Anteckningar

Edmund Prestwich has reviewed my translation of Tua Forsström's Anteckningar. Among other things he writes:

Memories and images are presented in a way that’s both vivid and spare, with an emphasis on elemental or elementary natural phenomena that can be evoked in very few words... Each image or memory fragment shines both in its own light and in the shifting play of light from those around it. As the book proceeds, the focus of attention broadens to include more generalised meditations on love and loss, the beauty and fragility of life and our relations to the natural world, but Vanessa’s death remains at its heart.

Björling aloud

 With thanks to Ian Giles. 

Tua Forsström/Joan Margarit: Reading and discussion

I Walked On into the Forest

 

In November this year Bloodaxe will publish my translation of Tua Forsström's fifteenth collection Anteckningar (2018), with the English title I Walked On into the Forest - Poems for a Little Girl.

Bloodaxe Nordic Poetry Reissues

 Bloodaxe are reissuing a range of European poetry classics, including three Nordic titles in my translation:

- Edith Södergran, Complete Poems

- Karin Boye, Complete Poems

- Mirjam Tuominen, Selected Writings

Claes Andersson (1937-2019)

Hufvudstadsbladet has an obituary of the poet, psychiatrist and politician Claes Andersson, who recently passed away at the age of 82.

W.H. Auden

On learning and not forgetting

When they asked W.H. Auden if poetry can change

society he said no, can poetry change human nature, 

No said W.H. Auden. But then what can the poems

 do? Allow us to commune with the dead, said      

W.H. Auden, remind us to enjoy life a bit or at least

endure it a bit better, keep us company for a while. 

- Tua Forsström

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff

Anteckningar

Tua Forsström has published her twelfth collection of poetry, Anteckningar, this time with Förlaget M and Bonniers. The book is in some sense a continuation of En kväll i oktober rodde jag ut på sjön (2013), though the new volume focuses more acutely on the theme of death, and the tone of the inner discourse has shifted imperceptibly towards a new and harsh gravity. "Tua Forsström is still one of Finland Sweden's most dynamic and vibrant poets," writes Svenska Yle's reviewer, and it would be hard to argue with that judgement. An English translation of the book should be forthcoming from Bloodaxe Books before too long - I'm presently working in that direction.

The Ride Towards Now

Schildts & Söderströms of Helsinki have published Ritten mot nuet (The Ride Towards Now) the 26th volume of poetry by the Finland-Swedish Ostrobothnian poet Gösta Ågren (b. 1936).

 Och

Poesin är berättelsen om
meningen med vårt liv:
tillvaron, inte händelserna;
rösterna, inte orden.

Och rytmen, inte sorgen,
fastän varje rad så tydligt
döljer den, och varje dikt
utgör ett avsked.


And

Poetry is the story of 
the meaning of our lives: 
the being, not the events; 
the voices, not the words.

And the rhythm, not the sorrow, 
although every line so clearly
hides it, and every poem
constitutes a farewell.

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff

A Tour Through the Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

by Gösta Ågren

History

History is thought, a

pattern that conceals the

true story, where

the swallow grows bloody

from flying through the

murky bombast and

facts stand like a higher

race above the souls'

morasses, and the annals

challenge in vain. The object

of this wild conversation is

the community, a magic behemoth,

a togetherness with no other shield

against the fire than ashes.

Self-reliance

The sunrise resembles

a religious idea; so

helpless is our existence.

Sometimes the sparse death

thickens to war. Then

the names sink away in

their own mass. Outside

society awaits bondage,

where the slaves' sick hearts

at last pound themselves

apart. But in here the freedom has shrunk to

decrees, and words are now so

clear, they signify only

sound. The silence is silenced

by music, but here

too you must

decide.

Compensation

God is a simplification

and the word soul says plainly

that human beings are only

symbolic, as if

there were houses without

emptiness. Alas,

nothing is compensated

in the eternal accounts. The

murdered are chosen,

the whipped still

burn. A rival overturned

Theagenes' victory statue, and came

finally first to the finish, crushed

beneath its weight.

Spiritual laws

That which is limitless cannot

be seen. It surrounds you

with its emptiness, which

slowly dissolves you like

a carnivorous flower

its prey. Only the quest

sustains you. Without

ideals no one can keep

their memories pure. Without

certainty and actions

the laws of matter take

over and turn

this wild event

into something lost.

Love

Love is a message

from the skin. Hands

begin to long for their meaning.

A story awaits, but

the one who has nothing

to lose does not dare

to losing that,

too. Only the one who has everything

to gain, is not afraid

of his courage. He has been

pitiable. Now

he turns

against himself. The heart pounds

like a helpless child,

but he writes his

bad poems. They cry

as wordless

cranes cry

in spring.

Friendship

Words of command

remain like a direction

in the silence. We must

obey or refuse

to obey. There is

no choice.

When words are clumsy

and hesitant like unfamiliar

footsteps on parquet,

they say something. When

they are handsome as enemies

they hide something. Do not

play with them: they are

laden. Only

friendly words say

nothing special.

They contain only

friendly words.

Prudence

Between the high years we glimpse

the ocean. Yet we must

arrange our life in a line,

for the present is merely something

constant; everything else

changes. We have control

of memories and plans,

two branches without a trunk,

but both require courage, great

as fear, and the steady

rhythm of the heart, that does not

constitute a symbol but is

a gymnast in the world of

the senses, whose only routine

consists in keeping the powerful

tree running.

Heroism

Heroism is a state

of cruelty, the hawk's sudden

line towards earth. Then all

that is cowardly risks fading, as though

history were something different

from life, and the days merely

sand beneath the weight of years.

But when the hero flees to the deed,

beside himself with contempt, trembling

like an engine with fear,

cowardice protects the seed as though

it were a sensitive emotion

in the sea of weeds, and thereby

keeps the escape route open for

the true route.

The oversoul

The soul is a daydream

outside our name, a garden

for the god, where mind

and will hysterically

degrade. Afterwards, the present

is too big; we dare not

fall asleep. Who can sleep

with a god in his soul,

an oversoul, that uses

us to be, and is itself

free? We should be operated on,

but no knife cuts him

apart, and never will

the spiritual heal

its victims. We ourselves

must

wake.

Circles

The circle has no centre:

it is a demented cell

that swallows everything, even

the emptiness that assails

feelings and days,

and the forgetfulness that

preserves everything. For

the essayist the circle is

life, but for the poet only

a horizon without habitations,

where people conceal themselves

by being, and the everyday

is inscrutable as a ritual,

the meaninglessness

a strange

freedom.

The intellect

The intellect is a room without

years and walls. You have to imagine

them. Well-worn footprints

point to principles, but

they are old now, prisons

waiting for their prey.

You have to go as

a stranger would go

into your brain and there

declare all the accumulated

commands invalid and expand

it to a lifetime without

the altar, a chapel where

you can think as though

everything was sacred.

Art

How could decorative

messages compete with

Altmira's bulls? They stand

in the darkness, sketches

of the body's drama. Art

is magic, but the light

in the museums glows as if

they had nothing

to hide, and the young

rebel against rules

as if form possessed

meaning. When the artist

fought the pictorial creature

in faltering torchlight

he was wild and pure

as arrogance. The journey

was towards the inner creature,

his real strength.,

that waited for him,

patient as his shadow.

The poet

The seventeenth century was everywhere

but some still escaped

as though they were

in disguise, and only

needed to think in a

hitherto unknown way

in order to become empty

and pure as strangers.

In their poems form protected

many weak

lines, but suddenly

a verse could vibrate,

desperate as a wing

seeking its bird.

Experience

What we leave undone

is a part of our action.

Without the dreamed ship

the bark boat would capsize.

Without all that we merely

pass by we would never

get there. Even

the boredom is laden

with existence. Its emptiness

is only a form of

patience. The work

waits like an adversary,

and the footsteps begin

to point again.

Character

The events are small, but

the chains endless. There is

a wildness in every name,

an I that wants to go and leave

the shackles behind. But flight

too is only a link:

the chain cannot be broken.

Where you go, into the latent,

you always meet

the same figure.

Manners

Long ago people saw

that seriousness threatens small talk,

and began to smile the silence

away. Many

also sought protection in

phrases, but phrases

are words, and cannot

be revoked. At last

fellowship became sheer

politeness. They understood

finally how important

it is.

Gifts

A giver tries to grow

greater, not with the help of

the recipients' gratitude

but by diminishing them

with his gifts. Fame

or beauty work in the same

way, even if all they give

is their aura! When

a gift has permeated

the inscrutable defence

and reached the entrails' warm

hatred, the recipient

convinces only by making

his face and voice

manage on their own.

He himself goes. His back

is stiff as a shield

and his clothes do not hide him,

they reveal him. At

the roadside another back

sprouts when wings unfold.

It shimmers like blue

metal. Only the beetle is

its own present.

Nature

The cattle's language has only

one word. They think with its

meaning, an older and

wilder pilgrimage than ours:

it can only continue

and the goal is the beginning.

October burns like

a palace. Fate is larger

than in May, all darkness

higher. We approach

the lower, ruling

layers, where conversations

are dark chambers,

the arguments without other logic

than their existence, and the bodies

simplified to pilgrims while

the cries merge to become

a single word.

Politics

The word power means

violence. The words of the laws

are not symbols but

real. In the ruins of Ctesiphon

the state remains, a rainbow

of concrete. We are

masses; we have no

other choice. When we seekingly

look around us, we meet

only Medusa's poor,

cold gaze, but turned to stone

we still manage to think

our dream, the only finished thing

in the crude sketch

in which we live.

Nominalist and Realist

Whoever denies the real

confirms its power. Revolt

is hard. Whoever affirms

reality drains it

if death encounters no resistance

it is merely a clump of dust

where we slowly gather.

With theories as wings

we fly with no other

direction than away. But here

on the tenth line I begin

to hesitate. The denier has

perceived that if everything exists,

nothing else exists;

the affirmer says deep withiin

that perbaps everything

is something else.

New England Reformers

There is an indifference,

empty and dead as strict

demeanour. It surrounds us,

a pain relief, which those

people who fight apparently

refuse. Yet they are

totally dependent on this

poverty. Without it

reality would

conquer them with its

limitless masses, where

the individual is only

a throat, turned

towards their teeth.

A resumé

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote

his two volumes of essays

in order to become calm. Thoughts

are an unease that seeks rhythm.

They must be turned into waves

through the opinions; if

they harden to principles

they will be broken

apart on the shore's

reality. They are not

incorporeal: the metaphors

make hem visible, brutal

as walls or gentle

as sleepy hands,

but every time we sense

that the description

is incomplete.

From Dikter utan land, Schildts & Söderströms, 2015

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff

Poetry in Translation

Poetry in Translation is an enterprising venture organized by FILI and aimed at crowdfunding translations of Finnish and Finland-Swedish poetry into 9 languages by 50 translators. The poets include:

Saima Harmaja
Mirkka Rekola
Arto Melleri
Sirkka Turkka
Susinukke Kosola
Tuomas Timonen
Jukka Viikilä
Jukka Itkonen
Anja Erämaja
Henriikka Tavi
Kirsi Kunnas
Sanna Karlström
Sinikka Vuola
Olli-Pekka Tennilä
Bo Carpelan

The Lost Key

Sanna Mander's amazing Nyckelknipan /Avain hukassa - written by its author in parallel Swedish and Finnish versions - won this year's Finlandia Junior Prize.

Coming Here

My translation of Hid (1992), the third part of the autobiographical trilogy, is now also available in the Kindle Store.

The Cities

I've uploaded a new Kindle edition of my translation of the second part of Gösta Ågren's autobiographical trilogy - Städren, The Cities.

Standing Here

Gösta Ågren

My translation of  the first part of Gösta Ågren's autobiographical trilogy, Jär, is now available as a Kindle e-book, Standing Here, published on Amazon's KDP. 

My short introductory essay on the trilogy, published in Books from Finland magazine in 1992, can be read here. 

World Poets

Among the participants in Bloodaxe's new DVD anthology World Poets, which presents work by 30 poets together with films of interviews and readings featuring the poets themselves, are Pia Tafdrup and Tua Forsström. There are also poems by Tomas Tranströmer. While it's good to see Nordic poets included here, some of Pia Tafdrup's poems inexplicably appear in Swedish translation, rather than in the original Danish. There are also some glitches and typos in the Swedish texts. It would have been useful to see proofs before publication, but apparently Bloodaxe considered it O.K. to skip that step.

Essay Tour

I've translated a section from Gösta Ågren's latest collection, Dikter utan land (Schildts & Söderströms, 2015):

A tour through the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

The essays themselves are here.

Gösta Ågren: 5 poems

RIVA

Att riva ett hus är svårare

än att bygga det. Du kan

avlägsna tak, väggar och golv,

men det går inte att  få bort

de tomma rummen.

DEMOLISHING

To demolish a house is harder

than to build it. You can

remove roof, walls and floors,

but you cannot get rid of

the empty rooms.

VÅRT BEHOV AV KATASTROFEN

Vi existerar, en skuld,

som måste betalas. Vår

hänsynslösa vistelse kräver

ett svar, som är större

än brottet.

OUR NEED FOR DISASTER

We exist, a debt

that must be paid. Our

reckless sojourn demands

an answer that is greater

than the crime.

RUMMET

Fönstren är sönderslagna;

man kan inte längre se

igenom dem. Dörren

saknar lås. Den kan

inte längre öppnas. En ram

har ingen tavla; man ser

verkligheten.

THE ROOM

The windows are shattered;

one can no longer see

through them. The door

lacks a lock. It can

no longer be opened. A frame

has no picture: one sees

reality.

TIGGAREN PÅ GATAN

Han sitter orörlig

i mitten av sitt nät,

som ingen kommer igenom

utan att ge eller

inte ge.

THE BEGGAR  IN THE STREET

He sits motionless

in the middle of his net,

through which no one comes

without giving or

not giving.

TIDEN OCH EVIGHETEN

Tiden är bara en tanke.  För

att kunna gå behöver den

en kropp, hjärtat.

Också evigheten är

en tanke. För att kunna

stå stilla behöver den

samma hjärta.

TIME AND ETERNITY

Time is only a thought. To

be able to move it needs

a body, the heart.

Eternity, too, is

a thought. To be able

to stand still it needs

the same heart.

from Gösta Ågren, Dikter utan land, Schildts & Söderströms, 2015

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff