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Glimmande nymf


Glimmande Nymf! blixtrande öga! (Gleaming Nymph, flashing eye!), is one of the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's best-known and best-loved songs, from his 1790 collection, Fredman's Epistles, where it is No. 72. A night-piece, it depicts a Rococo muse in the Ulla Winblad mould, asleep in her bed in , complete with allusions to both classical and Nordic mythology.

The epistle is subtitled "Lemnad vid Cajsa Lisas Säng, sent om en afton" (Left by Cajsa Lisa's Bed, late one afternoon). Bellman's biographer, Paul Britten Austin, calls the song exquisitely delicate.

Carl Michael Bellman is the central figure in Swedish song, known for his 1790 Fredman's Epistles and his 1791 Fredman's Songs. He played the cittern, accompanying himself as he performed his songs at the royal court.

Jean Fredman is a fictional character and the supposed narrator in Bellman's epistles and songs, based on a real watchmaker of Bellman's . The epistles paint a picture of the demimonde life of the city during the eighteenth century, where strong drink and beautiful "nymphs" like Ulla Winblad create a rococo picture of life, blending classical allusion and pastoral description with harsh reality.

The music is in 2/4 time, and is marked Andante. There are three verses of 11 lines each, the final line being repeated da capo to make 12 lines in all. The rhyming pattern is AA-BB-CC-DD-FFF. The melody is an ariette from an opéra comique, Le peintre amoureux de son modèle by Egidio Duni, which in 1782 was translated into Swedish as Målaren kär i sin modell. It had the timbre "Maudit Amour, raison severe".


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