This essay deals with the conflict between poetics and poetry in the works of Fenno-Swedish poet Gunnar Björling (1887-1960). The first two parts discuss the conflict in itself, while the third and last part of the essay discusses the movement or change through the authorship as a whole, which can be seen as leading from poetics to the poetry advocated by the first.  Björling advocates a poetry (and a general approach to life) not seeking to understand or explain reality, but meeting it in the most direct sense possible. The conflict consists of the fact that a poetics to its nature is in some sense theoretical and structured, the result of a process of thinking – which makes it inconsistent with the thesis of the very same poetics. The critique of reason which forms the basis of Björling’s poetics is in itself an example of the very same reason in practise. An important aspect of this idea of immediacy is the critique of language, which – drawn to its utmost – results in silence. Due to this, I split the conflict into two levels: the first one is the extreme, which understands the striving beyond language literally – and is highly parenthetic in the authorship; the second treats the idea of non-language and silence as in a more figurative or metaphorical sense, rather meaning an emancipation from reflective thought. This later level is the one of greater significance, being to some degree actual throughout the authorship.  Björling reaches the furthest in this strive in his late poetry, where the words to a higher degree speak with their physical presence than with their semantic meanings. In his early works the same philosophical and poetological ideas are highly present, but are not near being fulfilled until one or two decades later, reaching its peak in the very last books. The movement through the authorship is hence of a teleological nature, leading from the poetics expressed in a more reflective text prioritising the semantic aspects of language, to the text that is actually advocated by the poetics: a more immediate and concrete relation to being. By investigating the treatment of the word ”word” in Björling’s texts throughout the authorship, I show how this is intimately connected with the general style of writing. Björling reaches a greater acceptance of words as physical and part of reality, resulting in a sort of dissolution of the opposition between poetics and poetry – or, in a wider sense, between comprehensibility and incomprehensibility.

Kultur tillhör alltid en del av undervisning i moderna språk. Nationella faktakunskaper som ofta förekommer i mina läroböcker gör mig tveksam på om dessa fakta direkt kan bidra till framgångsrik kommunikation vid kulturmöten. Utifrån mina tvivel syftar mitt examensarbete till att ta reda på vilka åsikter om kultur gymnasielärare i moderna språk har och hur de genomför sin kulturundervisning. Min undersökning baseras på kvalitativa intervjuer med sex verksamma gymnasielärare i moderna språk. I resultatet av intervjuerna visar sig att kultur ofta står i bakgrunden och är mindre viktig än de fyra språkfärdigheterna. Utvecklingen av nationella faktakunskaper ses som det viktigaste undervisningsmålet och -innehållet. Kunskaper och färdigheter som direkt kan bidra till kommunikation ses som mindre viktiga. Kultur betraktas ofta som konfliktfritt. Val av undervisnings- och textspråk beror starkt på vilket steg eleverna läser.Till följd av globalisering och internationalisering ska kulturbegreppet förknippas med mångfald och kultur ska idag förstås som ett uttryck av inneboende spänningar och motsägelser. Trots att faktakunskaper är viktiga för att bygga upp de sociokulturella kunskaper som de infödda förvärvat från sin barndom, ska kunskaper och färdigheter som gynnar kommunikation samt kritisk förmåga lyftas fram. Ämnesplanen som styr lärares tolkningar om kultur ska problematisera kulturbegreppet och ge ett kulturbegrepp som bäst anpassas till dagens postmoderna samhälle.