Glimmande nymf
| "Glimmande Nymf" | |
|---|---|
| Art song | |
First page of sheet music for the 1810 edition | |
| English | Glimmering Nymph |
| Written | 1771, revised 1790 |
| Text | poem by Carl Michael Bellman |
| Language | Swedish |
| Melody | from Le peintre amoureux de son modèle |
| Composed | 1757 |
| Published | 1790 in Fredman's Epistles |
| Scoring | voice and cittern |
Glimmande nymf (Glimmering Nymph), is a song by the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman from his 1790 collection, Fredman's Epistles, where it is No. 72. It is subtitled "Lemnad vid Cajsa Lisas Säng, sent om en afton" (Left by Cajsa Lisa's Bed, late one evening), and set to a melody by Egidio Duni. A night-piece, it depicts a Rococo muse in the Ulla Winblad mould, asleep in her bed in Stockholm, complete with allusions to both classical and Nordic mythology.
Bellman's biographer, Paul Britten Austin, calls the song exquisitely delicate. It is innocently worded but clearly erotic; the initial version culminated in an account of orgasm. The mood is conveyed with a description of a rainbow — after sunset, abandoning realism for poetic effect. The melody has been called "languorous and intense".