Borisova-Ollas - Vinden som ingenting minns for choir and orchestra

Vinden som ingenting minns [Wind Without Memory] for mixed choir and orchestra is based on the texts of Pär Lagerkvist´s last collection of poems Aftonland [Evening Land].

The Nobel Prize winning novelist was also one of the most important figures in the Swedish poetry of the previous century. Born in 1891, he was brought up in a strictly religious home. As the most part of Swedish intellectuals of his generation Pär Lagerkvist broke away from his Christian background later in his life. Unlike many of his colleagues though he never became ostentatiously critical of religious beliefs and symbols as such. Much of his poetry, especially Aftonland from 1953, has a clear tendency to investigate a position of human being in the world where God is no longer present.

Throughout the entire collection of poems we can feel the duplicity of that position. If the “divine” does not exist any more, why are we still trapped by the fear of its probable apparition in everyday life in form of angels, strangers clad in shining armour, dreams, memories? There is also a number of poems in Aftonland where the author brings up the subject of our fear for the situation when all the traces of human existence are falling into total oblivion – and our constant longing for it.

Victoria Borisova-Ollas