless; Isagel the pilot. Even Isagel’s scientific discovery in Song 39, that would shift an entire scientific discipline, was ultimately pointless.

“[H]ere her breakthrough never could become
in any manner fruitful, just a theorem
which Isagel superbly formulated
but which was doomed to join us going out
ever farther to the Lyre and then to vanish.”   

In the end, what is the difference between Aniara and Earth? Are we not all trapped on a space vessel that is uncontrollably crashing through the galaxy due to no agency of our own on a journey whose destination none of us will live to arrive at. There is no difference between the yurg danced on Aniara and the yurg danced in Dorisburg. And so are we all dancing, loving, fighting, cheating, and toiling our way through the forever expanding futility that is the universe. There is no one to pilot our journey.

All quotes are from Martinson, H. (1998) Aniara: An Epic Science Fiction Poem. USA: Story Line Press.