Alone in the dark nature: eco melancholia in Harry Martinson’s Aniara and its film adaptation

Epic poem Aniara was published in 1956 by Harry Martinson. Its 2018 film adaptation by Pella
Kågerman and Hugo Lilja contributed to a rediscovery of the original work and ignited further
interpretations. Aniara depicts the long ill-fated trip of the eponymous spaceship, which
supposedly should have carried thousands of people away from Earth during “a time of calm,
repose and quarantine”. A malfunction knocks Aniara off course and leaves the spacecraft
wander towards the limits of both nature’s empty space and humans’ experience. While the epic
poem, written in the tension-stricken time of Cold War, pointed at “toxic radiation” as reason for
the exile from Earth, the film version focuses on the consequences of climate change. Alone and
directionless in a hostile un-nature, humans lack ground. Ghostly images of the environment
return in the much alluring pictures broadcasted by Mima – the spaceship controlling machine
which offers consolation and an ephemeral nostalgia of lost unity.
The aim of this article is to further investigate the consequence of the broken bond between
humans and nature in Aniara and provide an ecocritical and posthumanist reading of
Martinson’s and Kågerman/Lilja’s works as a representation of mankind as a peculiar form of
lone exobiology adrift in the mute (techno)sphere.