How people perceive life and death changes over time and space. The question of a peoples’ comprehension about life and all that comes with it is significant in understanding a long gone civilization. The purpose of this essay is to investigate the different ways which people in Homers Odyssey die, and whether these were considered “good” or “bad” according to the values and rules of the society of that time. Furthermore, I will examine if there are more or less acceptable reasons to kill someone. Both overarching aims will be attained by studying the Odyssey and analyzing all that has to do with death, perception of justice, the gods, and fate, to the extent of which this is possible. The epic poem, being one of few surviving literary works of the 8th century B.C. and possibly the oldest preserved Greek and European literary work, is a rare glimpse into the minds of a 3000-year-old people. The Odyssey will be explored using an empirical approach with my own opinions and values as a framework in order to better understand the concept of death in the ancient Greek world as Homer echoes it. The main source being used in my analysis is undoubtedly the Odyssey itself, since this contains all of the deaths and all of the conceptions of death that I wanted to access. Apart from the Odyssey I have also looked at the Iliad, to be able to illustrate similarities and differences between the two epics.                       Robert Garlands’ book The greek way of death as well as Death in the greek world by Maria Serena Mirto have given me a solid foundation concerning death overall in the ancient greek world. Garland writes about death as a process and examines the current evidence surrounding it, while Mirto, a bit more personally, analyzes the different stages of death and how people reacted to them. More centered information on the subject I have collected from Jasper Griffins’ Homer on life and death and Eric A. Havelocks’ The greek concept of justice. Griffin explores how life and death is depicted in the Homeric epics, and more closely the significance of death and the power of the gods. Havelock analyzes in his book the works of mainly three ancient writers (Homer, Hesiod and Plato) and the influence these have had over time on the development of justice in the minds of the ancient greek people.                       I came to the conclusion that there was indeed more or less “good” and “bad” ways to die, just as there was more or less “accepted” reasons to kill a man according to other men and the gods respectively, depending on the situation. People die in many diverse ways in the epic, each of which gives something to the discussion concerning how people perceived life and death in the age of Homer.

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After the publication of T.S. Eliotʾs famous modernistic poem The Waste Land in 1922 it took about nine years until two Swedish literature theoreticians decided to translate it into Swedish. The translation was made for a publication in a modernistic journal, Spektrum, for which they both were co ̶ founders and editors. The two Swedes were Karin Boye, a famous modernistic poet, writer and literature critic, and Erik Mesterton, also a literature critic with a deep interest in English poetry generally and T.S. Eliot particularly. This essay aims to compare the translation of The Waste Land that Boye and Mesterton made during the winter of 1931 ̶ 1932, with Eliots original poem, with the ambition to determine what kind of translation Boye and Mestertonʾs work resulted in. Starting from Schleiermacher, modern translation theories are examined and finally the translation named Det öde landet from 1932 is analyzed from a model by Mats Malm from his 1996 book Minervas äpple. By using the distinctions of mimetic, analogue, organic and external forms in the area of the poem's metre and style, and the distinctions of metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation in the area of the poemʾs content, the essay examines what has been the translatorʾs priorities during the process of translation, how Boyeʾs modernistic style shines through in the translation and how Mestertonʾs knowledge about Eliotʾs style in poetry shows in the finished work. The analysis shows that the translation leans toward a mimetic form, and is to be considered a paraphrase when it comes to the content. This shows that Boye and Mesterton had an intention to reproduce both Eliotʾs meaning and poetic style to the swedish readers, but also that the translators are capable of being dynamic both when it comes to meaning and form.

This essay provides an attempt to reflect the notions of violence, right or law and fate in Benjamin’s Zur Kritik der Gewalt, in order to clarify his very dense historical-philosophical reflection on the constitutive relation between violence and law. In contrast to what is most often the case, this essay will not address the notion of divine violence in a direct sense, but mainly focus on Benjamin’s discussion on right and law. The complex of his historical reflection, his attempt to articulate what he calls the “historical function” not only of violence, but also of law, is crucially related to the notion of fate. First and foremost fate is what turns the suspicion of the perniciousness of this historical function into a certainty, actualizing its destruction as something obligatory in terms of divine violence, by deepening the analysis and revealing the fundamental relation between law and violence. By pointing out the function of violence within the sphere of law, Benjamin not only states that violence cannot be thought otherwise than in relation to this sphere, but also that the relation between law and violence has to be thought in terms of the “uncertainty of the legal threat”. The deepest meaning of both the “uncertainty” and “the legal threat” emerges from the “sphere of fate”, and by reflecting this notion this essay will try to outline the legal complex and the meaning of fate in terms of guilt, misfortune and judgement, and how it is constituted with reference to the notion of “bare life” – that is, the marked bearer of guilt. The complexity of the relation between violence and law shows itself in the circumstance that this “bearer” in terms of guilt also becomes the bearer of the relation itself, bearing the validity of law, or more precise, the being in force of law. This also conceptualizes law as a phenomenon of frontiers, in a double sense that will explain the meaning of guilt and fate in terms of infringement, but also the legal relation to violence understood as a line constituting an inside and an outside within the sphere of law itself. And this will also explain why the meaning of justification of violence – significantly related to fate and the phenomenon of this line – never can be understood ethically.

Fotografi är i dag mycket attraktivt och lockar mängder av folk från konstsamlare till beundrare i alla åldrar. Internationellt sett är i dag skandinaviskt fotografi högt eftertraktat och intresset ser inte ut att avta, tvärt om. Här, vid väg ände, precis invid Kottlasjön på Lidingö ligger ett gamalt vackert vattenverk. omgivet av speciell natur och ett stilla landskap. Huset har stått oanvänt sedan många år och väntar på nya vindar. Med sparsam renovering, och nödvändiga åtgärder kan detta utgöra grunden för en ny mötesplats och verkstad för samtida konstfotografi. / An old waterwork is beeing transformed to a place for photography workshops with focus on creative photography. As the light creates a tension in the photography, it will do the same here with openings, reflections and light slots. A play with the daylight. After thrifty renovations and necessary actions the waterwork will become a meetingplace for workshops and contemporary art photography.

Uppsatsen utforskar relationen mellan Karin Boyes Astarte och T.S. Eliots The Waste Land, särskilt med avseende på modernistisk tematik och med avstamp i tidigare forskning som kommenterat relationen mellan verken, främst Gunilla Domellöfs och Caroline Hauxs. Analysen omfattar den senares upptäckt att ”Det öde landskap som skrivs fram hos Eliot existerar dolt och outsagt i Astarte.” Verken jämförs med avseende på: Skildringen av den moderna staden; Krig, trauma, våld och utvecklingsskepticism; Den ofruktbara masskulturen; (Naturens, Guds och Kärlekens död); Verkens mytkomplex; Psykoanalytiska perspektiv på gemenskap, behov och begär. Uppsatsen innehåller även en sammanställning av likheter mellan episoderna som utspelar sig mellan Viola och Hill i Astarte och mellan maskinskriverskan och kontoristen i The Waste Land. Undersökningen bekräftar betydande beröringspunkter mellan verken vad gäller såväl tematik som de positioner författarna intar – det gäller utvecklingsskepticismen, masskulturen (där Astarte i högre utsträckning intresserar sig för handel och konsumtion), samt fruktbarhetsförlusten med avseende på Naturen, Gud och Kärleken. Myter har en betydelsefull roll i båda verken. I Astarte är Gudinnan/belätet Astarte i och för sig närvarande, men hon fyller inte sina ursprungliga funktioner. Undersökningen identifierar nya tolkningsmöjligheter gällande Astartes potentiella roll, kopplade till våld och skydd. På ett övergripande plan finns en korsställning mellan verken, där det som utgör The Waste Lands förgrund tenderar att blottas genom sprickor i ”Astartesamhällets” fasad, genom Boyes didaktiska exposéer, samt vid kritisk läsning. Den sammanlagda effekten av dessa aspekter är att Eliots ödeland – den levande döden – är mer av en tydlig referenspunkt än något dolt och outsagt i Astarte.