Poetry and Song
Bellman was understood as a great humorist by his contemporaries. He achieved this through incongruity, with what at a casual glance seems to be lofty biblical style or delicate pastoral poetry, but is in fact populated with drunks and whores, talking of life in taverns and excursions around Stockholm, frequently ending with allusions to sexual intercourse. For example, Blåsen nu alla! (All blow now!), begins with the sight of Venus crossing the water, as in François Boucher'sTriumph of Venus, but when she disembarks, Bellman quickly transforms her into a lustful Ulla Winblad. Similarly, the ornate and civilized minuet melody of Ach du min Moder (Alas, thou my mother) contrasts starkly with the text, which is about Fredman lying with a hangover in the gutter outside a pub, complaining bitterly about life. Characters such as Ulla Winblad (her surname means vineleaf) recur through the Epistles; Britten Austin comments that
- "Ulla is at once a nymph of the taverns and a goddess of a rococo universe of graceful and hot imaginings".
Read more about this topic: Carl Michael Bellman
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