"Lasse Söderberg: Surrealism and the Cuban Revolution in Swedish poetry during the 1960's"

Author, poet and translator Lasse Söderberg (born 1931) is one of the most influential translators of Spanish-language literature in Sweden. Among others, he has translated works by Octavio Paz, Federico García Lorca, Nicolás Guillén and Nancy Morejón.

In the 1950's, Söderberg was active in the surrealist circles in Paris and had close ties with artists such as Roberto Matta and Wifredo Lam. He also participated in Cuban and Surrealist art and literature projects. Despite this, research on the role of Cubans in surrealism, as well as the influence of the Cuban revolution on the French surrealists, is limited. In addition, Söderberg's role as a peripheral figure in the surrealist circles and his involvement in the Cuban art scene have not received much attention so far.

In 1969, Söderberg published the collection "Kuba's poeter drömmer inte mer" (Cuba's poets do not dream anymore), which consists of Cuban poetry. Three years later, he published the poetry collection "Praise for a Revolution", based on two trips he made to Cuba during the first decade of the Revolution. By focusing on these two collections, pofessor Anna Forné explores the relations between Swedish artistic networks during the 1960's, the surrealists in Paris and the artistic scene in Havana at the end of the 1960s.