Allwood, Martin S.

From Philosopedia.org

Allwood, Martin S. (13 April 1916 - 16 January 1999)

Allwood received his primary education in Sweden. From 1935 to 1939, he was a student at the university of Cambridge, England, where he received a double first degree (B.A) in literature and psychology. After the second world war, he studied at Columbia and later in Germany. His doctoral thesis was about the leisure time of the population in a bombed city (Darmstadt, Germany).

1939 he was in India - he had a continued interest in India for the rest of his life. Among other things, he translated several Indian poets to Swedish and wrote a book about India 1942.

During 1942 and 1943, he was the first person in Sweden to conduct a holistic sociological-anthropological investigation of a small community. 1943 he published his study under the title Medelby (Middle Village).

During the early 1940's, in his book Läsare bedömer litteratur (Readers Judge Literature), he was also the first person to introduce I. A. Richards’ ”new criticism” into literary studies in Sweden. During the same period, he was engaged in developing new methods for language teaching at the language school, Marston Hill, founded by his father, Charles Allwood, in Mullsjö, Sweden. He published the book Levande språkundervisning (Living Language Teaching), where he collected the educational expertise of the 1940's and introduced new methods which are still important for language teaching in Sweden.

In the 1950's, Allwood started a private educational academy in Mullsjö, with seminars on psychology, sociology and music. In conjunction with this, he conducted the first study of comics, Kalle Anka, Stålmannen och vi (Donald Duck, Superman and Me).

He was one of the first enthusiasts in Sweden for a united Europe. In the beginning of the 50's, he organized a European week every summer in Mullsjö. From the late 1950:s to the early 1970:s, he arranged the sociology program “Three Ways of Life” for American (USA) students. The program gave American students a chance to learn about and travel in Sweden and the Soviet Union through study visits and contacts with business and schools as well as with local and national administrative authorities.

Until the late 60's, he was a professor in the USA, while in the summer being responsible for English courses at the Anglo-American Center in Mullsjö, where Swedish and Scandinavian young people learned English. The summer courses continued until 1991.

In 1969 he found out that he had cancer. After some years of struggle, he was cured and decided to stay in Sweden. He writes about his experiences during his illness in his book Jag bar döden i min kropp (I Carried Death in My Body), which has been translated into 13 languages.

Allwood was also the founder of the Authors’ Society of Göteborg (Gothenburg) and one of the founders of the Authors’ Society of Sweden (1974).

A productive author, he wrote in Swedish and English (as well as minor publications in German and French) and has been translated into many other languages. In addition, he was himself a very productive translator. Mostly he translated Scandinavian poetry to English. Among his publications in this field can be found Modern Scandinavian Poetry 1900-1980, which was published 1982.

A selection of his extensive poetic contributions can be found in Selected Swedish poetry, in two parts, published 1982-1987.

In Sweden, the most complete overview of Allwood has been given by Helmer Lång in the book Four Swedish Europeans (1976).

(See the bibliography of Martin Allwood’s publications.

Allwood translated numerous Scandinavian works. His Marginal Man (1937) includes a humanistic poem, “Occidental Nightmare”:

My God my God I am my own God
My God I am my God
My own God my God
I am my own God
I am my own
Own God my God
I am my—God
I am my strange
I am my
Own God—
God!
I? God? Strange?
I. God. Strange.
Am I. Am I? Am I.
God—am I God?
God. Own. My own. Strange.
I am my own God?
My own God
Am I.

Asked about his views concerning humanism, Allwood responded to Warren Allen Smith:

I am a psychoanalytically oriented sociologist, and I take my starting point in the concept of freedom. As I conceive of freedom as a secular derivative of salvation, I am naturally suspicious of any concept of freedom limited by nature, human or physical. The freedom which can be achieved within the closed system of causality of any “nature” seems to me to be too predictable to be really worthy of the name of freedom. In science, we use the concept of nature mainly to afford a closed system of cause and effect, within which prediction is possible. This does not satisfy my observations regarding the actual freedom of human thought, action, and personality. This actual freedom is such that the future is “open” (to genuine new creation) rather than “closed,” as it would have to be under a system of perfect prediction, i.e., perfect knowledge of cause and effect in social and human nature.
A naturalistic humanism is, therefore, to my mind, a contradiction in terms. Naturalism can rest on the earlier 19th Century conception of science as having stable, much unchanging units. Copper is copper is copper . . . and copper cannot achieve freedom from its copper-nature. Therefore, we can predict the behavior of copper. Copper cannot have insight into the fact that it is copper. Human beings can have insight into the fact that they are human. Psychoanalysis is admirable because of its iron determinism, because of its scientifically “closed” system. But the end result of analysis is not slavery to nature but, rather, a profound insight into the nature of our nature. The truth makes human beings free in the sense of insight into the “human condition.” Perhaps I should add, unless this is already apparent, that I am a Protestant in the sense of a firm belief in free thought, “free love,” and freedom from infantile fixations to any authority or authority symbol. At the same time, I realize the possibility of Luciferian motives for the quest of freedom.