I read an article about contemporary literary critique last week in one of Sweden’s major newspapers. The article, which also reflected on other recent opinions on the topic, set me on an unexpected trail of reading and discovery.
The article centred on whether critics should consider their emotional responses to what they were reviewing. The author, Åsa Beckman, argued that often, miscredited emotions are those typically coded as feminine, such as sorrow, while more masculine emotions like anger are not.
Beckman backed her argument with a couple of examples, notably when German critic Thomas Steinfeld a few years ago stated that “emotional twaddle” was remaking public discourse into something akin to “women’s magazines”. Beckman argued for a balance between intellectual rigour and emotional honesty, pointing to a role model of hers: former writer and critic Birgit Munkhammar.
Munkhammar grew up in a working-class family in northern Sweden, who later studied comparative literature and became a fierce but respected critic. In her 1997 book “En piga läser” (approximately “The Reading Maid”), Munkhammar describes reading earnestly, without the pretence of acting clever, with a sense of childlike wonder – but not gullibility.
Says Beckman, “[Munkhammar] prided herself in reading like a maid (which, she says, includes shedding a tear or two if something is sad)”. That didn’t preclude her from doling out “witty, educated and salty” critique, however.
In another article, from 2023, Åsa Beckman further expounds Munkhammar’s virtues: “Through the years, she has looked up and down at conflicts, people and themes, referred to the history of literature as much as to everyday life. […] You didn’t have to agree with Munkhammar on everything, but you were always sure that she expressed her honest opinion.”
I myself have many times discussed on this blog what I perceive as a constructed dichotomy of the academic/intellectual versus the popular/emotional. A needless opposition that can be used to invalidate broad swaths of artistic and cultural expressions based on opinion rather than merit or quality. Reading about Birgit Munkhammar’s apparent ability to combine both emotion and intellect in her professional work adds to my resolve to do the same in mine.
Take, for instance, the music I composed for The Loving Mother. It wasn’t simple or banal, but I did not shy away from a fairly traditional harmonic framework, nor classic operatic tropes or well-worn compositional ideas, such as leitmotifs. In fact, I made these choices consciously to best serve the libretto, to catch and hold the audience, and to the best of my ability depict the emotional drama I and Tora, my librettist, wanted to tell.
In one Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, the reviewer described my music as “melodic if a little sprawling”. In another, Svenska Dagbladet, they talked about my “beautiful, melodious lines”. Sprawling or not, it seems like I made the right choices for the music to have its desired effect. Tora and I wanted to affect our audience and, judging by both what I’ve heard first hand as well as what others have related to me, we really succeeded.