Tears in Rain

Tears in Rain is one of the (in total sixteen) original illustrations that Martina Müntzing executed for her friend Aase Berg’s (born 1967) book Spöket (The Ghost), published in the autumn of 2022. In the book, Berg writes, in her precise and dazzlingly beautiful prose, about the dynamic relationship between humans and animals. Exploring man’s unrequited love for animals as well as the fragile and deceitful power balance that comes with the territory when taking on a pet.

Aase Berg is a Swedish author, poet, journalist, literary critic and former editor. 1995 – 2001 Berg worked for the journal 90tal, later renamed 00-tal. Between 2002 and 2004 she was editor of the literary journal Bonniers Litterära Magasin (commonly known as BLM) and she currently writes for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Berg is also a frequent contributor to various Swedish cultural journals, writing on a wide range of issues like photography, gender, prostitution etc.

Berg was among the founding members of the Stockholm Surrealist Group in 1986. During the late 1990s she emerged as one of the most prominent young poets in Sweden and has had several collections of poetry published by various branches of the Bonnier publishing house (the largest and most prestigious in Sweden). She made her debut in 1997, with the poetry collection Hos rådjur, and has, so far, written eight poetry books, including a much talked about trilogy on the theme of motherhood - Forsla fett (2002), Uppland (2005) and Loss (2007). Aase Berg made her debut as a prose writer with a short story in the collection Perversioner: 12 noveller om avvikelser, published on Vertigo, the publishing company of Carl-Michael Edenborg (another member of the Stockholm Surrealist Group). Since then, Berg has increasingly devoted herself to prose. Recent works include, the novels, Haggan (2019) and En uppblåst liten fittas memoarer (2021). The autobiographical book of essays about animals, Spöket (The Ghost), was published in the autumn 2022.

Several of Berg’s works have been translated into English (by Johannes Göransson). These titles include Hos rådjur (With Deer, 2009) and Forsla fett (Transfer Fat, 2012). Other titles by Berg, available in English, are Remainland: Selected Poems of Aase Berg (2005), Dark Matter (2013) and Hackers (2017). Some of her work has also been translated into German and Chinese.

Tears in Rain, depicting a stock dove (or stock pigeon) embellishes page 183 in the book Spöket (The Ghost). The image illustrates Berg’s story about how the author’s dog, Öbritt, comes across the half-decayed remains of a stock dove during a springtime walk in the countryside. The ensuing situation, in which Berg tries to remove the prey from the dog, illustrates the fine line separating domestic pets from their wild and untamed counterparts. The title of the work, Tears in Rain, relates to an excerpt from a monologue in Sir Ridley Scott’s (born 1937) legendary science fiction film Blade Runner (1982), quoted by Berg on page 184: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire on the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

The stock dove or stock pigeon (Columba oenas) is a species of bird in the family Columbidae, the doves and pigeons. It is widely distributed in the western Palearctic (part of the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth, stretching across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa) and was first formally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778) in 1758 (in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae, which is considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature).

Provenance

CFHILL, Stockholm, M. Müntzing, 9 December 2022 – 12 January 2023.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above).

Literature

Aase Berg, Spöket, 2022, illustrated (in black and white) full page, p. 183.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation