Josephson – Sweden’s Rembrandt and Matisse

The fact that Sibelius set ten poems by Ernst Josephson (1851–1906) (in eleven songs) is remarkable for two reasons. First, the amateur poet Josephson’s output is not extensive: he published only two small collections. Second, the themes of his poems are neither idealistic nor pantheistic, unlike so many of Runeberg’s and Rydberg’s; rather, they are expressionistic, almost grotesque, studies of tormented souls or curious tales with macabre elements. Josephson’s simple but effective strophes have nothing of the refined poetic language of Viktor Rydberg, Carl Snoilsky or Oscar Levertin either; they are more reminiscent of notebook sketches than thoroughly elaborated, polished verses. His rhymes sometimes seem rather forced, even clumsy. Whether Sibelius’s occupation with Josephson’s poetry (1908–9) was a catalyst for his “introverted,” expressionistic period or a result thereof is a chicken-egg dilemma. The fact is that it coincides with his break from the classicistic Third Symphony to the Fourth.

Ernst Josephson’s name is part of Swedish cultural history, but considerably more so in the sphere of painting than poetry. He grew up in a Jewish family in Stockholm with relatives, active in both music and theater. Ernst was ten when his father died, and he had a close relationship with his mother. Still a teenager, he began his studies at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. As a youth of twenty, he is reported to have exclaimed: “I am going to be Sweden’s Rembrandt – or die!”

In November 1875, he left for Central Europe, studying and copying the art of the great masters, primarily in Paris. In a poem, “Skål för Paris” (A Toast for Paris), he declared:

In 1876 he lived in Holland, mainly in Amsterdam, where he studied and copied paintings by Rembrandt and other Flemish masters. Here he was commissioned to paint a portrait of an eighteen-year-old lady, Ketty Rindskopf, with whom he fell passionately in love. His affection for her was never returned. In the fall of 1877 he continued to Italy, where he spent almost two years in Florence and Rome.