Fredmans epistlar

Bellman's artistry in the songs of Fredman's Epistles has been compared with William Hogarth's work as a painter,[3] as here in Gin Lane, 1751.

Bellman wrote a total of 82 Fredman's Epistles, starting in 1768. The overall theme of the Epistles is, on the surface, drinking, and its effects, but the Epistles are very far from being drinking songs. Instead, they are a diverse collection of songs, often telling stories. They are sometimes romantically pastoral, sometimes serious, even mournful, but always dramatic, full of life. Together, they "paint in words and music a canvas of their age".[4][5] They are populated by a lengthy cast of characters, and set firmly in Bellman's time and place, eighteenth century Stockholm, but are simultaneously decorated, for romantic or humorous effect, in Rococo style. As a result, listeners are confronted with both striking realism and classical imagery. Within these general themes, the Epistles follow no discernible pattern, and do not join together to tell any single story. Their tunes, too, are borrowed from a variety of sources, often French. The words that are fitted to the tunes are often in parodic contrast to their original themes, very likely achieving humorous effects on their eighteenth-century audiences.[3][6][7][8][9] Fredman's Epistles are thus not easy to categorise; the critic Johan Henric Kellgren stated that Bellman's songs "had no model and can have no successors".[1]

Bellman was a skilful and entertaining performer of his songs, accompanying himself on the cittern, putting on different voices, and imitating the sounds made by a crowd of people.[3][6][7][8] He is unusual, even unique, among major poets in that almost all of his work was "conceived to music".[4] His achievement has been compared to Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, and Hogarth. Bellman, however, was no great playwright, nor a major classical composer. His biographer, Paul Britten Austin, suggests that the comparison with Hogarth is closer to the mark. Bellman had a gift for using elegant classical references in comic contrast to the sordid realities of drinking and prostitution. The way he does this, at once regretting and celebrating these excesses in song, achieves something of what Hogarth achieved in engravings and paint.[3][6][7] The art historian Axel Romdahl describes Bellman's sensibility as if he had been a painter: "An unusual swiftness of apprehension, both optical and aural, must have distinguished him."[10] Britten Austin agrees with this, noting that "When [Bellman's] words and music have faded into silence it is the visual image which remains."[10] Jan Sjåvik comments in the Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Literature and Theater that "Bellman's achievement consists in taking this humble and unrecognized literary form [the drinking song] and raising it to a genre that became impossible to ignore, while in the process creating songs and characters that have become an indispensable part of Sweden's literary and cultural heritage."[8]

Detail of watercolour by Johan Fredrik Martin of a scene reminiscent of Ulla Winblad's journey back from Lake Mälaren to Stockholm in Epistle No. 48, Solen glimmar blank och trind

Many of the 82 Fredman's Epistles remain popular in Sweden. Their diverse styles and themes may be illustrated with examples of some of the best-known songs. To begin with No. 23, Ach du min Moder! (Alas, thou my mother), which has been described as "the to-be-or-not-to-be of Swedish literature", tells, in realist style, the story of a drunk who wakes in a Stockholm gutter outside the Crawl-In Tavern. He curses his parents for conceiving him "perhaps upon a table" as he looks at his torn clothes. Then the tavern door opens, and he goes in and has his first drink. The song ends with loud thanks to the drunk's mother and father.[3] In contrast, the Rococo No. 28, I går såg jag ditt barn, min Fröja (Yesterday I saw thy child, my Freya), tells the tale of an attempt to arrest the "nymph" Ulla Winblad, based on a real event. Bellman here combines realism – Ulla wearing a black embroidered bodice, and losing her watch in a named street (Yxsmedsgränd) in Stockholm's Gamla stan – with images from classical mythology, such as a myrtle crown and an allusion to the goddess Aphrodite.[3]

Quite a different tone is set in No. 40, Ge rum i Bröllops-gåln din hund! (Make room in the wedding-hall, you dog!), as some unruly soldiers interfere in a chaotic wedding, mixing roughly with the musicians and the wedding-party. Shouts of "Shoulder arms!" and panic at a chimney fire combine with a complex rhyming pattern to create a humorous picture of the disastrous event.[11] The story ends with the priest pocketing some of the collection money.[3] A later Epistle, No. 48, Solen glimmar blank och trind (The sun gleams smooth and round), narrates the relaxed and peaceful journey of a boat bringing Ulla Winblad home to Stockholm across Lake Mälaren on a lovely spring morning, after a night of carousing. The boatmen call to each other, apparently haphazardly, but each detail helps to create a pastoral vision as "Gradually the wind blows up / In the fallen sails; / The pennant stretches, and with an oar / Olle stands on a hayboat;". The song is "one of Bellman's greatest", creating "an incomparable panorama of that eighteenth-century Stockholm which meets us in Elias Martin's canvasses."[3]

No. 71, Ulla! min Ulla! säj får jag dig bjuda (Ulla! My Ulla! Say, may I offer thee) is another of the best-loved pastoral Epistles, and the melody may well be by Bellman himself. It imagines how Fredman, sitting on horseback outside Ulla's window at Fiskartorpet on a summer's day, invites her to come and dine with him on "reddest strawberries in milk and wine".[12] The following Epistle, No. 72, Glimmande nymf (Gleaming nymph), is a night-piece, set to an Andante melody from a French opéra comique. It describes in erotic detail the "nymph" asleep in her bed. To create the desired mood of rising excitement, Bellman creates a rainbow — after sunset. Britten Austin comments that the audience "does not even notice".[3][13] Meanwhile, No. 80, Liksom en Herdinna, högtids klädd (Like a shepherdess in her best dress), is a pastorale, almost paraphrasing Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's French guide to the construction of pastoral verse, starting with "As a Shepherdess splendidly dressed / By the spring one day in June / gathers from the grass's rosy bed / adornments and accents for her dress". The effect is of an "almost religious invocation".[3]

The final Epistle, No. 82, Hvila vid denna källa (Rest by this spring), is both pastoral and Rococo, depicting a "little breakfast" in the Stockholm countryside. Red wine flows; there is roast chicken, and an almond tart. Flowers "of a thousand kinds" are all around; a stallion parades in a field "with his mare and foal"; a bull roars; a cockerel hops on the roof, and a magpie chatters. Meanwhile, the musicians are exhorted to blow along with the wind god Eol, small love-sprites are asked to sing, and Ulla is called a nymph. The final chorus asks everyone to drink their dram of brandy.[3]

Lithograph of Jean Fredman by Pehr Hilleström, 1865

The lyrics of the Epistles describe a gallery of fictional and semi-fictional characters who take part in more or less real events in and around the Stockholm of Bellman's time. This cast includes some 44 named personages, many of whom appear only once or twice. Some, like the principal characters Jean Fredman and Ulla Winblad, are based on real people, and in Fredman's case his real name was used. The Fredman of the Epistles is an alcoholic former watchmaker, and is the central character and fictional narrator. He is thus supposedly present in all the Epistles, but is only named in a few of them. The backdrop of many of the Epistles, Stockholm's taverns, is also frequented by musicians including Christian Wingmark on flute, Father Berg on various instruments, Father Movitz, and the dance master Corporal Mollberg.[3][6][7]

A particular group is the Order of Bacchus (Bacchi Orden): to become a member, one must be seen lying in a drunken stupor in a Stockholm gutter at least twice. Among the more minor characters is the brandy-distiller Lundholm. Another is Norström, Ulla Winblad's husband; the real Eric Nordström did in fact marry the "real Ulla Winblad", Maria Kristina Kiellström, a silk-spinner and fallen woman made pregnant by a passing nobleman.[3][6][7][14] In the Epistles, Ulla Winblad is the chief of the "nymphs". She is half goddess, half prostitute, chief among the demimonde characters of the Epistles.[3][6][7]

François Boucher's 1740 painting Triumph of Venus, the model for the humorously Rococo Epistle 25, "Blåsen nu alla (All blow now!)"

"A noisy company". Wash drawing by Johan Tobias Sergel (1740–1814)

Many of the Epistles have a Rococo theme, especially the pastorale pieces with a cast of gods and demigods from classical mythology. Thus, Epistle 25, "Blåsen nu alla (All blow now!)", a short crossing of the Stockholm waterway to Djurgården, is peopled with billowing waves, thunder, Venus, Neptune, tritons, postillions, angels, dolphins, zephyrs "and Paphos's whole might", as well as water-nymphs splashing about the "nymph" – in other words, Ulla Winblad.[15]

The principal figures, given that the Epistles focus on drinking and its effects, along with "nymphs", are Bacchus and Venus / Fröja, but the cast is wider, including:[16]

• Amaryllis – a nymph of the countryside (from Virgil's Eclogues)
• Bacchus – god of wine and drinking
• Charon – the ferryman of Hades, carrying souls to the place of the dead
• Chloris / Flora – the nymph or goddess of springtime, flowers and growth
• Clotho – one of the three fates, spinning the thread of human life (which is suddenly cut off)
• Cupid / Astrild – god of desire and erotic love, Astrild being a late Nordic invention
• Jupiter/Jofur – king of the gods on Mount Olympus, god of thunder
• Morpheus – god of sleep
• Neptune – god of the sea, accompanying the birth of Venus from the waves
• Nymph – a (beautiful) female nature deity
• Pan – god of wildness and rough countryside
• Themis – Titaness of divine law and justice
• Triton – messenger of the sea, accompanying Neptune
• Venus / Fröja / Aphrodite at Paphos – goddesses of love

Map of Bellman's Stockholm, with places of interest for his Fredman's Epistles overlaid on map from William Coxe's Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden..., 1784.
– 1 Haga park – 2 Brunnsviken – 3 Forsta Torpet (Ep. 80) – 4 Kungsholmen – 5 Hessingen (Ep. 48) – 6 Lake Mälaren (Ep. 48) – 7 Södermalm – 8 Urvädersgränd – 9 Lokatten (Lynx Tavern) (Ep. 11) – 10 Yxsmedsgränd in Gamla stan (Ep. 28) – 11 Skeppsholm Quay – 12 Årsta Castle – 13 Djurgården Park – 14 Gröna Lund pleasure gardens – 15 Bellman's birthplace – 16 Fiskartorpet (Ep. 71)

Alongside the frankly mythological, Fredman's Epistles have a convincing realism, painting pictures of moments of low life in Bellman's contemporary Stockholm. Bellman himself provided a list of descriptions of his characters, giving a brief pen-portrait of each one, like "Anders Wingmark, a former clothier in Urvädersgränd, very cheerful and full of commonsense". Different characters appear in different Epistles, making them realistically episodic. There is a fire in Epistle 34; a funeral is busily prepared in Epistles 46 and 47; and a fight breaks out in Epistle 53. Many of the songs are about the effects of strong drink, from the damage to the Gröna Lund Tavern in Epistle 12 to the masterly portrait of a drunkard lying in the gutter of Epistle 23, described by Oscar Levertin as "the to-be-or-not-to-be of Swedish literature".[3]

The pastoral Epistles, too, give the impression of being in real places, with flesh-and-blood people, at specific times of day. Epistle 48 tells how the friends return to Stockholm by boat after a night out on Lake Mälaren, one summer morning in 1769. Each of its twenty-one verses paints a picture of a moment in the peaceful journey, from the wind stirring the fallen sails, the skipper's daughter coming out of her cabin, the cockerel crowing, the church clock striking four in the morning, the sun glimmering on the calm water. The effects may seem to be haphazard, but "each stanza is a little picture, framed by its melody. We remember it all, seem to have lived through it, like a morning in our own lives."[17] Britten Austin calls it "a new vision of the natural and urban scene. Fresh as Martin's. Detailed as Hogarth's. Frail and ethereal as Watteau's."[17]

An 1825 broadside with Fredman's Epistle No. 30: Drick ur ditt glas, se Döden på dig väntar (In Paul Britten Austin's translation "Drain off thy glass, see death upon thee waiting")

Britten Austin tempers his praise for Bellman's realism with the observation that the effects are chosen to work in song, rather than to be strictly correct or even possible. Thus in Epistle 72, "Glimmande Nymf", the memorable rainbow with its glowing colours "of purple, gold and green" is seen after nightfall. He comments "Never mind. It is a beautiful scene, even if its chronology calls for much poetic license." Or in Epistle 80, "Liksom en herdinna", the farmer is for some reason going to or coming from market on a Sunday, when the market would be closed; and his cart "heavy on staggering wheel" must have been absurdly full if it contained chickens, lambs, and calves all at once. But it had to be a Sunday to allow Ulla Winblad to step out of her swaying chaise, on an outing from the city. Britten Austin remarks that "until such solecisms are actually pointed out, one does not even notice them." It is the same with the meals, which would cause "terrible indigestion" if the listener actually had to eat them,[lower-alpha 2] but "as a feast for mind, eye and ear they are highly satisfactory", the imagination filled with "all the poetic wealth" that Bellman provides.[18]

The literary historian Lars Warme observes that Bellman's sharp eye for detail has brought him praise for being the first Swedish realist, but at once balances this by saying that[19]

his particular brand of 'realism' carries with it a heaping measure of pure fantasy, grotesque humor, and—not least—an elegant veneer of classical mythology.[19]

Warme credits Bellman with a good knowledge of a literary craftsman's tools, using rhetoric and classical knowledge "to provide a theatrical backdrop for his tavern folk." The result is an "astonishing mixture of realism and wild mythological fantasy", set to complicated musical structures:[19]

marches and contradances, operatic ariettes, and graceful minuets. The result is related to a drinking song only by derivation. As an artistic achievement it stands alone in the history of Swedish poetry.[19]

Sheet music for Fredman's Epistle 80, "Liksom en herdinna" (As a shepherdess), a pastorale

The critic Johan Henric Kellgren, in his introduction to the first edition, found that the songs could not be known fully only as poems. Never before, he stated, had the art of poetry and the art of music been more fraternally united. They were not, Kellgren argued, verse that had been set to music; not music, set to verse; but the two were so thoroughly melted together into One beauty that it was impossible to see which would most miss the other for its fulfilment.[lower-alpha 3] Quoting this in the final paragraph of his thesis, the musicologist James Massengale commented "That is how it ought to be said!"[21]

Massengale argues that, given that music is so important in the Epistles, and that Bellman had more than enough musical skill to write a tune, it is remarkable that all or almost all the tunes are borrowed. He suggests that this "seems to indicate that Bellman wanted to preserve some vestige of the borrowing." That the borrowing was not just about saving effort or making up for absent skill, Massengale argues, is demonstrated by the fact that the amount of work Bellman had to put into the melodies for Epistles 12 ("Gråt Fader Berg och spela") and 24 ("Kära Syster!") was "surely tantamount to the production of new melodies." Borrowing was accepted, even encouraged at the time, but that does not explain why Bellman would have done it so consistently. The "poetic possibility", Massengale suggests, is that Bellman wished to exploit the humorous contrast between a melody of one type and a story of another, or between an existing image associated with the melody, and a fresh one presented in an Epistle. In addition, Bellman was able to use what his audience knew to be borrowed music to reinforce the historical flavour of the Epistles, introducing exactly the kind of ambiguity that he was seeking.[22]

Massengale points out that in the Epistles, Bellman employs a variety of methods to make the poetry work. For example, in Epistle 35, Bröderna fara väl vilse ibland, Bellman uses a panoply of metrical devices to counteract the "metrically plodding melody". He uses the rhetorical figure anadiplosis (repeating the last word of a clause at the start of the next) in verse 3 with "...skaffa jag barnet; barnet det dog,..." (...got I the child; the child died...) and again in verse 4. He uses epanalepsis (repeating the first word of a clause at its end) in verse 3, with "Men, min Anna Greta, men!" (But, my Anna Greta, but!), and again in verse 5. And he uses anaphora (repeating a word at the starts of neighbouring clauses) in verse 4, "häll den på hjärtat, häll man fyra!" (pour ... pour out four!), and again in verse 5. Massengale observes that good musical poetry, like this Epistle, is always a compromise, as it has both to fit its music or be no good as a musical setting, and to contrast with its music, or be no good as poetry. The final verse, containing all three metrical devices, is not, argues Massengale, an example of "decay", but shows Bellman's freedom, change of focus (from lament to acceptance), and the closure of the Epistle.[23]

Pastoral head-piece engraving in the first edition

The 1790 edition was the only one to appear in Bellman's lifetime. It was published by Olof Åhlström, by royal privilege; he held a monopoly on the printing of sheet music in Sweden.[38] Åhlström arranged the songs for piano, and Kellgren edited the song texts and wrote an introduction, but the extent of their influence on the shape of Fredman's Epistles cannot be fully determined.[lower-alpha 4] The edition was illustrated with a frontispiece by the leading Swedish artist Johan Tobias Sergel, engraved by Johan Fredrik Martin.

The corpus of published Epistles did not change after Bellman's death. Many minor selections from the Epistles have been published, sometimes with illustrations and introductions. The Epistles have been translated, at least partially, into Danish, German, French, English, Russian, Polish, Finnish, Norwegian, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch, as shown below.[39]

The English edition by Britten Austin is a selection of the Epistles, and is in rhyming verse in the original metre. Britten Austin describes the challenge of translation as difficult or impossible, and admits that in one way his translations are inevitably "a little faint." He explains this is because "Bellman's colloquialisms which offended his contemporaries still strike Swedish ears as the language of everyday speech. My renderings, therefore, may seem a trifle too antique in flavour; but to have jumbled up, as Bellman brilliantly does, modern-sounding slang with the graces of Rococo diction, would have produced a horrid effect.[40]

Editions and selections of the Epistles, some with illustrations, some with music, some printed together with Fredman's Songs, include:

• 1790: Fredmans epistlar, Stockholm: Olof Åhlström, by Royal Privilege.

--- facsimile reprint, 1976: Uddevalla.

• 1816: Fredmans epistlar, Stockholm: Rumstedt.
• 1844: Fredmans epistlar, Copenhagen: Jaeger. With 24 coloured lithographs.
• 1858: Fredmans epistlar, Text och musik, Copenhagen: J. Erslev. (In Danish)
• 1869: Fredmans epistlar och sånger, Stockholm: Elkan and Schildknecht.
• 1889: Fredmans epistlar, Stockholm: Bonniers. Arranged for piano solo.
• 1899: Fredmans epistlar af Carl Michael Bellman, Stockholm: Ljus. Intro. by Oscar Levertin. Illus. by Alf Wallander.
• 1909: Fredmans Episteln, Jena: E. Diederichs. (In German)
• 1920: Fredmans epistlar, Ord och musik, Stockholm: Bonniers.
• 1927: Carl Michael Bellmans skrifter. 1. Fredmans Epistlar, Stockholm: Bellmanssällskapet. ("Standard Edition")
• 1953: Les Épîtres de Fredman, Stockholm: Norstedt. (In French) 28 Epistles trans. Nils Afzelius and Pierre Volboudt. Illus. by Elias Martin.

--- reprinted, 1984: La Ferté-Milon.

• 1958: Das trunkene Lied, Munich: Desch. (In German). trans. Hanns von Gumppenberg, Felix Niedner, Georg Schwarz.
• 1977: Fredman's Epistles and songs, Stockholm: Reuter and Reuter. (In English) trans. Paul Britten Austin.
• 1982: Pesni Fredmana; Poslaniia Fredmana, Leningrad: Khudozh. (In Russian)
• 1991: Fredmanowe posłania i pieśni, Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne. (In Polish)
• 1991: Lauluja ja epistoloita, Helsinki: Yliopistopaino. (In Finnish)
• 1994: Fredmans epistlar, Stockholm: Proprius.
• 2002: Ulla, mia Ulla: antologia poetica in italiano cantabile, Rome: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali. (In Italian). A selection.
• 2003: Sterven van liefde en leven van wijn : een bloemlezing uit de Epistels & Zangen van Fredman, 's-Hertogenbosch : Voltaire. (In Dutch). A selection.

• Bellman, Carl Michael (1790). Fredmans epistlar. Stockholm: By Royal Privilege.
• Bellman, Carl Michael (1791). Fredmans sånger. Stockholm: By Royal Privilege.
• Britten Austin, Paul (1967). The Life and Songs of Carl Michael Bellman: Genius of the Swedish Rococo. New York: Allhem, Malmö American-Scandinavian Foundation. ISBN 978-3-932759-00-0.
• Britten Austin, Paul (1999) [1990]. Fredman's Epistles and Songs. Stockholm: Proprius. ISBN 978-9-231-03608-8.
• Hägg, Göran (1996). Den svenska litteraturhistorien [The Swedish literature history]. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. ISBN 91-46-17629-2.
• Hassler, Göran; Dahl, Peter (illus.) (1989). Bellman – en antologi [Bellman – an anthology]. Stockholm: En bok för alla. ISBN 978-91-7448-512-7. (contains the most popular Epistles and Songs, in Swedish, with sheet music)
• Hassler, Göran; Dahl, Peter (illus.) (1989). Bellman II – en antologi [Bellman – an anthology]. Stockholm: En bok för alla. ISBN 978-91-7448-742-8. (contains the remaining Epistles and Songs, in Swedish, with sheet music)
• Kleveland, Åse; Ehrén, Svenolov (illus.) (1984). Fredmans epistlar & sånger [The songs and Epistles of Fredman]. Stockholm: Informationsförlaget. ISBN 978-91-7736-059-9. (with facsimiles of sheet music from first editions in 1790, 1791)
• Lönnroth, Lars (2005). Ljuva karneval! : om Carl Michael Bellmans diktning. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag. ISBN 978-91-0-057245-7. OCLC 61881374.
• Massengale, James Rhea (1979). The Musical-Poetic Method of Carl Michael Bellman. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. ISBN 978-91-554-0849-7.
• Stork, Charles Wharton (1917). Anthology of Swedish lyrics from 1750 to 1915. New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fredmans epistlar.

• Bellman lyrics and reference index Bellman.net (in Swedish)
• Facsimile of 1790 book