from The Diary of William N. [3]

(continued)

25.12. 14 degrees Celsius. I ate some Alsatian sausage cold. A glass of madeira. The university swallows talents and digests them slowly and surely as the sundew which grabs the fly and use it for food, but I do not have to fight for a "position" at any university, for there has always been enough ground under my feet. The thanks one receives are mere crumbs for the sparrows, while the vultures lurk on the branch waiting for the moment you make a mistake: Thank you, thank you, friends and enemies! Now that it is dark it sounds to me as though Paris is humming. Plaisance used to be open countryside – there was even a large park and a castle, which the omnibus company demolished in order to build the depot, and now there are tenement buildings and narrow streets, and the residents are poor people. Before the tall building was built opposite to darken my dwelling, this street was better than the Rue Pernety, where I used to live.

26.12.1898 Between the first and second pages of this notebook I have inserted a note which reads: "À Madame Constance Cavé. Ce cahier doit être détruit après ma mort."

27.12.1898 No letters. Before Christmas Elise sent me the instrument I had asked for, but it was quite the wrong one, even though I carefully explained what it should look like, and drew a picture of it. It will have to be returned. Coughing badly, the codeine tablets do not help, my whole body hurts and I have no appetite. If I get the article finished, the black-gowned academics will attack it like flies on a carcase.

28.12.1898 Death is not discussed as much as love (which is also discussed on the street corner), even though it is the only certain thing in life. Write poetry about death! People love a woman/man, but, I ask, does anyone love death? Suicides I do not count, for they do their deed while their minds are unbalanced. As a physician I have seen death many times, but the face of a dead person is neither happy nor sad, but completely empty, as the death struggle is over. When I die my old enemies will be disappointed, because they will miss an important event in my life, one that with all their hearts they desired to witness.

29.12.1898 Human folly occasions an anger that warms like an eiderdown or a bottle of burgundy! Th. S. wrote to me about a dispute concerning a civil service appointment, which is interesting, even though it does not concern me at all: let Helsinki, Uppsala, Lund and all the universities of the world look after their affairs without me!

30.12.1898 7 degrees Celsius. I lie in bed under the coverlet (my coat is also being used) and am trying to write, but my fingers are numb. It is 4 pm. I did not eat, drank milk which I mixed with hot water and sugar.

31.12.1898 At midnight the year changes and I will be writing in 1899, but I will not stay up that late. In her letter Elise wished me a "Good New Year". How good will it be, I wonder?

Paris, 1. January, 1899 A person of romantic disposition would suppose that this day is a "clean sheet", as it is Sunday and the first day of the year. I have not the slightest tendency to romanticism, but I awoke pleased that I had slept better than I have for a long time, for the cough did not keep me awake. On opening the front door (I was taking the refuse out to the back yard), I received a surprise: propped against the wall was a paper-wrapped bouquet of anemones, lilac, poppies, expensive spring flowers that can only be bought at the finest flower shops in Paris, and I thought it was a mistake and the bouquet was intended for one of my neighbours, but no: in an envelope was a card with my name on it, Dr. William N. On the other hand, there was no sender's name, and I am most perplexed by this occurrence! After rummaging in the kitchen I found a large jam jar (it was not clean, but I washed it), and in it I put the bouquet of flowers, which I think is very beautiful, and it looks as though spring had come to my dark, cramped and dusty apartment. A truly remarkable event!

[Kristina Carlson, William N. päiväkirja, Otava 2011]

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Estonia gunman dead

Via RIA Novosti:

The attacker was identified as one Karen Drambyan, 57, a member of the United Leftist Party of Estonia, a group with strong links to the country’s Russian community.

London riots

Not really a subject for this blog, I suppose, though in the context of AB Breivik's sadistic and brutal campaign it may have some relevance even here. A LiveJournal poster has written what I think is so far the best and most informative reflection on the recent violence in London and other British cities.

from The Diary of William N. [2]

19.12.1898   In Finland I am not respected!  How would it have gone with me if I had remained in Helsinki? Poorly – the mail does not go to the hinterland properly, unlike in Europe –  the circles there are narrow, malicious, and even I respect but a few men like Th. S. who is loyal to me and F. Elfving, who is also a decent man. The Fries family are Swedish, but how they have messed up my life! At the dinners in Uppsala there was punch and chatter, yes, yes, but later the mood of the music changed (furioso), F. pater did not listen to my opinions, he contradicted me and cultivated relations behind my back in many directions, and so did F. filius. Lord knows  what will become of science if the scientists comport themselves like dancing masters!  I tried to promote Zetterstedt’s appointment to the Upsala post, but it turned out otherwise, for the post went to  T. Fries filius. Professor Andersson of Stockholm had the nerve to claim that I had merely succeeded in harming Z.’s position, thank you very much!

20.12.1898   Constance brought "Christmas fare", as she he is leaving tomorrow with her "old fellow" for the Auvergne. (I thought the man was a former officer, but he is really a common soldier.)  I received food that keeps such as sausages and brawn and English-style Christmas cake  in which there were plums, apricots, cherries and raisins, and the cake is soaked in brandy. I snorted at the word “Christmas”, for C. knows the manner in which I "celebrate" it, but she also insisted on cleaning, which led to an altercation between us, and C. shed some tears when she went home. But she is a good woman.

21.12.1898  Today I sat in the hospital (I had promised Elisa that I would see the doctor), on a bench with a mother who held a crying baby in her arms, an old, loud-voiced deaf woman, a labourer whose leg was wrapped in bloody rags, etc.  The dreary corridor echoed with footsteps when the nurses and doctors walked by, and I at last I made up my mind to get to my feet and shout that I was a doctor too, and should therefore be treated with respect, did I have to bow and scrape in order even to make a doctor halt in his tracks, I was not trying to jump the queue ahead of the concierge-woman or the tinsmith, but had been waiting for two hours, so perhaps at last it was my turn. A third hour began, and I could not endure to wait any longer, but went home. Let Dr. S. send me instructions for treatment by letter as before. I am too thin, I know it is true,  I am six feet tall and weigh only 136 pounds, but my frame has the strength of spirit and intellect.

24.12.1898   I ate two slices of Christmas cake and drank two small glasses of Madeira. (A.B brought the Madeira yesterday.)  I have found  the pharmacist R's  old letter in which he writes: "Vous serez toujours pour moi un homme d'une veritable science, mais d'un caractère quelquefois difficile. " Friends and enemies in the same basket! R.  helped me to manage my affairs in Paris during the time when I held the post at Helsinki, but later he got tangled in a troublesome affair which had its origins in the fact that I did not inform Descaine of my travel to Helsinki, although he got me the money with which to complete the Synopsis (Part Two), and therefore D. began to threaten to reclaim the money by legal means, which information was passed to me by R. That wretched sum of money, a mere handout, which originally seemed almost an insult, but the real insult was the fact that I was suspected of laziness or incompetence or even of dishonesty! I immediately sent half of the sum to Tulasne, and through him a letter to  D.  My relations with many people were at once broken off, but not even in the scientific sense can I associate with people who do not trust me and do not value my work. Since in the room it is only 15 degrees Celsius, I shall drink one more glass of Madeira, this is my Christmas Eve.

[Kristina Carlson, William N. päiväkirja, Otava 2011]

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

(to be continued)

2083

From 2083, by Anders Behring Breivik:

...we have to agree on a consensus for creating a modern, “un-tainted”, cultural conservative, patriotic youth movement which will prevent our youths from joining NS or WN movements. This movement should be somewhat like the equivalent of Russias Nashi movement (Putins youth movement - 120,000 members aged between 17 and 25). They are anti fascist/anti Nazi, but still patriotic conservatives.

(p. 652)

Many state leaders around the world are puzzled over how little resistance the European elites are getting in their attempts to completely demographically reshape Europe.

Even the Russian president, Vladimir Putin knows exactly what is going on as he has publicly stated in the past:

“Western Europe is heading in a direction where they are going to become colonies of their former colonies."

(p. 732)

Q: Name one living person you would like to meet?

A: The Pope or Vladimir Putin. Putin seems like a fair and resolute leader worthy of respect. I’m unsure at this point whether he has the potential to be our best friend or our worst enemy though. He’s very hard to psychoanalyze. I wouldn’t want to be his enemy, that’s for sure. Obviously, he has to openly condemn us at this point which is  understandable.


(p. 1407)

Poem

by Tommi Parkko

In a city built inside a pot there is no dancing,
rise from pitch and molten lead, be a straight-backed saint.
The black steps rustle down to the shore, the ribs of the houses
melt into the river.

Old age is a habit rooted in the body, the icons bear the pure
colours of God. The black and the grey are from man, from bone.
The other colours are from flowers, shield bugs and stones
The sky is perforated by urine, the snow by Tycho Brahe’s toenail.
In a city built inside a pot there is no dancing,
do not talk to me of Mary or of virgins. Your unicorn
is the beluga whale and the relics
are tsarist bonds and Kafka. You must threaten
the relics with fire and spike to have your will.

In the synagogue's attic are the remains of a creature, and pigeons,
the city’s dream beneath the tourist map.
You will soon call the castle home, it is the backbone of everything.

translated from Finnish by David McDuff


[From Pelikaani, Savukeidas, Turku, 2011]

Dershowitz in protest at ambassador's remarks

Alan Dershowitz has spoken out in protest against remarks made in a recent interview by Norway's ambassador to Israel that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway. At the conclusion of his article, Dershowitz writes:

Nothing good ever comes from terrorism, so don’t expect the Norwegians to learn any lessons from its own victimization. As the ambassador made clear in his benighted interview, “those of us who believe [the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel] will not change their minds because of the attack in Oslo.” In other words, they will persist in their bigoted view that Israel is the cause of the terrorism directed at it, and that if only Israel were to end the occupation (as it offered to do in 2000-2001 and again in 2007), the terrorism will end. Even Hamas, which Norway supports in many ways, has made clear that it will not end its terrorism as long as Israel continues to exist. Hamas believes that Israel’s very existence is the cause of the terrorism against it. That sounds a lot like the ranting of the man who engaged in the act of terrorism against Norway.

The time is long overdue for Norwegians to do some deep soul searching about their sordid history of complicity with all forms of bigotry ranging from the anti-Semitic Nazis to the anti-Semitic Hamas. There seems to be a common thread.

Update (August 5): The Jerusalem Post has published an op-ed piece by Norway's deputy foreign minister in which he says the following:

The ambassador was incorrectly quoted by Ma’ariv. He did not compare the motivation behind different terrorist attacks; he simply tried to answer a question about whether the terrorist attacks in Norway would change perceptions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He stated that many Norwegians see the conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territory in the context of the occupation and religious extremism, and that this view would probably not change after the events in Oslo and on Utoeya.

from The Diary of William N. [1]

by Kristina Carlson

26.11.1898  Solitude is not dispiriting or sad, but it is sometimes boring, and I conclude that this is due to the company in which I am alone.

27.11.1898  Today a pharmacist, D. (there have been many pharmacists in the circle of my acquaintances!), invited me to dinner at his home on Sunday.  I went with some reluctance, as the D.’s  live in a street off the Avenue de Messina where I had to travel by omnibus, and what was more,  Dr. D. did not belong to the same botanically cultured group as, for example, the pharmacist Dr. R., who at one time did much to help me (my relations with him have broken) – Dr. D. is just an ordinary, successful, wealthy pill-pusher. I accepted the invitation none the less, because he assured me that there would be no other guests apart from myself, and that his family had an excellent cook. The dinner was indeed first-rate: Potage velouté aux champignons, Filets de poisson en soufflé, Bifteck sauté béarnaise, Pommes normande en belle vue, vegetables, cheeses, and so on, and good wines. When we rose from the dinner table I had to pay for my meal with  some culture! The children’s nanny and Madame D. led into the drawing-room two little girls with curly hair adorned with bow-ribbons, whom they planted in front of the grand piano to play duets, and after the first piece I applauded, but when they began to play a third I began to fret and wondered when it was going to be the little girls’ bedtime, which fortunately arrived at the end of the fourth. I do not know what error led the D.’s to imagine that I was a lover of music, but luckily I managed to catch the omnibus.

28.11.1898  People who live in the flatness of the everyday do not think about their own condition, they are well-to-do and satisfied, for they have delicious dishes and good wines on their tables, they have shiny carriages and sleek horses, servants who bow to them, and they live without care, for it never even occurs to them that everything could be different – instead, their happiness is ensured by at one-dimensional view of the world. Perhaps they browse through newspapers and novels, attend the theatre or concerts and look at works of art, but this dilettantism has a uniform surface, and their minds are not touched by art. They have a certainty about the essence of the world that is based on an assumption, one that they do not call into question by looking through a microscope or telescope. They are pitiful, but they are "happy", so what is there in them to pity? I thought  that even on a flat surface a crack or roughness would appear, but with these self-satisfied people that does not happen. While I do not begrudge them their wealth and their self-satisfaction,  I would never dream of exchanging my narrow room for the cardboard theatre of their world.  

30.11.1898   I too have received awards! The French Academy’s Prix ​​Desmazières, an honorary doctorate, honorary membership of the Fauna & Flora, what else, by giving those awards they salved their bad consciences, but did I receive assistance when it was most needed, for the writing and printing of the Synopsis, for example? Had I jumped off the bridge in 1857 my great work would have remained unpublished. My only support was  Dr. J. B. Mougenot, who lived in the Vosges, and though I have never wanted to be financially dependent on anyone, I agreed to accept money from him, as it was a loan and not a gift, and a loan that I paid back conscientiously. Mougenot, said that precisely because of all the difficulties the Synopsis would become dear to me, and in that he was right, though my joy in completing the work did not last long, for the second part was still waiting to be written and published, a process that took many more years. I did not take seriously Mougenot’s instructions about the life of society, for he exhorted me to be polite and conciliatory in my behaviour, and said  in his letter that "Truth and the conviction to defend the right opinion give one strength, but one must strike with caution." How does one "strike with caution"? With the butt of an axe? I was sorry when M. passed away a few weeks later, after I had taken up my post in Helsinki in the autumn of 1858.

1. 12.1898  Awards, awards, indeed! Perhaps they will even put up a gravestone for me,  though at Helsinki University they ridiculed my clothes (I did not dress according to their idiotic dress code , not even at meetings of the Senate), and my meagre sandwich lunches, because even my students ate better than their professor, and it was told as an amusing story how I hammered and chiselled the dry pieces of bread, when hunger overtook me  and the students on a specimen-gathering trip and nothing else edible could be found. at the peasant cottage. One of the students broke a tooth, but when the pieces of bread had been soaked in spring water for a little while, they were fit to eat.  In their heart of hearts the university people had no respect for me, of course I know that, that is precisely why I was not given von Nordman’s apartment, because among them there were still those with whom I had quarrelled as a younger man, when in Fauna & Flora I  opposed von Nordman’s plan to send a biological expedition to the White Sea, yet it was  my duty as the Society’s vice-chairman to oppose it, because the White Sea was not part of the region we studied, and the expedition was against the Society’s rules.  Nordman and his assistants would have  liked the Society’s  2000 roubles for himself! When Nordman resigned from the Society he was followed by Mannerheim, Nordenskiold, Ilmoni, Bonsdorff, Mäklin and Wright, but was that my fault, or was it the fault of the Society’s rules?

2.12.1898   In the mid-1860s Admiral Jones, who lived in Dublin, sent me 500 francs when he heard that I had resigned my professorship, but later I never heard anything more from him. The German F. Arnold sent me 100 francs, but I returned that money and wrote "timeo Danaos”, because Arnold is a Schwendenerist, and my opinion is not for sale. Monsieur M. sent me some lichen specimens wrapped in hundred franc notes! I suppose he was quietly trying to help, but I returned the money and later only accepted a fee, which I had earned by my study of the specimens.

3.12.1898   I took a long walk, though the weather was bad, it was cold and windy and the drizzle poured from the sky, but as I walked my brain also remained in motion  (the peripatetic school) – in my apartment I can only move an inch or two  at a time, as there are books and papers all over the floor.  I must outline the contents of an article, there is not enough light for microscope work, and my eyesight is not what it was. Constance has not visited.

4.12.1898   The next time the year changes, we shall be on the threshold of a new century, and a hundred years after that there will be a new millennium, too.  I shall sink into history, and no one will remember me. Elise maintains that the “good” people will be remembered, because their memory will be transferred from friends and relatives to subsequent generations, but I am not a “good” person! If friends (?) and enemies are to be believed, I am:  sharp-tongued, cantankerous, malicious, quick-tempered, unforgiving, rancorous, suspicious, jealous, bitter, pig-headed, egocentric, ill-bred, and stingy. Among other things.

5.12.1898  Plain talking is not valued in academic  "social circles", and rebuttals must be wrapped in cotton wool, so as not to "offend" anyone. But is the cause of science advanced in this way?  Honesty has always been my guiding principle. But it is not enough – for everything to go smoothly one must please, no matter how insignificant one’s work! Even  in ancient times one could  succeed by means of  eloquence, although one’s other achievements were not particularly impressive.

8.12.1898   Perhaps I am not a nice person, perhaps no one likes me – let alone loves me – so I can hardly expect even pity as my lot.

10.12. 1898   A.B. came to visit, even though in a letter I had forbidden him to, as except for  Constance I do not want to let anyone into my apartment,  and my friends know that, but A.B. was stubborn, and rang my doorbell despite my prohibition, which made me angry, because I was dressed in a morning coat and cardigan, with woollen socks on my feet, and was not prepared to receive a visit. A.B. did not, however, turn away from the door, but came inside, because I did not think I could stop him by force. He brought me meat pasties and egg pasties, two cakes coated in pink sugar, a bottle of burgundy and a newspaper, but my wrath did not abate until he handed me a surprise, which was a reproduction of  Georges Seurat’s painting "La Grand Jatte"!  After he left, I studied the picture closely, and I am just as thrilled as when I saw the original work, though the copy fails to do it full justice. I like Seurat’s "scientific" way of painting, for he is not content with an obvious or flat surface like the painters of the old school who try to carefully imitate the reality that is visible to the eye. Instead,  S. disperses and reassembles, and in this process I see a confluence with microscope work, when the gaze is directed on even the smallest elements, and the brain traces their  significance and completeness. A. B. also talked about the other "Impressionists", whose paintings he believes I ought to see, but perhaps this one alone will suffice. Once I had moved the other things away, I leaned the picture against the edge of the stove.

11.12.1898   Sunday. On Rue Didot there was a modest funeral. When I stopped to raise my hat,  Madame L. hurried up to me, whispering in a loud voice that "he ought not to be buried in consecrated ground, because he took his own life," and it was apparently the same coal merchant whom I saw in the summer. In my opinion he need not have troubled to take his own life, as he would soon have died from high blood pressure and heart failure in any case. I didn’t jump into the Seine, and I am already at an age where I know that  Nature takes care of death in due time, so there is no point in hurrying.

12.12.1898   At night it was cold, and I felt so chilled that I shivered. I got up in the dark to fetch a coat to put on top of my quilt. In the morning the outside thermometer read -3, and when I went out to buy milk and bread I saw that  the water flowing from the drainpipes had frozen in the street, which the little boys thought was fun, because they could “skate". The cold and darkness prevented me from working at the microscope. Of the things that  A. B. had brought me I still had 1 egg pasty, 1 cake, and ¼ bottle of wine. After I had eaten, at 4 pm I went to bed.

16.12.1898   I shiver and have no appetite, I suffer from shortness of breath and pains in my joints, my stomach is bad and I am unable to work, but I will endure, for I know that I have done the right thing, I have not curried favour with anyone, I have not sold myself, I live like a poor artist, even though I am a scientist, and posterity will not remember me though I have sacrificed my whole life to science. I suppose art is never "wrong" as science can be, but is that any consolation to  the artists whose work is not valued and not purchased? (G. Seurat  is said to have been a wealthy man, but he had a very short life.)


(to be continued)


[William N. päiväkirja, Otava, 2011]

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Gazeta.ru: Oslo/Belarus connection

According to Gazeta.ru, Belarusian oppositionists claim that Anders Behring Breivik has connections with Belarus which went far beyond his ostensible interest in Viking graves and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (he visited the country as a tourist in 2005). Party of Patriots leader Mikhail Reshetnikov is quoted as saying that that earlier in 2011 Breivik may have received paramilitary training from former members of the Belarusian KGB. See also this link.

Seven Dresses for Visibility

by Pia Tafdrup

I am sewing a dress that can be worn
proudly by one who is born with
an expectant spark in the heart’s vessels,
it will perfectly fit large and small,
is spun strong by the bow of the rain
it can be enjoyed a whole life long,
if the cloth is looked after well.

I am sewing a dress that can be worn
silently by new victims of fear,
it can fit large and small,
does not hide vulnerability
as droves of birds are hunted
out of the tree's dense crown,
the fabric flutters in the wind.

I am sewing a dress that can be worn
lightly by new victims of hate,
it is coloured red by blood
and has thunder-black borders,
it can fit large and small,
those who least of all will think
that one should change before the night.

I am sewing a dress that can be worn
by the victims of a cold cynicism
it can fit large and small,
its crazy fabric is made
of fire no downpour will quench,
it will be a reminder that the earth
may open up at any time at all.

I am sewing a dress that can cover
dried blood on the victims of death,
it can hide large and small,
it is shaped by the deep furrows
of tears across the cheek,
the cloth matches the walls of the dark,
the peace in each grave on the planet.

I am sewing a dress that can be worn
in a misty haze of sorrow’s
victims, designed for relatives
and friends of the deceased,
it can fit large and small,
anger’s first light is visible
between lead-grey threads of pain.

I am sewing the dress that can be worn
securely by one who knows hope,
woven in are the laughter of friends,
quiet tears of joy, the desire
to wake up in spite
of life the disaster took
– it reflects the rays of the sun.


SYV KJOLER FOR SYNLIGHEDEN

Jeg syr en kjole, som kan bæres
stolt af den, der fødes med
forventningsgnist i hjertets kar,
den passer fuldendt stor og lille,
spindes stærkt af regnens bue,
den kan nydes hele livet,
hvis der værnes godt om klædet.

Jeg syr en kjole, som kan bæres
tyst af frygtens nye offer,
den kan passe stor og lille,
skjuler ikke sårbarhed,
som flokkevis af fugle jages
ud af træets tætte krone,
flagrer stoffet op i vinden.

Jeg syr en kjole, som kan bæres
let af hadets nye offer,
den er farvet rød af blodet
og har tordensorte kanter,
den kan passe stor og lille,
den, der mindst af alt vil tro,
der skulle skiftes tøj før natten.

Jeg syr en kjole, som kan bæres
af en kold kynismes offer,
den kan passe stor og lille,
kjolens vanvidsstof er gjort
af ild, som ingen skylregn slukker,
den skal minde om, at jorden
når som helst kan åbne sig.

Jeg syr en kjole, som kan dække
størknet blod på dødens offer,
den kan skjule stor og lille,
den er formet efter grådens
dybe furer over kinden,
klædet matcher mørkets vægge,
freden i hver grav på kloden.

Jeg syr en kjole, som kan bæres
i en tågedøs af sorgens
offer, viet til en slægtning
og til venner af den døde,
den kan passe stor og lille,
vredens første lys er synligt
mellem blygrå smertetråde.

Jeg syr på kjolen, som kan bæres
trygt af den, der kender håbet,
vævet ind er venners latter,
stille glædestårer, lysten
til at vågne op på trods
af liv, som katastrofen tog
– den reflekterer solens stråler.


translated from Danish by David McDuff

Utøya poem

Pia Tafdrup has written a poem about the Utøya shootings - my translation can be read at World Literature Today.

The Danish text of the poem is on this page of Politiken's e-edition (left-hand page, right-hand column, click to enlarge).

A Poem for Norway at the London Times (paywall).

From "Landscape"

by Lassi Nummi (1949)


A line. From the left, slowly rising, forming small curlicues, levelling off, rising again until it folds and falls gently arching into invisibility.
Below the line darkness, restlessly stirring, swelling
Another line, vertical and motionless: a blade of grass.

The brightness is not uniform. There are dark patches in it. A slight gleam, a thin, meagre shimmer covers everything. The clouds. The sky.
The forest’s edge, the forest. The darkness splits, disperses, decreases . . earth, a breath of wind, bending grasses. Approaching, approaching: the vertical line, the grass-blade. The wind reaches it.
It moves.

In front of me is a strange, many-branched object. It rises from the surface thick and black for a while, then branches out. In three parts it continues its journey to the heights, letting a narrow branch diverge to the side now and then; slowly becomes thinner and eventually breaks into thousands of thin black segments; and finally bursts into bright bundles of fresh and delicate round, greenish plates.

Between all this there is labyrinthine room in plenty for the light and semi-twilight. A grey shimmer slowly oozes through the branches and penetrates everywhere; it is reflected faintly from the greenness, revolves around the black tissue, falls quivering along the ever thicker branches, momentarily brightening, gushes simultaneously from three directions onto the large stem; floods, growing dimmer again, slowly down it.

At intervals also a light mist, pressing deep into the labyrinth, turns the greenness soft; soft and deep.

A breath of wind: motionless the deep green cluster awaits its arrival. Unexpectedly it encounters the first one – a trace – now another flickers, a fifth, dozens .. a fluttering passes through everything, decreases slightly, quickens: now the thinnest black tissue joins in, the movement passes downwards, more violently: a sudden shiver arrives startlingly as far as the vicinity of the tri-forked branch.

It becomes quiet. The movement decreases in the middle, continues for a while further out, for a moment longer at the top, grows fainter. It is all over, all the delicate green plates hang motionless, gather into one . . parts disappear. In front of me is a single, heavy green lump from whose centre a black streak runs down to the ground.

A tree, its leaves and trunk.

*

The trees rise up out of emptiness.
Grass grows all around. Groups of trees spring up from it, the land’s surface undulates, rising and falling. Further away the forest’s dark green stripe surrounds the landscape.

I am walking in a foreign land. I walk slowly; the dark green of the trees glides slowly past. The trees stand out in sharp lines from the surface of the grey sky. They are completely motionless. The grass and the earth are motionless. Everywhere there are hard, unmoving surfaces, I cannot see anything else. Trees, land, forest. Sky.

It is strange to walk like this, in the emptiness, in the midst of surfaces. One cannot know what is concealed behind them. I stop. In front of me is a group of trees . . an uneven dark green wall that is supported by cold, black struts. I want to see behind it, I go round it, but on every side it is the same.

Everything is flat, I cannot see anything behind. I cannot see anything inside. The sharp outlines intersect painfully, the flat, grey plate covers everything, it is oppressively low. In the midst of emptiness . . one cannot touch anything. I close my eyes, I walk.


A smooth, green surface is in front of me, the grass. On it there is a grey gleam, nothing breaks its membrane.

Movement.

Something moves . . a blade of grass, I bend down to see it better. Next to it I see another blade, a third and yet another. I get down on my knees to see them better.

The grassy area is not flat. The ground is not flat. Next to the grassy area there are blades of grass and also leaves and various small plants and stones and soil and some flower, ants run about in between, and other small creatures, a leaf.

A leaf.

It must have fallen from a tree.

I lift my gaze; in front of me is a green wall, a tree. From it one leaf stands out, another, dozens . . it does not move and yet it seems to be pushing them in every direction, it is not a wall, from it all kinds of small objects protrude on every side, and in between, on the inside only an empty space remains . . I see inside it! I see behind it.

Nothing moves and yet everything is in quiet motion, on every side all kinds of small objects protrude, grass, forest, sky, everything quivers. I try to see all the grass-blades . . there are too many of them and more and more of them and ants are running about between them. And one cannot see all the tree’s leaves, there are painfully too many of them, and behind the tree there are other blades of grass and other ants are running about between them, and they cannot be seen either, and in the new tree there are too many leaves and behind it more grass . . . trees and grasslands so many that one cannot see or count them, in between soil and moss in countless quantities . . and somewhere at last a road where the sun shines, the sand-grains glitter and they are in front and behind, side by side and one on top of one another more and more, and no one can count their number.

For a while I do not raise my head; I have covered my face with my hands.

Maisema (1949)

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

...and in the context of the North Caucasus

«Брейвики» придут на Кавказ?

http://www.rosbalt.ru/kavkaz/2011/07/27/873430.html

Breivik as author

From IslamRF.ru:

Всякий, кто когда-нибудь хоть немного занимался тем, что называют наукой, например, писал (а не скачивал) добротный реферат, понимает – создать подобное без определённой подготовки или помощи «компетентных друзей» невозможно. Есть основания сделать более радикальное предположение – манифест Брейвика писал не он.

Скорее всего, данную книгу, несущую лёгкий «закос» под любительство, а на самом деле сбитую весьма профессионально, делал хорошо подготовленный коллектив. Возможно, Брейвик её читал, возможно, какие-то фрагменты вставлял сам – но слишком многое сказано не им.

Но от его имени.

От имени массового убийцы и террориста, не дрожащей рукой расстрелявшего десятки ни в чём не повинных молодых людей, от имени психопата-нациста, ещё и похваляющегося своим поступком. 

http://islamrf.ru/news/politics/analytics/17008/

Oslo bomb blast and Utøya shooting - 3

Breivik has chosen Geir Lippestad, a member of Norway's Labour Party, as his defence lawyer.

...han har snakket en del om det han opplever som motiv. Det jeg generelt kan si, er at han ønsket å ramme samfunnet, samfunnsoppbyggingen og den måten vårt samfunn styres på, sier Lippestad. (Aftenposten)

Manfred Gerstenfeld on Norway carnage and Israel (YnetNews)

The politisk.no report on Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre's visit to the AUF summer camp, dated July 21.

Following Breivik's claims of links with Britain's EDL, there are also reports from St Petersburg that several Internet groups in the Russian Federation have been closed down after they published large volumes of comments in support of the killer.

The court hearing will take place behind closed doors, with all media banned.

Min venn Anders, by Peter Svaar.

Oslo bomb blast and Utøya shooting - 2

At a Norway police press conference on July 23 national police chief Sveinung Sponheim said that Breivik has made Internet postings which "suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views, but if that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen".  During the conference the term "Christian fundamentalist" was used.

If the Oslo blast was caused by a vehicle bomb, it could not have been assembled in a private apartment, but must have been prepared elsewhere, either in the city or outside it. Vehicle bombs are widely used for terrorism not only in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East but also in the North Caucasus, which leads one to speculate that as there are several thousand Chechen and Ingush radicals living in Norway, there can be no shortage of experts in the field, and the individuals or group who organized the July 22 bombing must have got their expertise from somewhere. However, such speculation is probably misguided, at least at this stage.

Document.no has posted a list of all the comments Breivik has left on its site. There is a Google-ish English translation here.

A second shooter may still be at large.

The death toll continues to mount.

Berlingske reports that Breivik gave himself up voluntarily to Norwegian police.

Oslo bomb blast and Utøya shooting

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14252515

There has been a mass shooting at the AUF (Norwegian Labour Party youth section) summer camp on the lake island of Utøya near Oslo. A man dressed as a policeman who arrived by boat was reported to be firing an automatic weapon. A large force of anti-terror police was said to be on the way to the site of the shooting. Sky News reports that ambulances were unable to reach the island, as shooting was still going on. There are some 560 teenagers participating in the camp. Some tried to escape the island by swimming in the very cold waters of the lake. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was due to speak at an event on the island either today or tomorrow.Latest reports speak of panic situation and many shot and killed. Sky reports that the shooter has now been apprehended, and interrogation will follow.

There are echoes of Beslan, Mumbai, and London. But the motive for the attacks remains unclear.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has said that "Norway finds itself in a very serious situation." A crisis meeting of ministers has been called. Is it a 9/11 moment?

There are unconfirmed reports (NRK, AP) of over 20 bodies on Utøya.

Some reports indicate that the Utøya gunman is a male of Nordic appearance - but the significance of this is unclear. It will be recalled, for example, that Alexander Tikhomirov (Said Buryatsky), killed in 2010, was an ethnic Russian convert to Islam who recruited and trained terrorists in Russia's North Caucasus.

The official Utøya death toll has now risen to at least 80, and the events appear to constitute a large-scale massacre.

The man being held by Norwegian police on suspicion of carrying out the shootings is 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, a member of an extreme right-wing organization, Aftenposten reports. English-language link here.

A representative of Norway's Police Security Service (PST) has said that a violent action of this kind by right-wing extremists has long been feared, noting that there are links between Norwegian extremists and groups elsewhere in Europe, including Russia.

In the comments at Harry's Place, Dorthea has posted a quick translation of an article from Verdens Gang:

A childhood friend of Breivik tells VG Nett that Breivik became right-wing in his late 20’s, and posted a series of controversial opinions on Facebook. His profile was deactivated after a while.

Anders Behring Breivik marks himself in online debate forums as well read, and one with strong opinions about Norwegian politics. He promotes a very conservative opinions, which he himself claims to be nationalistic. He also expresses himself strongly opposed to multiculturalism – that cultural differences can live together in a community.


Breivik once had many posts on the site Document.no, an Islam-critical site that publishes news and commentary.


In one of the posts he states that politics today no longer revolves around socialism against capitalism, but that the fight is between nationalism and internationalism. He expressed clear support for the nationalist mindset.


Anders Breivik Behring has also commented on the Swedish news articles, where he makes it clear that he believes the media have failed by not being “enough” Islam-critical.


Six days ago he released his first and only message on the social networking site Twitter, where he laid out a famous quote by British philosopher John Stuart Mill. “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 WHO garden only interests.”


On Facebook Breivik stated that he is the director of his own company Geofarm. Breivik established firm GeoFarm in 2009, and stated that the company should engage in the cultivation of vegetables, roots and tubers. The company in this industry you can get access to large amounts of fertilizer. He claims he has an education in finance and religion, but does not disclose what universities he should have studied at. The only school he gives are Oslo Handel – listed as his high school.


The 32-year-old is among other things registered as a member of Oslo gun club and the Masonic Lodge. Among other interests he expresses his admiration for Winston Churcill, classical music and Max Manus (Norwegian movie about WW2).


The 32-year-old man has been active in video games and has been involved in the online game World of Warcraft. In connection with this game, he posted a picture of a gun.

Poems from The Pelican

by Tommi Parkko

"So long as a man rides his hobby-horse peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?"

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy


i

It was that time, the bear was lowered from the mouth of heaven,
a yellow helmet, on it a red cross and a bird,
the ropes passed from the groin to the shoulders
from the tops of the trees deep into the stomach.

You were by the side of the highway, the land opened up before you
its shipwrecked tale:
asphalt and grass, a stone's helplessness, a ploughed acidic field.

The stone was newborn, and the fontanel,
the voice bounced on the bones of the skull, the mill ground
salt, in the grains of the wheat an abyss, an abyss
for disputes and thundering.

On the road that led to the edge the elks and the birds
confronted one another,
you saw it all and it was good,
stone and flesh intertwined like milk round coffee,
you can isolate the limit! Your axis round everything,
the stars, the child's skin smelt fresh.

ii

You have not been given your voice, you
and three others.
You were too late, the alarm clock stopped, the train left,
you read the book by chance, the round form,
the sounds had already been assigned.
Not good enough for you the noise,
the whir of the cypress or the swishings of the whale.

You have not received a voice
from anyone, no rattle
of tongue or creature
though you asked and asked.

Your friends took the boom of the thunder,
the tinkling of the waterfall and the cry of the pelican.

you listen your ears
hopeful, starry bright,
there is nothing yet:
do not turn your back on a world
that does not give you your voice.


iii

The police band accompanies two thousand
dachshunds into town, coffee pots drift on the tide
noses outstretched.
My illness is not a medicine, but one must
dive into the river all the same.

I wait for the darkness that on my eyelids is like a paper margin,
the air’s victory over the land,
a rainbow sucks the water of the river
to rain it down elsewhere. The word is mist
and pouring rain in the library.
I wear out the wooden walls and the newspapers with my open eyes.
It is all from the sky, the frogs,
the slow steps of the ice to the airplane and
the programming that is called maturity.



[From Pelikaani, Savukeidas, Turku, 2011]

Translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Picnic, a Prelude

by Pia Tafdrup

If my grandmother had been an architect,
which as a young bricklayer’s apprentice she           
aspired to be,                                           
until my grandfather got other plans
for her future
within the four walls of the home,
  Copenhagen would have 
been a different city today
and "architect" more
than a capsized word in her mouth.
  If my mother had been employed
as a receptionist at the desk
of Hotel Trouville in Hornbæk
guests from all over the world would have
received the best service,
   which did not happen,
because my father found a better solution
                                 a brand new baby
which would be cared for
within the four wings of the farm.
- "Is home not good enough for you, then?” 
   Letters from my mother reached me
in a straight bird-line –
No matter how many wing-beats, I was gone.
Like that
I felt at home
wherever I arrived.
White envelopes with her
unmistakable, circular handwriting
  scrutinized and deciphered in many countries
letters about my brother, my father and sister
and all her cats
"Your father has sown the field to the east
and I have been to the hairdresser’s."
I slit the letters open
                   and out poured out the sun.
–  “Take me with you,”
they said between the lines
to me who was involved in seeing
  how others lived,
seeing icebergs in Greenland, sniffing around
in Hanoi’s little shops, sending my tentacles out       
in Bogotá, confronting myself
with Australia's wildlife
but quite often encountering
beggars, robbers, swindlers and those
who were worse, men who asked:
– “Do you want to get married?”
I said no, because I was married,
at least on paper.
– “What are you doing here, then?             
Go home and look after your children!”
How could people in other cultures
understand my desire to travel?
What was I doing in the West Bank?
Or why was it important
to cross Chicago's no-man's land?
   Who ever had a grandmother
who taught one to travel
even though one was running a fever?
  A picnic was cancelled because I was ill
instead, with my sister and me
she wandered up and down
the moss-green carpet in the passage, told us      
of all the gnarled trees in the woods,
of the mushrooms we were going to pick
until at last we
flopped down with the filled basket
                             and held a picnic on the grass.         

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Biophilia

The seventh full-length album from Icelandic singer Björk is called Biophilia. According to the singer herself, the album springs from a wish to explore the structures of nature and music, to find out where they meet, and then to write the songs about it. One track, Crystalline, was released on June 27, and the whole album is expected to appear on September 26. The album has been recorded as a series of IPad apps as well as a standard CD, and also involves the use of At the present time it's not clear who wrote the lyrics of some of the songs, though Icelandic poet Sjón (Sigurjón B. Sigurðsson) is the author of 'Solstice', featured earlier in this blog.

Björk is currently introducing songs from the album at the Manchester International Festival, and the live performances include the use of images and back projections. According to the Wiki,

Björk will be performing "Biophilia" tracks and music from her back catalogue with a small group of musical collaborators, including an Icelandic female choir. The show will feature a range of specially conceived and crafted instruments, among them a bespoke pipe organ that accepts digital information and a pendulum that harnesses the earth’s gravitational pull to create musical patterns. Stephen Malinowski designed some animations on the show, creating videos that changed and fitted according to the music produced by the iPad: the animations are displayed for Björk to see them as a teleprompter, and also another animation is shown to the public created by the music produced by the iPad. Malinowski also designed the iPad apps animations, every song in the album has an animation within the app.

Words

For some time now, I've felt that the focus on Nordic literature could probably be widened to include writing and translation from other parts of Europe, so I have started yet another blog (it may eventually end up being more a conventional website than a blog) - not a successor or alternative to the Nordic Voices blogs, but maybe a supplement and/or addition to them.

Sinikka Langeland

Norwegian folksinger, kantele player and composer Sinikka Langeland has recorded a new CD album with the title The Land That Is Not, based on poems by Edith Södergran. The album will be released on the ECM label in the autumn, and adds to the already considerable list of recordings by this unusual artist, who combines the kind of sound one associates with the singing of Joni Mitchell with "the oddness of  Björk", as one publicity handout puts it. There are samples of Sinikka Langeland's work in several places on the Internet, including this Myspace site.

Vinduet 2/2011

The new issue of Norsk Gyldendal's literary magazine, Vinduet, is now published, and as its leading editorial proclaims it's something of a mixed bag (the phrase is used in English). The atmosphere of the magazine is as curious as ever - in the articles and associated graphics and photos there are occasional eerie cultural echoes of the 1960s and 70s, and one sometimes has the impression that in literary terms, at least. Norway has a secret hankering for that ground-breaking but also traumatic period in the country's history.

Britain's Poet Laureate (in Norwegian this becomes hoffpoet) Carol Ann Duffy is the subject of a fairly long article by author and journalist Jostein Sæbøe, who recently published a Norwegian translation of Duffy's collection Mean Time, and there's a version of her poem 'Oslo'. Dag Solstad, who is 70 this year, receives extensive treatment from several  authors, including Trond Haugen, who contributes an interesting  review of Espen Hammer's  Solstad monograph. For Hammer, Haugen suggests, Solstad's progression from the literary absurdism of the 1960s to the Marxism/Maoism of the 1970s was not a major break, but in some senses merely represented an extension of the 'absurd' into the political realm. There's a tribute to Gunvor Hofmo, who is now 90, and a long feature on the Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi. Christopher Hitchens, Lorrie Moore and Russian novelist Andrei Gelasimov are the focus of other prominent items in the issue.

Concerto grosso

by Lassi Nummi


Listen
to this tone,
tone of these days, this grass, these stones.
Tone of people, words and gazes
tone of the gazelle, of tiger, fallow deer and lark,
tone of streams, of a dark quiet room, of a distant forgotten fragrance..
Hear the tone of a dark room, of warmth – of icy brightness, of firm rising steps
tone of frozen seas, of breaking ice floes.
Tone of muscular bridges, of deed that is liberated into its realization
of movement that releases into its beauty,
of bow and arrow, of cloud and lightning, of avalanche, of echo
-- of steed bounding into a gallop.
Hear the tone of submission and defiance, of the hard cold and grey landscape
-- of misty cliff, of burning forest,
of boulders rising from foam
Listen to the tone of silence.

Hear the tone of opening lips – do not slip past it,
let your hand slip over the hair and hear its tone.
And hear the tone of steely weakness, of glassy strength,
and hear the tone of mirrors, be reflected, vanish, and be ready
at the moment of your birth, as you hear it,
tone of shattering mirrors:
tone that senses its form, tone of strength being liberated into its firmness:
Be born, step outside your mirrors and the shards of your mirrors and be free!
And be ready, and stretch out your hands to meet the hands that wait in the darkness.

So listen to what is left: the flowing tone of days and nights.
Hear the happy days and the mist and the wind and the rain and the clouds.
Do not forget the tone of affection, touch, of simple joy and the caressing gaze.
Do not flee the tone of death. The tone of death is bright, exhausted and free.
Leave the rest - leave the rest, and seek only the tone of silence
and build your dwelling beside it. When it is ready, when you stand in its doorway,
let the silence be silent, and let new voices ignite on the borders of muteness:
you listen to a new tone, all the voices of the world resound in it.
You are listen. You listen to every voice, you listen to every voice
and yet hear only one, -- distant, -- near, -- through them all.
No nights, no days, no love, no pain – no longer. Only a flowing tone
No beginning, no end. You are dead, you are alive. Take your crown, release your gaze
and listen, with forehead raised.

[from Tahdon sinun kuulevan, 1954]

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Anarchy in the UKR

Serhiy Zhadan

Lev Hrytsyuk writes that contemporary Ukrainian writing is increasingly finding a home in Swedish - Anarchy in the UKR (2005) by the young Ukrainian poet and novelist Serhiy Zhadan (Zjadan in Swedish) made it to Russia's National Bestseller shortlist in 2008, and the novel pulls no punches, focusing as it does on some particularly violent episodes from 20th century Ukrainian history. The book is a result of the author's  travel through Ukraine to the places where the famous revolutionary and anarchist guerrilla warrior Nestor Makhno fought his battles. Between 1918 and 1921 Makhno was leader of the peasant army that fought against the German, Austrian and Belarusian counter-revolutionary forces in Ukraine. Zhadan's narrative style deliberately mimics the phrasings and moral contortions of Soviet journalism, and the entire venture seems to be a no-holds-barred polemic with Ukraine itself. 


Now Bonniers are set to publish the book in Nils Håkanson's Swedish translation. It's unclear whether an English version is planned - somehow one feels that it ought to be.

Nordic Voices in Print

Please note that Nordic Voices in Print now has a single Web address:

http://nordicvoicesinprint.wordpress.com

The alternate URL

http://nordicvoices.xtreemhost.com

is no longer active.

Chaconne

By Lassi Nummi


1

I would like to begin as if unnoticed – not right now or a little earlier,
also not later; neither with this particular subject, nor with something else:
I would like to begin as animals gods and children begin, as love begins, that which is told about –
not as: "do I really dare?” or "did I interpret the shine in your eyes correctly?" or "do you know that your resistance is crumbling?"
but as the waves, the trees of the forest, and the wind – the most transient, most everlasting. I would like the thoughts
to break unnoticed into words, and so that each has time to take root
in the soil of silence, where they will blossom alone. I would like the words to turn into speech as if by a whim of chance, and the speech into song, and the song into a song without words,
and the wordless song dissolve into music, and the music to flow over our heads towards silence. At its edge I would like to draw black lines, not very many,
about something that has occurred to me – or that I have supposed might occur to me -- or that might
occur to me, as we sit with our friends on a honeyed autumn evening.


2


I have written many strange songs on strange subjects.
Today I am going to write a serious song on a serious subject.
My theme is your ear. I have researched it, grown thoroughly acquainted with it,
studied it from every angle in streaming light and twilight and semi-darkness
against the grapevine; when you are speaking, laughing, or when you are silent;
when tea is brought in. In a moment of music, a moment of hubbub, or when everyone is simultaneously silent
and the distant murmur of the streets is borne on the evening air through open windows.

3

Your ear – it is white, but not marble-like; I would say that everywhere in it a warm rosy shading can be observed. A slender labyrinth of furrows and bulges
– I deliberately use emphatic diction – thus acquires a deeper, more human content
through the affinity with
organic nature, transience and the brilliance of moments. Towards it many things
gather, and its time is short; gleaming as its backdrop
it has the gold of your hair.

Towards, past it your hair
is gathered through a golden comb in a bob at the back of your neck:
the morning fresh swell glitters, through which, quite close to the shoreline, gleam
shellfish or the white labyrinth of coral.

Near it your face is gathered – this almost motionless and very lively face,
This Greek and Asian face, unconscious of its consciousness, closed in its clarity – face of the Goddess of Mercy, Mary, Diana
This face of a birch tree, a maiden, a girl reflected in a pond, this white-stemmed face,
born from the smile of Artemis, smile dissolved back into a spring, born as Artemis,
born as Diana

Towards it voices are gathered – a sea’s thundering and whispering voices:
the hubbub of the city’s sea, the hubbub of the park’s sea of leaves, which the giant seashell of the house
repeats; the house’s hubbub, the laughter and uproar and talking and whispering and music
and the cry of a ship far away; the rustling of foliage, as if some brown god
were silently watching us.
Your ear’s shell rests
on the shore of the sea of voices. But silence has grown within its heart like a pearl.


4

Now I will tell you what I have thought this honeyed evening, autumn-honeyed,
among our noisy and sincerely many-faceted friends. I have thought: if my hand were to pluck
the flowers of your skin, it might stop and with closed eyes wake up and listen
to the streams, the brooks, the veins’ pulse, the soil’s pulse and the silence and swell of your heart. Into itself it might gather you, every voice
and everything that is silent. On the seashore the seashell opens to the thunder of the surf.

5

I know that the moon is rising. The shutters are opened
in the rooms that face the moon’s rising; or perhaps it was just a door. The Asian gods of my father's house
smile at the touch of the moonlight. Often, on hearing them murmur to one another,
I have intervened in their talk. Once – I must have been twelve at the time – I said to the Healer of Eye Diseases:
"Oh, teach me to see!" And when they were silent, I said angrily:
"You turban-head you could very well
take me to the God of War and Riches and order him to run me through with his sword
and let my family die out with me – provided you take this cataract and let me
look for a few moments into the heart of existence!"— Then for the first time I saw the gods’ faces fall:
in amazement they stared at me from their pedestals; disapproving, severe, stiff, or thoughtful;
but the God of Fertility had turned away, trying in vain to hide his bronze smile.

6


The Buddha is so heavily gilded, and on the topmost shelf: I do not speak to him – let him sit on his private lotus
and let the river roll by. – But you, God of Fishing, who keep watch near the shore
with your vigilant nets – I talk to you: could you not fill our house with invisible water so that the fish would swim everywhere in our midst – turn our speech into fishes, so that my words would leave my lips
and swim towards her hair – seaweed, golden sand, amidst which the contours of shell or coral are dimly visible?


7

You stir slightly, your hair flickers. I know: the moon is rising. They said just now
that Venus has fled Taurus and entered the figure of Aquarius, which is really
far more dangerous.
The moon is rising. Wild vine covers the house. The troubled brightness of the preludes
rises up the leaves like dew. The music is turned on, and the wind that flows in
behind it wakens the gods to listen.
Oh, what I would give, if everything were to stop now!
Only the music would flow on, and we would float with it, until we awoke in a network
of wild vine
wild vine growing through us.
– Dew, the brightness of the preludes. The moon is rising
between and above the wild vine. The leaves are flickering. Wild vine covers
the houses and covers the hearts, our bold, childish and trembling hearts.

The music has stopped. The pagodas rise from the twilight. Something new has caught on its fingertips the bird of your gaze.

8

The ivory goddess from Himalaya has raised her light hands.
The two at the top hold a lotus, each their own,
in a divine balance with her head and on a level with her girlish face.
A third supports the cloak, lightly wards off, on a level with her breasts..
A fourth, lower down, points, as if approving.
When you understand the posture
its frozen movement comes to life: even if the moon were not shining on the ivory-white skin,
you would see it moving and hear the music through the movements. I, at last, would understand the music
even without seeing the sculpture, as the light that rises from within your face
and melts into the semi-twilight of the moon; as the silence that thickens around you, until
the hand’s light movement is ripe to release, the gaze to brush the distance,
to shine forth, a half-unconscious laughter, like the chiming of the ankle-ring when the dance suddenly dies.

9

I know that the way, the truth and the life open in the moonlight as the nocturnal lotus flower opens.
But I have been taught to be sceptical. When I search for the truth, I find fossils,
characters, corals, the skeletons of hieroglyphics that have passed away; to reconstruct
the spark of life
into them – and in general – requires a talent for alchemy. -- On the other hand I have been raised
to search for wisdom, which is not so much waking or sleep than a continual awakening
from sleep to consciousness, from waking to a sleep that is permeated by consciousness: a tightrope semi-sleep-
walker, whom the images of two worlds bruise and entice:
a wind that towers to the heights and the depth of the ravine. – Raised to study
the mysteries, not so much in order to solve them as to learn the right way to approach
the kernel of the riddle: to listen to the humming, to attain the pearl.
– The Asian gods
smile doubtfully. Without grain and signs, lifeless, they reminisce about the man
about whom my mother talks: years before he went to follow the Lord Jesus Christ,
he raised in place of the gods on his altar the signs of heaven and earth.
I have not learned how to write them, but I love the golden grain and the wind
and I know that something of immortal beauty, vanishing and eternal,
is between them.

My earth-dream, my heaven-dream narrate it over an abyss, and the piercing wind takes my tears.


10

Have I told you that my heart once heard your heart’s shy speech
and now cannot distinguish the thundering voices of the world’s sea through it?
For that reason everything in me gathers into you. If you gather all this
into your pearly brilliance, will you one day repeat these voices like a far, forgotten sea?


11


I have wanted to tell you all this, and also less, this honeyed autumn evening
when our friends have gathered to celebrate the moon, which blesses their marriage, and endless sonatas are played
and talk is unrestrained and tea is drunk, to conceal the true nature of the ritual
and make the evil spirits go astray; I have wanted to say
that everything in me is gathered in you, and sings.
-- This painful secret
you have known of course, and we have talked about it; or might I have caressed it
into your hair? and might you have danced it for me?
But today it is new, reborn – as all true secrets and enigmas are reborn
over and over again: not to be solved, but to be realized and approached.
So approach its essence
and touch it.

I know that these years are vanishing,
have almost already slipped out of my hands. The moon has risen. Everything is ending
almost before it has begun. Look, the wild wine withered
and burst into clusters. The foreign voices
descended on its leaves like dust.


12

Hellene or barbarian – I do not know. This sense of change and flux, and this sense of changelessness and stasis
will always survive. I am perhaps a European, and I ought to understand
the demands of the age, serious business, commercial prosperity, or compensation for oppression
in new-fangled arrangements where that
term is not used. Or I am Asian,
arrived with a wandering nomadic tribe, here grown decadent: reciting spells, stimulating oneself into ecstasy,
conjuring past and future; meat curing over the sides of the saddle; opening the door to the non-existent garden
and submitting.

Are wreaths being made
for the wine festival? Dionysus, spirit of music,
is he is in our midst? Do flutes glimmer
everywhere, from mountains and ravines, stimulating us to processions and dances, into a wild ecstasy,
until we are ripe to fall on our faces
before the mystery?
Or does Apollo gesture
from further away, from a landscape of midday and majestic light -- raising the lyre,
playing his white peace through us?

The Asian gods
are watching us. Between the leaves I think for a moment I have attained a shining gaze
full of hidden meaning.

The gods of my country gaze from the heavy memorial tree group
at the sacred innocence of the birch trees, as the mist rises, the dance of the forest nymphs,
dissolving back into the spring.

I do not know, I do not know.
I know that I have seen the smile of Aphrodite rising white-stemmed
from the gold-glittering foam, where the corals the shells the clams happily conceal
their secret.

13

I would like to end as if imperceptibly. I would like my speech to slowly dissolve into
music, the music to dissolve into the light, into the silence of the light that streams through the doors.
As if you were already gone, all of you gone, the rooms filled with a pearl-brilliant silence,
the shutters forgotten, the moon descending,
with a curtain of dewdrops covering the sleeping wild wine.

"Here the country palace is empty, empty as a dream..."

In the semi-dusk of the moonlight the gods are staring. But they are only black lacquered wood
and the images of our fears and our desires; and we are skin, blood, dreams
and bone. Everything is in flux. And yet: there is the truth, and the way. It begins in the moonlight before my front steps,
and if I go on a journey without taking anything with me, bowing to the gods and praying to the Lord Jesus Christ,
there is a fleeting hope that I shall get back before I am seventy, and when I perceive I have completed the round trip
I would understand that I know less and am closer to the truth that lives in the circle’s hidden centre.


14


You sleep in the chamber of my anxiety. I pray. Then I bow to kiss
the cowrie shell the sea has brought. The curtains flicker. The world’s pearl ceiling
bends over us and repeats the echoes. We listen, and we are listened to
we are the cowrie shell, we are the sea. We dissolve into the world and the world into us.
We are the wild vine and the dew, we are the brightness of the preludes, we rest in the world’s gastropod
which shuts everything out, but repeats the voices of an unknown distant ocean.



[from Taivaan ja maan merkit (Marks of Sky and Earth), 1956]


translated from Finnish by David McDuff

The Diary of William N.

Following on from Mr. Darwin's Gardener, which won the Finnish State Prize for Literature in 2010, Kristina Carlson has written another novel on a theme drawn from the history of 19th century science. The Diary of Wlliam N. [William N. Päiväkirja, Otava 2011] is a fictional portrait of the Finnish botanist and entomologist William Nylander (1822-1899), who specialized in lichenology and lived in Paris from 1863 until his death.

The book is really a study of what it means to be an outsider - by virtue of his "difficult" temperament and his unconventional approach to scientific and university matters (sometimes perverse in its wrong-headedness), Nylander lives as an institutionless exile from his native land, subsisting in poverty while still maintaining his often shaky links with the scientific community both in Finland and abroad. Presented in the form of diary entries, the novel takes the reader through the final years of Nylander's life in Paris, and the narrative is broken by reflections on art and science - the botanist is also fascinated by contemporary French painting and other developments in modern art, and this makes for an interesting meditation on the meaning and significance of the new century which Nylander does not quite live to see.

In some ways the book is reminiscent of other Finnish and Finland-Swedish essays in the genre, possibly the most notable being Bo Carpelan's Sibelius study, Axel. But Kristina Carlson has gone further in evoking the atmosphere and reality of a bygone era and milieu, with a vivid and intricate account of the details of Parisian social, scientific and academic life viewed through the psychological lens of a Nordic mind that is steeped in Gallic wit and black humour. The figure and presence of August Strindberg are never far away, and with his antagonism to the status quo and embittered view of bourgeois life and marriage, Nylander becomes a link to the future - alienated from the suffocating climate of the age, he joins company at least in spirit with the artists, writers, philosophers and poets who seek a way out of the 19th century's moral and aesthetic cul-de-sac.

Solstice

by Sjón

when your eyes
pause on the ball
that hangs on the third branch from a star
you remember why it got dark and why it is getting light again

the earth (like the heart) leans back in its seat
and like that it travels along an orbit
drawn in the darkness

unpolished pearl in sky-black palm of hand
flickering sun-flame

you remember
that you yourself are a light-bearer
who receives her radiance from others

translated from Icelandic by David McDuff


sólhvörf

þegar augu þín
nema staðar við kúluna
sem hangir á þriðju grein frá stjörnu
þá manstu afhverju dimmdi og athverju birtir á ný

jörðin hallast í sætinu (eins og hjartað)
og þannig ferð ast hún eftir sporbraut
teiknaðri í myrkrið

ófægð perla í himinsvörtum lófa
flöktandi sólarlogi

þá manstu
að sjálf ertu ljósberi
sem þiggur ljóma sinn af öðrum

Detour

by Pia Tafdrup

Wild geese are gathering on the field
soon the whole flock will rise,
flying up over the woods, out across the water.
An ocean rolls within me
  wide open. 
I am too slow
for quick changes,
          too quick 
for things to go so slowly that life
                                becomes futureless.
Dreams start
  even before one learns to walk.
From the other side of the Atlantic
I can see better
what Scandinavia is –
the black duckling, the white swan,
Ibsen, Strindberg, Kierkegaard,
  gravity, melancholy, irony,
the wind settling round the trees,
  no other embrace,
the grey-white light of winter days,                         
loneliness enough
           for all.
In a Chinese street
where I try
to distil meaning out
of the words’ acoustics
I understand the dependence
on my Danish language
             the aorta
that runs underground in my body
no matter how aimlessly I 
travel around, buoyed up
by the light.
I move forward,
  the same sky seen
from different angles,
  the same Earth,
the blood’s cadence sets the pace.
Every detour I make
goes by way of myself alone. 

translated from Danish by David McDuff

The Cool Day

My translation of Bo Carpelan's Den svala dagen (The Cool Day) is here. And some versions of poems from Carpelan's last collection, Gramina, together with an essay by Michel Ekman, are here.

Pia Tafdrup: Three Poems

Infection

You stiffen poisoned by sudden dread
while the day overturns and changescolour
and the blood beneath a steadily growing pulse
sends the pain out into the most finely branching net
where it flutters around like ash
at a wing-beat rising above the embers
until the heart, that coral tree
in acute flowering stands still in spasm,
near to drowning in its own blood
For who can go about immune in a city
where people live in separation
like shards of the same dream
The dark’s invasion of a stranger
– is the hatred taking hold of you?
Like stab of metal that gnaws into your flesh
far, far from that morning where newborn you
were blessed by the first light.


Mount of Olives

For all men have one entrance into life,
and the like going out.

Wisdom of Solomon, 7,6

Still is the Mount of Olives graveyard in sun
where caravans of stone travel acrossthe west-facing slopes
Still as those landscapes, which abruptly turn to desert
places that have not yet been assigned a name
where sand flies,settling in ever new formations
Still is the air, a rent in the garment
and the night on the mountain mild as under a bird's wing
Still stands the air among the graves
on which stones flower eternally for the dead
– Blessed be the Judge of Truth –
Still as in Jerusalem's depth, where the water drips
in the more than two thousand year-old cisterns
echo of souls that still watch and wake
Each drop falls with its click
one syllable, as in the word death.


Night in the Mountains


The sun that lays waste the squares at noon
sinks quickly near the 32nd parallel
but before it loses itself and each object creeps into the shadows’ depths
vast landscapes saturated in their tone appear
colours that beyond all reckonings of time cling round each other
to seep redeemed into the brain
You see a cypress bend beneath a bird’s weight
if it settles in the tree’s crest
You see mountains that may be moved by faith or crumble at a sudden command
a sky that may crackle with jet fighters
or a sudden rain of missiles
Sleep-heavy the traffic curves up the hill, but the sound of car horns fades beneath you
You will see contours wiped out by a steady hand
see sky and desert merge into one near the low mountains further away
Your eye will dwell on the Arab houses,which chameleon-like, pretty
glide together with the desert colours in the light of sunset
until a woman’s laughter bursts from the nearest house
and lights the city’s lamps

Mild evening air caresses the city afterthe sun has gone down
Let the darkness fall about you like those kisses
the young girl receives from her beloved in the tavern
The stones are still warm as his hands
Lean against these stones, stay sitting so long
that the cats, who at night wail with longing,are not afraid
but sneak out from their hiding-placesand rub up against your leg

Jerusalem's night is also yours, the light of the half moon
its gentle breeze, flowers that each individually close around their scent
the birds that are silent and the city's furthermost lights out there, where silence embraces all sounds
where no one hears your steps and no paths are beaten
No one will call you back from the grey zone
where you feel neither anger nor pain
but something will grow in you between sky and desert
where you reach no one and no one canreach you
something will shine with darkness and trump your earlier self

You will see the old new and the new old
it rests on your eyes how you look at this place
just as it depends on you what the city chooses in you
Say goodnight to the impenetrable darkness, to the star that shines so brightly
that its light is cast far into the days here.


(from Territorialsang [Territorial Song], 1994)

translated from Danish by David McDuff