IN THE DESOLATE TIME
Friend, in the desolate time, when your soul is enshrouded in darkness
When, in a deep abyss, memory and feeling die out,
Intellect timidly gropes among shadowy forms and illusions
Heart can no longer sigh, eye is unable to weep;
When, from your night-clouded soul the wings of fire have fallen
And you, to nothing, afraid, feel yourself sinking once more,
Say, who rescues you then?—Who is the comforting angel
Brings to your innermost soul order and beauty again,
Building once more your fragmented world, restoring the fallen
Altar, and when it is raised, lighting the sacred flame?-—
None but the powerful being who first from the limitless darkness
Kissed to life seraphs and woke numberless suns to their dance.
None but the holy Word who called the worlds into existence
And in whose power the worlds move on their paths to this day.
Therefore, rejoice, oh friend, and sing in the darkness of sorrow:
Night is the mother of day, Chaos the neighbor of God.
Erik Johan Stagnelius (1793 – 1823) Sweden
Gladsome Lights 
I read it once to myself, then once more aloud, also to myself. Powerful words, and comforting ones. I’ll be copying this one into my journal. Thank you
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Good to remember that Night is the mother of Day.
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A great poem by the greatest swedish poet – even better in swedish! – I have tried to translate it to a painting – showing his knowing of orthodox liturgy; Sten Hidal, a professor at the University in Lund has shown that Stagnelius understood more of the Orthodox Church than any of his contemporaries in Sweden. So my translation of the line “kissed the seraphs to life, waked the suns to their dance” – a parallelism in style of what you find in the Psalms – is not taken from out of thin air. As in the swedish original the Word of creation is called out in a stronger way than in the english version – Stagnelius refers to the text in Genesis but uses another word than the swedish bible based on “to be” that is more of “become!” just like the hebrew “Jehi!” that I painted.
You find my painting at
https://hosting.fluidbook.com/atelje_agetorp/#/page/88
and other paintings inspired by Stagnelius poems on the pages before and after
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What a fascinating project – may it be blessed. Thank you so much for sharing about Stagnelius and about your work.
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I hope that more of his poems will reach the rest of the world – even though they are so perfect in swedish that they are hard to translate…
Thanks for your answer – and God bless you, too!
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