The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer
Published 2006 · 288 pages · 18,000 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Poetry
How hard is The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems to read?
The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems scores 43 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 35 out of 100
- Accessible vocabulary but the metaphoric connections between words create unusual semantic density.
- Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Concrete images open into metaphysical territory. The gap between surface and depth is the poem's subject.
- Information density: 72 out of 100
- Extreme density per line. Every word carries multiple meanings. Poetry demands slow, repeated reading.
- Narrative indirection: 48 out of 100
- Poems proceed by metaphoric leaps rather than narrative logic. Meaning arrives sideways.
- Symbolic density: 70 out of 100
- Every image is simultaneously literal and symbolic. The metaphor IS the method.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- No irony. Transtromer writes with visionary sincerity.
- Resolution withholding: 35 out of 100
- Poems resist closure. They open questions rather than answer them.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Individual poems are structurally clear. The collection is organized chronologically.
How The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems is regarded
The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems holds a literary regard score of 83 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.