It is my great pleasure and honor to welcome you, in my capacity as President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, to our symposium on the topic “Punctuation: Past & Present.” You will concentrate for a day and a half here, at the Academy venue, on punctuation marks, and I cannot but congratulate the symposium organizers, Academy members and Professors Bo Andersson and Merja Kytö at Uppsala University, for this wonderful initiative. In short: punctuation marks might only prima facie, that is, superficially, belong to the trivia of the literary or linguistic Humanities of today. On closer inspection, sometimes a period, a semicolon or a comma is what it is it all about. Once you realize that, you are stuck. You can never escape from noticing these syntactic as well as typographical details. You tend to sympathize with Oscar Wilde who, according to a famous anecdote published on May 8, 1884, in The Daily Graphic: An Illustrated Evening Newspaper (New York), once explained that he had been immensely busy during his morning hours of work time. “I have spent my whole time over the proof sheets of my book of poems,” he said. Aha, replied one of his listeners, what was the result of that? Well, said the writer, it was very important, I took out a comma! “Is that all you did?” asked his astonished listener. Whereupon Wilde, according to The Daily Graphic reporter, “with a sweet smile, said, ‘By no means; on mature reflection I put back the comma.’” This story is sometimes reproduced with French novelist Gustave Flaubert instead of Oscar Wilde as the comma-obsessed writer, but its significance should certainly not be restricted to 19th-century aestheticism. A punctuation mark might in fact change the whole meaning of a poem. We have a beautiful example of such a crucial comma in a stanza by the Swedish Romantic writer Erik Johan Stagnelius (1793–1823). I am referring to Stagnelius’ poem “Endymion,” where a young shepherd is depicted sleeping in the moonlight. The goddess of the Moon steps down from heaven, fascinated and charmed by the beautiful boy. Finally, the poet exclaims, in the first edition of Stagnelius’ poetry (1826):

中文翻译：

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开幕座谈会

我非常高兴和荣幸地欢迎您以瑞典皇家文学、历史和古物学院院长的身份参加我们关于“标点符号：过去与现在”主题的研讨会。你们将在学院会场用一天半的时间专注于标点符号，我不得不祝贺研讨会的组织者、学院成员以及乌普萨拉大学的 Bo Andersson 和 Merja Kytö 教授的这一精彩举措。简而言之：标点符号可能只是表面上的，也就是说，从表面上看，对于当今文学或语言人文学科的琐事。仔细观察，有时句号、分号或逗号就是它的全部含义。一旦你意识到这一点，你就被困住了。您永远无法逃避注意这些语法和印刷细节。你倾向于同情奥斯卡·王尔德，根据 1884 年 5 月 8 日发表在《每日图形：插图晚报》（纽约）中的一则著名轶事，他曾解释说他在早上的工作时间非常忙. “我花了我所有的时间在我的诗集的校样上，”他说。啊哈，他的一位听众回答说，结果是什么？好吧，作者说，这很重要，我去掉了一个逗号！“这就是你所做的吗？” 问他惊讶的听众。因此，据《每日新闻》记者报道，王尔德“带着甜蜜的微笑说，‘绝不；经过深思熟虑，我把逗号放回原处。'”这个故事有时被法国小说家古斯塔夫福楼拜复制，而不是奥斯卡王尔德作为痴迷逗号的作家​​，但它的意义当然不应仅限于 19 世纪的唯美主义。标点符号实际上可能会改变一首诗的整个含义。我们在瑞典浪漫主义作家埃里克·约翰·斯塔格尼利厄斯 (Erik Johan Stagnelius，1793-1823 年) 的诗节中有这样一个关键逗号的美丽例子。我指的是 Stagnelius 的诗“Endymion”，其中描绘了一位年轻的牧羊人在月光下睡觉。月亮女神从天而降，被美丽的男孩迷住了。最后，这位诗人在斯塔涅利乌斯的第一版诗歌（1826 年）中感叹道：“描绘了一个年轻的牧羊人在月光下睡觉。月亮女神从天而降，被美丽的男孩迷住了。最后，这位诗人在斯塔涅利乌斯的第一版诗歌（1826 年）中感叹道：“描绘了一个年轻的牧羊人在月光下睡觉。月亮女神从天而降，被美丽的男孩迷住了。最后，这位诗人在斯塔涅利乌斯的第一版诗歌（1826 年）中感叹道：