If an interested foreigner were to ask one of Erik Axel Karlfeldt's countrymen what we admire most in this poet and on what qualities his national greatness depends, it would at first seem easy to give an answer.
People like to talk of what they love.
The Swede would say that we celebrate this poet because he represents our character with a style and a genuineness that we should like to be ours, and because he has sung with singular power and exquisite charm of the tradition of our people, of all the precious features which are the basis for our feeling for home and country in the shadow of the pine-covered mountains. But the Swede would soon check himself, realizing that such a general explanation is insufficient, that in Karlfeldt there are many things, beloved but difficult to define, which a proper appraisal must take into account but which are inaccessible to the foreigner. Hence we can offer no ready-made expression of our conviction of the high rank of Karlfeldt's poetry, for there are elements of mysticism in it, powers and instincts that elude analysis. We face a similar difficulty on this occasion when we are to briefly sketch the life-work of the great lyrical poet, since it has now been made the object of a great international award. It is the deliberate self-limitation of lyrical poetry, and at the same time its fate, that its most profound qualities and values are indissolubly connected with the character and rhythm of its original language, with the meaning and weight of every single word.