In one sense, I would suppose that there are two kinds of artistic genius out there, the one neither necessarily greater than the other. The first, and the most common, is a kind of labourer–the artist who through a long process of maturation and deliberation has come to perfect his or her craft. And then there is a rarer, wilder and all to often tragic breed of genius. One who, if lacking in a certain technical refinement or intellectual complexity, makes up for it with a radical, prodigious artistic vision which he just seems to be born with–which seems to be overflowing in him and be almost too big for the artist himself–yea, even the world–to contain.

In this second category I would place the beautiful, poor soul that was Attila József, a Hungarian poet who, in spite of his life being cut short by a suspected suicide at the age of 32, possessed one of the great poetic minds of the modern era. While there might certainly be an artistic progression to be seen in his work, even in his first poems, published at the age of just seventeen, one feels like one is reading a “complete” poet–one entirely grounded in his art.

As always, I would like to give a greater discussion of Józsefs poetry by highlighting a number of his poems and juxtaposing these with his destiny’s course but that would require time that I do not currently have. Perhaps in the future. In the meantime I can simply encourage you to read more of his work by following this link to access a number of them: https://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~lukacs/ja/poems2/jozsef-eng.htm#10. As far as the poem featured here is concerned, credit has to be given to the translator, Thomas Kabdebó, who has done a very admirable job in rendering them into English.

Ode.

1.
I am sitting
here on a glittering wall of rocks.
The mellow wind of the young summer
like the warmth of a good supper
flies around.

I let my heart grow fond of silence.
It is not so difficult,
–the past swarms around–
the head bends down
and down hangs the hand.

I gaze at the mountains’ mane
every leaf reflects the glow
of your brow.
The road is empty, empty,
yet I can see
how the wind makes your skirt flutter
under the fragile branches of the tree.
I see a lock of your hair tip foreward
your soft breasts quiver
–as the stream down below is running away
behold, I see again,
how the ripples on round white pebbles
the fairy laughter spouts out on your teeth.

2.
O how I love you
who, made to speak
both the wily solitude which weaves its plots
in the deepest caverns of the heart
and the universe.
Who part from me, in silence, and run away
like the waterfall from its own rumble
while I, between the peaks of my life,
near to the far,
cry out and reverberate
rebounding against sky and earth
that I love you, you sweet step-mother.

3.
I love you like the child loves his mother,
like silent pits love their depth
I love you like halls love the light
like the soul loves the flame,
like the body loves repose.
I love you like all mortals love living
until they die.

Every single smile, movement, word of yours
I keep like the earth keeps all fallen matter.
Like acids into metal
so my instincts have burnt
your dear and beautiful form into my mind,
and there your being fills up everything.

Moments pass by, rattling
but you are sitting mutely in my ears.
Stars blaze and fall
but you stand still in my eyes.
Like silence in a cave,
your flavour, now cool,
still lingers in my mouth
and your hand upon the waterglass
and the delicate veins upon your hand
glimmer up before me again and again.

4.
O what kind of matter am I
that your glance cuts and shapes me?
What kind of soul and what kind of light
and what kind of amazing phenomenon am I
that in the mist of emptiness
I can walk around
the gentle slopes of your fertile body?

And like the word
entering into an enlightened mind
I can enter into its mysteries…

Your veins like rosebushes
tremble ceaselessly.
They carry the eternal current
that love may blossom in your cheeks
and thy womb may bear a blessed fruit.

Many a small root embroiders through and through
the sensitive soil of your stomach
weaving knots, unwinding the tangle
that the cells of your juices may align
into clusters of swarming lines
and that the good thickets of your bushy lungs
may whisper their own glory.

The eternal matter happily proceeds in you
along the tunnels of your bowels
and the waste gains a rich life
in the hot wells of your ardent kidneys.

Undulating hills rise
star constellations oscillate
lakes move, factories operate
millions of living creatures
insects
seaweed
cruelty and goodness stir
the sun shines, a misty arctic light looms –
unconscious eternity roams about
in your metabolism.

5.
Like clots of blood
these words fall
before you.
Existence stutters
only the law speaks clearly.
But my industrious organs that renew me
day by day
are now preparing for silence.

But until then all cry out.
You,
whom they have selected out of the multitude
of two thousand million people,
you only one,
you soft cradle,
strong grave, living bed
receive me into you!…

(How tall is the sky at dawn!
Armies are dazzling in its ore.
This great radiance hurts my eyes.
I am lost, I believe…
I hear my heart beating
flapping above me.)

6.
(By-Song.)

(The train is taking me, I am going
perhaps I may even find you today.
My burning face may then cool down,
and perhaps you will softly say:

The water is running, take a bath.
Here is a towel for you to dry.
The meat is cooking appease your hunger,
this is your bed, where I lie.)

Form:
In translation, free verse, with the exception of part 6, “the by-song” which consists of two rhymed quatrains in an irregular meter).


Analysis

Part 1:
It is a pleasant, early summer’s day. The poet is sitting alone atop a rocky wall and gazing out onto the landscape before him. In the silence, the poet takes to reminiscence (he mentions that the past is “swarming about him”) and in the third stanza of this part it becomes clear that he is remembering a woman whom he loves. The differences in both time and place become blurred however as the poet looks out on the landscape and in its details sees her: the crest of the mountains is like her brow, the wind shaking the leaves of the trees reminds him of her fluttering dress and quivering breasts and the warbling of the stream of her laughter:

I gaze at the mountains’ mane
every leaf reflects the glow
of your brow.
The road is empty, empty,
yet I can see
how the wind makes your skirt flutter
under the fragile branches of the tree.
I see a lock of your hair tip foreward
your soft breasts quiver
as the stream down below is running away
behold, I see again,
how the ripples on round white pebbles
the fairy laughter spouts out on your teeth.

Part 2
Oh, yes, how he loves her. Writing good love poetry is in many ways the ultimate test of a poet’s ability–this most complex of subjects also requires a linguistic complexity for it not to fall into cliché. So if nothing else, just delight in the verbal banquet that he dishes up for us here in portraying the paradoxical nature of a love that feels both personal and universal:

made to speak
both, the wily solitude which weaves its plots
in the deepest caverns of the heart
and the universe.
Who part from me, in silence, and run away
like the waterfall from its own rumble

Part 3:
The first stanza, in a similar way to part 2, describes the nature of his love. The second and third stanzas however are about memory and time. The beloved is as a collection of images and feelings that have silted in his mind and now come surging out in the poem. Since this woman is a memory, though, there is also a hint of distance here–one gets the feeling as though this might be a person with whom he has little or no intimate contact:

Moments pass by, rattling
but you are sitting mutely in my ears.
Stars blaze and fall
but you stand still in my eyes.
Like silence in a cave,
your flavour, now cool,
still lingers in my mouth
and your hand upon the waterglass
and the delicate veins upon your hand
glimmer up before me again and again.

Part 4:
Once again, the landscape and the beloved are melded together and the poet delights in his imagination’s ability of traversing through it. Note how though he is in “the mist of emptiness” he can nonetheless “walk about the slopes of her fertile body”. On one hand, this part takes on a somewhat religious character–the love he feels is as a key to the enigmas of the universe:

And like the word
entering into an enlightened mind
I can enter into its mysteries…

and hence his beloved is also compared to the Virgin Mary: “Thy womb may bear a blessed fruit”. But on the other hand the religious imagery is at the same time undermined by the carnality of the imagery here:

Many a small root embroiders through and through
the sensitive soil of your stomach
weaving knots, unwinding the tangle
that the cells of your juices may align
into clusters of swarming lines
and that the good thickets of your bushy lungs
may whisper their own glory.

–and it’s a fleshliness that is so deep that it even encompasses her digestive system:

The eternal matter happily proceeds in you
along the tunnels of your bowels
and the waste gains a rich life
in the hot wells of your ardent kidneys.

Part 5:
The distance hinted at earlier becomes much more obvious here–there is an impossibility in his longing. His words “fall” before her “like clots of blood”, his existence “stutters” and he is preparing himself for “silence”. The second and third stanzas close this part as a kind of supplication to the beloved for acceptance.

Part 6:
The fact that the final part is called a “by-song” and that it is entirely presented between parentheses indicates that it is different from the rest of the poem. It is also the only part to be written in some kind of regular form (two quatrains of rhymed verse). The poet is no longer sitting and looking out over the landscape, but he is riding the train. We do not know where he is going but his mind is consumed with the rather hopeless idea that he might, by chance, cross paths with the woman that he loves today. There is a leap from wish to fulfillment in the last stanza, which closes with an image of a longed-for future of domestic banality–so unlike the love-filled inebriation of the rest of the poem!

While all good poetry should be read aloud, I am a firm believer in the supremacy of the written word over the spoken one. It is possible to enjoy and glean the quality of a good poem on a first listen, yes, but it is always going to be words riding on the wind. These do not lend themselves for deliberation and, most necessarily with good poetry, re-reading. While spoken-word and its horrid offspring, poetry slam, have tried liberating themselves from print, I am yet to witness a single good poem come from these formats.

It is important for me to underline that this website and its affiliated channels will be grounded in the written medium. At the same time, I am not going to be blind to the fact that we live in a day and age in which people have less and less of the time and patience which such reading requires and I am afraid that the number of people who can genuinely read, not just poetry, but even literary prose, is diminishing.

I am not going to be so foolishly self-righteous to see this project of mine as a sort of reconquista of the written word in the face of the hordes of unbelieving audiovisualists. The primary goal of this project is simply to contribute to the diffusion of good literature (predominantly poetry) on a popular level and if that means that I can reach a larger audience by branching out into other media, then I would be foolish not to do so. That is why I have created a supplementary channel to this website on Youtube. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcXu0TzhqSe6crhKaqqrb1A

If there is any regular reader here, do not worry that you might be missing out on something by not also following the Youtube channel, for it consists exclusively of recordings of texts earlier published on the blog, nothing else. My main hope with the channel is rather to advertise the website and bring potential readers over here.

This post is a translation of a text published on this page over a year ago, on the 15th of September 2021, in Spanish. The very admirable translation of this poem by Nathaniel Tarn, coupled with Pablo Neruda’s universal poetic genius warrants, I feel, an English version too.

“To not admire Voltaire is one of many forms of stupidity”. So said Jorge Luis Borges. I would equally like to state that not to admire Pablo Neruda is one of many forms of stupidity in this world, above all if you are an American. Why? Not because Neruda is one of the greatest of American authors, but because he, in his artistic scope, is the Latin American poet par excellence. It is further my opinion that he is the most important author to write in Spanish since the Spanish Golden Age and is one of the most important figures of modern literature whose poems are a gift for all humanity.

Nonetheless, for all his fame, Neruda is very often misunderstood. He is seen as an author who is lacking in depth–popular because superficial. On the one hand, I understand this opinion–his poetry has an almost unparalleled presence in popular culture. On the website Poemhunter (one of the most popular poetry-related websites on the web), one finds a number of his poems among the list of the “Top 500 poems”. Lamentably, not a single one of them is good. Pablo Neruda was quite a prolific author and in between the mediocrity it can be difficult to divine the real gems.

But how wrong they are! Forgive them, for they know now what they say, because notwithstanding this, among honest critics of his work, a majority are able to agree on his genius and what his masterpiece is. It is found in a sequence of twelve poems collectively called The Heights of Machu Picchu from the collection Canto General. To understand the sequence it is important to understand the theme of the collection as a whole. Canto General is a monumental work which aims to present the history, the geography, the nature, the people, and above all, the spirit of Latin America. In the general scheme of it, The Heights of Machu Picchu can be considered a chapter in which the poet attempts to reconcile the modern, colonial civilisation of Latin America with the history and the soul of its indigenous past. The sequence, where we follow the poet on a journey from a state of misery in modern, urban life to the heights of Machu Picchu, works as an allegory where the poetry moves from despair and confusion towards spiritual illumination. The city of Machu Picchu, this relic of the world that existed before the arrival of the Europeans, is the special place where the poet will undergo this experience.

The climax of The Heights of Machu Picchu is found in the penultimate canto that we will now analyse. Having ascended the mountain and finally arrived at Machu Picchu, the poet prepares himself to perform a symbolic, ritual act: he will sink his hand into the earth. This act symbolises the reconciliation of the two worlds that I have mentioned above.

I strongly encourage you to read the entire sequence (I will try to upload it on this website some day) but I would just as well like to point out that it is not necessary to have read the preceding poems in order to appreciate the beauty of the end. I myself read this canto first without knowing the theme of either The Heights of Machu Picchu or Canto General as a whole and it’s aesthetic immensity nonetheless bowled me over immediately. I hope it will do the same for you.

Enjoy.

XI

Through a confusion of splendour,
through a night made stone let me plunge my hand
and move to beat in me
a bird held for a thousand years,
the old and unremembered human heart!
Today let me forget this happiness,
wider than all the sea,
because man is wider than all the sea
and her necklace of islands
and we must fall into him as down a well
to clamber back
with branches of secret water, recondite truths.
Allow me to forget, circumference of stone,
the powerful proportions,
the transcendental span, the honeycomb’s foundations,
and from the set-square allow my hand to slide
down a hypotenuse of hair shirt and salt blood.
When, like a horseshoe of rusting wing-cases,
the furious condor batters my temples in the order
of flight and his tornado of carnivorous feathers sweeps
the dark dust down slanting stairways,
I do not see the rush of the bird
nor the blind sickle of his talons–
I see the ancient being, the slave, the sleeping one,
blanket his field–a body, a thousand bodies, a man,
a thousand women swept by the sable whirlwind,
charred with rain and night,
stoned with a leaden weight of statuary:
Juan Splitstones, son of Wiracocha,
Juan Coldbelly, heir of the green star,
Juan Barefoot, grandson to the turquoise,
rising to birth with me, as my own brother.



Analysis

The poet has spent the night atop Machu Picchu (“through a night made stone…”) and is ready to plunge his hand into the earth to reach and resuscitate the civilisation that is buired there, that is to say, the aboriginal roots of America itself. It is a world that is dead and forgotten (“let me plunge my hand/and move to beat in me/a bird held for a thousand years,/ the old and unremembered human heart!”). Even if the poet presages the great joy that he will experience in doing this, he does not intend it to be a sollipsistic, egoistic act: the poet knows that this is an act of personal sacrifice. Because of this, he writes, with such beauty, the following verses:

Today let me forget this happiness,
wider than all the sea,
because man is wider than all the sea
and her necklace of islands
and we must fall into him as down a well
to clamber back
with branches of secret water, recondite truths.

Neruda lets us know that he wishes to reach down to something immaterial–he wishes to arrive at the soul of man–to what touches all humanity:

I do not see the rush of the bird
nor the blind sickle of his talons–
I see the ancient being, the slave, the sleeping one,
blanket his field–a body, a thousand bodies, a man,
a thousand women swept by the sable whirlwind,

The universal quality of this “soul” as well as the connection between the two civilisations is represented by the names of the final verses: “Juan” (the English “John”) is perhaps the most typically general of European names, yet this Juan is juxtaposed at the same time as the “son of Wiracocha”, “son of the green star” and “grandson to the turquoise”.

At the end of the poem, the poet has not realised this connection yet. The poem ends only with an imperative, “arise to birth with me, my brother”. The reconciliation between these two worlds–the objective of the poet–occurs in the succeding canto. I am attaching it below because it follows on so naturally from the preceding one. I will not be analysing it, however, above all because it doesn’t really add any new elements to the sequence itself and ought to be enjoyed on its own. The climax of the sequence is the eleventh, the full terminus is the twelfth.

XII

Arise to birth with me, my brother.
Give me your hand out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
You will not emerge from subterranean time.
Your rasping voice will not come back,
nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays–
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flints
to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth
let dead lips congregate,
out of the depths spin this long night to me
as if I rode at anchor here with you.

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.

Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.

Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.

Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.

Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

The attribute that is most typically used when talking about the likes of Andrew Tate and their sudden, temporary prominence is “meteoric”. The definition according Merriam Webster: Resembling a meteor in speed or in sudden and temporary brilliance. While this certainly is a fitting (and clichéd) way of talking about it, I would prefer using the adjective “icarian” since it adds a moral and for that matter, more poetic dimension to the tale of Tate–the tale of one man’s limitless ambition thwarted by the limits of ignorance. In this case, it is at the hands of the internet powers-that-be which have sent him sprawling from the heights of social media glory to the dark and churning depths of cancellation below.

If you do not know who Andrew Tate is, the only information necessary for this post’s purpose is to know that he is/was a prominent influencer of the “manosphere” who for a short period of time this year reportedly became the most Googled man on the planet before being promptly deplatformed from the social media networks where he built his following. This would normally not be of any interest to this website–I have no intention of writing about Meghan Markle or Kim Kardashian here–were it not for the fact that the man writes poetry too, and not just any kind of poetry, but from the horse’s mouth:

My instagram poems are probably the finest literary works in the history of the English language.

Perhaps he was joking when he said that but in my candidness I believe his self-indulgence is real and that he attaches supreme value to everything he creates. For that reason am I putting it under the critical lens, no other. I believe anybody should be able to delve into the craft of verse without being critically excoriated but if you then become publicly known and, not least, state to hundreds of millions of people that your work is the greatest in the history of the language, well then you better live up to your word, mate, or else.

While Tate’s narcissism is certainly off-putting, particularly considering that he calls himself a Christian, it is certainly nothing that makes his poetry bad per se. I can think of good poets throughout history who were probably just as vainglorious as Andrew Tate and who wrote many fine poems for no other reason than for the publicity.

With all that said, let’s get underway. I will be looking at three poems that are in fairly wide circulation. I am assuming that they are representative and of high quality since Tate has discussed these himself. I am further keeping them with their punctuation, spelling and grammar mistakes since for the benefit of the doubt they might actually be intentional. Each of them are written in loosely rhymed quatrains. This first one is untitled.

I show less than I have to stay tasteful
Still catching hate cause they’re hateful
Too much food out the gate it’s a plateful
Now your girls full of tate and she’s grateful

I show less than I earn cause I’m humble
Your bitch in my ride coz you fumbled
Yes I hear couple pussydem grumble
But they don’t try n step I don’t stumble

I show less than I know I’ve stopped talking
Split the bullshit from truth I’ve been clocking
See me sit n don’t speak like im hawking
But there’s feet behind talk bitch i’m walking

I show less than I love but I miss her
Thinking back to the day that I kissed her
She left a sore on my heart there’s a blister
Fuck the next best thing that’s her sister

This is somewhat surprisingly technically grounded. The dominant metrical foot is the anapest with exclusively feminine end-rhymes being used. There are also some examples of internal rhyming (Now your girls full of tate and she’s grateful) and an anaphoric anchor in each of the stanzas starting with the phrase “I show less than…”

The poem is, of course, about Andrew Tate, and about how he is far more profound than what his exterior puts on. The first three stanzas are in praise of his modesty (yes), not only regarding his material possessions but also his intellect. The last, and the most interesting, since it suggests a softer side, is about lost love and how Tate gets revenge on his former lover by copulating with one of her near relations.

The next one has a title. it’s called Battle scars:

We had it all to lose, we had it all to gain
I know it hurts you when you hear my name
There’s no sun without rain. No joy without pain
Who ever makes souls made ours the same

Distance kills fake love and shows you what’s real
I know the deal, I can play heart of steel.
The distance seems to make it much harder to heal
Give me one night of your touch, just one more feel.

I’m fuckin some bitch and pretending it’s you
I fuck a new one each day since we said we were through.
I check my inbox and just tear through the queue
I can’t sleep at night what else should I do

I’m kissing this bitch and remember your lips
I’m missing your touch while she’s suckin the dick
Got battle scars girl guess I finally got hit
But I’m a champion and I was made for this shit.

Metrically this tends towards the iamb in the first two stanzas and towards the anapest in the last two. Once again, this is a lament for absent love (is it the same love interest from the first poem?). There is a suggestion that a physical distance has made their relationship impossible (stanza two) and he is filling the absence this has created through coition with other partners on a daily basis. There is no feeling of resentment towards his former lover here–he mentions that he has been hurt through her loss, but since he is the highly qualified individual that he is he just moves on in life.

The final one is once again without a title. It goes like this:

Every time I leave there’s tears in her eyes
She knows how I’m earning and wants me alive
The struggle is finished but I still only strive
Understand it’s how life taught me to survive

Every time Im moving there’s a strap no doubt
I don’t respect the law so why travel without
It’s rained and it’s poured I even built up a spout
The withouts want my buckets when living in drought

Every time we fuck I crush my soul into yours
We mix pain and insane with Eiffel Tower tours
I collect cash quiet behind double locked doors
Without profit to make there wouldn’t be wars

Money has no value so I give time with the don
You’re in love with my brains obsessed with my brawn
Enemies won’t stop now the guns have been drawn
I just hope you still love me after I’m gone

Top G.

Yet another love poem (what a sweetheart he is!). This is vaguely iambic. He uses anaphora in the first three stanzas with the adverbial “Every time…”.

This poem centres less on Tate’s sentiments than it does that of his beloved. It is about how sad she is when he is not present. Why should she be sad? Well, because he lives a dangerous life (he doesn’t respect laws, he has dealings with organised crime syndicates, his enemies are armed, etc.) and she knows that he might not come back alive (–“after I’m gone”).


Summary

This is not, by any accounts, good poetry. The simplistic vulgarity speaks for itself so I will not write more on that, but on a more basic level the poems need far more elaboration, not only to make the content more profound but just to tidy up a lot of the clumsier details. Once again, leaving the orthographical and grammatical mistakes aside, this poetry rife with clichés (i.e. “There’s no sun without rain. No joy without pain”; “It’s rained and it’s poured”, etc.), and just incongruences. For example, why is the third poem, which is about Tate being absent from his lover because of his dangerous lifestyle, suddenly interjected with this silly detail about them going on guided tours of the Eiffel tower?.

I have not read any other poems by Tate but I would imagine that they all read more or less the same. I am not encouraging Tate to stop writing poetry, but if he wishes to write better verse then he must also understand the limits of his skill. He claims he is a believer and therefore he ought to understand better than the atheist that one is only exalted in humbling oneself. In the meantime the main piece of advice that I would give Tate is to read more. There is a painfully conspicuous absence of poetic vision here and this stems principally from a detachment to a poetic tradition. His verse is one that simply has one point of reference: rap lyrics, and like most rap lyrics the universe of Andrew Tate’s poetry concerns three things: his riches, his “bitches”, and his ego. If that is all your art has to go off, your poetry will forever be confined to the dust heap.

Andrew Tate: go to a library and borrow a good anthology of English language verse, or more simply why not just peruse the anthology I have created myself?

Betyg:

Athena Farrokhzad har sedan publicerandet av debutsamlingen Vitsvit troligen varit den mest omtalade diktaren i den svenska offentligheten. Även om sorlet kring henne varit något tystare i kölvattnet av hennes senare verk, Trado, I rörelse och vederbörande samling, Åsnans år, tycks hon ändå ha haft en oproportionerligt stor publicitet för att blott vara poet. Det är nästan förbluffande hur en diktare kan väcka en sådan dragning i ett samhälle där dikten blivit så främmande.

Men egentligen räcker det med en snabb sökning på internet för att skönja en förklaring till denna gåta. Den uppståndelse som Farrokhzad väckt har i grund och botten väldigt sällan att göra med hennes dikter. Det som uppmärksammas är oftare hennes smått kontroversiella politiska uttalanden i mer populära medier. Två av de mest kända av dessa är hennes sommarprat år 2014 och en artikel som hon skrev efter den danske poeten Yahya Hassans död år 2020.

Jag tänker inte kommentera dessa och tänker inte heller ta ställning till Farrokhzads politiska åsikter i denna recension. Det mest respektfulla jag kan göra gentemot poeten Athena Farrokhzad är helt enkelt att läsa och utvärdera hennes poesi på dess egna grunder, och om poesikritiken bottnar i detta (vilket den alltid bör göra i populära medier) skulle jag våga påstå att knappt någon genuin kritik gjorts av hennes verk. Åsnans år må ge sken av att ha recenserats i de flesta stora dagstidningarna (googla så får du se) men av dem jag läst rör det sig om ytliga redovisningar av det huvudsakliga innehållet utan genuin granskning och bedömning av skaldekonsten däri. Om någon vågar påstå annorlunda så får ni väldigt gärna höra av er.

Till skillnad från Farrokhzads föregående poesisamling, I rörelse, presenteras Åsnans år som ett enhetligt verk. Många olika teman, poetiska stilfigurer och perspektiv bearbetas inom dess 115 sidor men ändå framställs dessa som en relativt sammanhängande helhet. Det faktum att inga av de enskilda verserna har titlar, till exempel, antyder att de inte ska betraktas enskilt utan läsas tillsammans. Den mest centrala symboliken som går igenom dessa är förstås åsnan. Diktsviten inleds med en berättelse om hur poeten köper en porslinsåsna på en loppmarknad som hon ställer i sitt kök. Hon nämner att man i de stora hoven förr i tiden lät miniatyrer bepryda borden med föreställningar om politiska händelser. På samma sätt vill Farrokhzad låta hennes porslinsåsna gestalta en yttre, både politisk och personlig verklighet:

Vi ställer fram miniatyrer av oss själva i porslin
Avsedda för att leda uppmärksamheten från och till oss själva
Gör oss aptitliga för vilken makt
det nu är som håller oss gisslan

Man har tidigare talat om det polyfona i Farrokhzads poetiska projekt och jag vill minnas att poeten själv diskuterat sin önskan om att låta sin egen röst göra en reträtt i hennes diktning. Jag finner detta lite märkligt då jag själv alltid upplevt innehållet i Farrokhzads verk som väldigt självcentrerat, och Åsnans år är inget undantag till detta. Titeln till trots skulle jag till och med vilja konstatera att detta är Farrokhzads minst politiska och mest personliga verk. Det inleds med ett latinskt citat: Adventavit asinus pulcher et fortissimus–“Åsnan anländer, skön och modigast”. Detta anspråk på att förhärliga åsnan syftar uppenbarligen till upphöjandet och rättfärdigandet av den proletära strävan, men minst lika mycket hänvisar författarinnan till sig själv här–hon ämnar också upphöja sig själv till att bli huvudperson i sitt eget verk. Det är därför föga förvånande att hon också identifierar sig med åsnan i boken:

Åsnor, säger jag till min älskade
på återvinningsstationen, glömmer aldrig en oförrätt
De älskar smaken av mynta och ljummet vatten
visar tillgivenhet genom att lägga huvudet mot en skuldra
umgås ogärna med andra djurarter
och dör hellre än att beklaga sig
Låter det inte som någon du känner

Åsnans år ger absolut uttryck för en extern politisk angelägenhet där Farrokhzad inte utgör huvudämnet. Detta sker exempelvis i porträtteringen av Palestinakonflikten och i de fiktiva skildringarna av en åsnerevolution–men mer än något annat centrerar verket i slutändan kring Farrokhzads privatliv. Skildringarna av detta kan ofta vara väldigt intima. Det kanske främst återkommande ämnet här handlar om det personliga hanterandet av sorg, vilken gestaltas och bearbetas genom två av hennes kusiners öden–hon benämner dem sina “bröder”–som dött i förtid, troligen i sviterna av drogmissbruk:

En dag ska vi återvända
och när våra sorger över det liv som berövats oss möts
ska något ohyggligt gå sönder
Jag hatar allt jag gjorde som fjärmade mig från dem

I Åsnans år, som tidigare nämnts, låter Farrokhzad åsnetematiken förgrena sig ut i många olika ämnen och omständigheter. Den används i allt från reflektioner kring moderskapet (förhållandet till sina döttrar beskrivs som förhållandet mellan ett sto och ett föl), i samtal med hennes sambo kring livets banaliteter och till och med för att beskriva hennes sexliv:

Piska hårdare, ber jag, och när jag
när mig trycker du moroten i min mun
och säger: Här har du, din slyna

Med detta vill jag poängtera en av de största svagheterna som jag finner med denna bok. Genom att låta åsnemotivet företräda så många olika ämnen blir det också urvattnat ganska fort. Ofta är motivet till och med helt frånvarande i många sidor och många av dessa verser skulle lika gärna kunna stå för sig själva. Ett exempel på en ganska fin sådan finns på sida 80:

Födde jag mina döttrar så nära min sorg
för att använda dem som valuta
Trodde jag att jag kunde beveka döden
genom att köpslå med min dyrbaraste tillhörighet
Kunde jag gå till mina bröders gravar med en så vidrig offergåva
Skulle jag räcka fram deras sömndruckna kroppar och viska:
Dödsplåga mot födslovärk, liv för liv

Vid andra tillfällen år åsneriet bara med i förbifarten, och vid dessa tillfällen känns det ibland som om den slarvigt påklistrats för att på ett konstlat sätt räta sig i led med bokens övergripande tematik:

Ett barn är fött på denna dag
strömmar ur högtalaren när vi ställer fram krubban
Vi tar två skålar ur dockskåpet, fyller den ena
med vatten och river morötter till den andra
Vad gör ni, undrar min älskade och släpper matkassarna
Tyst, du förstör friden, viskar jag, åsnesäsongen har börjat
Vad håller du på med, vi har väl ingen gud, säger han
Fattar du ingenting, fräser jag
hon är hungrig och vi ger henne att äta
hon är törstig och vi ger henne att dricka
Du är djävulens parodi på allting tvåfota
mumlar min älskade, ställer konserverna på hyllan.

Denna vers är från sida 111. Fetstilandet är mitt eget och har lagts till för att göra en poäng: att denna dikt skulle kunna vara autonom om det inte vore för den frasen. Den gör denna vers avhängig resten av verket för att den inte ska framstås som nonsens. Detta är kanske inget fel i sig men som läsare undrar man varför åtminstone några av dikterna i detta verk inte också fick vara mer självständiga.

Jag misstänker att Farrokhzad själv under verkets utformande också känt att tematiken ibland blivit lite för tunnslagen. Hon har låtit tre av bokens sidor (sidor 46, 73 och 90) utgöras enbart av transkriberade åsneläten (“iiiiii oooooo iiiii oooooooooooo…”) och den enda förklaringen som jag kan ge för detta är just att hon känt behovet av att stötta upp och befästa bokens bärande bjälke. Annars förstår jag inte varför dessa finns med.

Farrokhzad har det grundläggande för att vara en skicklig poet–en retorisk färdighet som uppvisar en förtrogenhet med och ett visst bemästrande av språket. Denna framträder mest i hennes mest personligt känsliga dikter. Jag återvänder till följande vers på sida 80:

Födde jag mina döttrar så nära min sorg
för att använda dem som valuta
Trodde jag att jag kunde beveka döden
genom att köpslå med min dyrbaraste tillhörighet
Kunde jag gå till mina bröders gravar med en så vidrig offergåva
Skulle jag räcka fram deras sömndruckna kroppar och viska:
Dödsplåga mot födslovärk, liv för liv

Motsättningen och oförsonligheten mellan det tragiska i kusinernas död å ena sidan och lyckan i föräldraskapet å det andra är fint och ger detta en poetisk komplexitet. Tyvärr är rader som dessa alltför få i verket som helhet dock och detta belyser det andra och största problemet som jag har med Åsnans år. Förutom den svaga tematiken består verket mestadels av väldigt ytlig poesi. Detta är framför allt tydligt i de mer politiskt färgade dikterna:

Du är en intelligent åsna, säger stoet till sitt föl
sluta säga att du vill vara häst
Men mamma, mamma, mamma
Nej, älskling, inga men
Är det sant att vi är det trögaste djuret
att vi är det lataste som gått på fyra ben
att vi är fattiglappar överrepresenterade i dumbomstatistiken
Nej, älskling, lyssna inte på det örat, det stämmer inte
Men grisen då, mamma, stämmer det med grisen
Vad pratar du om, älskling, vilken gris
Stämmer det att grisen är det lortigaste djuret
Ja, det stämmer tyvärr, håll dig borta från grisen

Det som kan ibland rättfärdiga dessa delar är Farrokhzads humor. Ett exempel på denna kommer från ett avsnitt där Farrokhzad skildrar Noa och syndafloden och åsnehonans vägran att ombordstiga arken:

Snälla du, suckade hon, vilken värdelös deal
I en evighet har jag inväntat syndafloden
jag har bett Gud göra rent hus med jorden
Ta den här dumbommen med dig
han som tror sig vara en hingst
Du har väl ett häststo bland besättningen
Låt henne para sig med honom och föda hans avkomma
så får vi slut på den här charaden en gång för alla

Men detta är i slutändan väldigt anspråkslös poesi. Det består ändå till slut av en ytlighet som inte kräver mer än läsarens ögonskummande för att ta in, ibland med en viss förtjusning, men sedan snabbt avfärda. Detta skulle egentligen passa bättre som prosa och tyvärr klingar stora delar av detta verk som förhastad och opoetisk prosa.

Adventavit asinus… vociferans et hebetissimus (jag beklagar eventuella fel–jag har fortfarande inte avslutat kursen Latin 1 på universitetet). Med detta sagt vill jag inte avfärda Athena Farrokhzad som poet. Åsnans år är, som jag redan nämnt, ett verk som visar en författarinna med vissa väsentliga grundvalar för att kunna skriva bra poesi. Tyvärr är det den svagare diktningen som får övertaget här. Jag skulle bara önska att hon inser vilka hennes styrkor är och att hon utvecklar och förtätar dessa i sitt framtida författarskap. Det får gärna ta sin tid.

Betyg:

Ho intenzione, in un futuro che sarà sempre condannato con troppi progetti, di scrivere un articolo su questo poeta che è senza dubbio uno dei migliori del Novecento italiano e allo stesso tempo uno dei più ingiustamente ignorati. Intanto spero di contribuire in un piccolo modo alla riscoperta delle poesie di Idilio dell’Era mettendo dodici delle sue opere in file pdf su questo sito.

Innanzitutto devo segnalare che questo lavoro non è merito mio. Devo ringraziare l’Associazione Idilio dell’Era che ha scannerizzato ogni pagina caricata qui. Io le ho semplicemente raccolte nelle sue opere rispettive. Cliccate i link per accederle.

Ho anche creato una pagina con alcune poesie di dell’Era che mi piacciono particolarmente. Sono accessibili qui: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/idilio-dellera-1904-1988/

Buona lettura.

• Tenerezza (1936)
• Stagione mattutina (1936)
• L’orma del poverello (1939)
• Poesie giovanili (1941)
• Voci e lamenti (1955)
• Già i colori d’autunno (1956)
• Il canzoniere del fanciullo (1962)
• Pietà degli anni sterili (1966)
• La raccolta del povero (1971)
• Polifonie di una notte diserta (1976)
• Non tornerà l’estate (1976)
• Cielo di sera (1983)

Should I have any regular reader on this website (and apart from a few personal acquaintances, I doubt whether there are any) he or she might have been able to divine my dubious attitude to the current state of poetry. To say that there has been a decline in its quality during the past six decades or so, even if there have been (and still are) poets of high quality writing during this period, seems to me to be incontrovertible.

On a broader scale, the withering of the art of verse is one that parallels the atrophy seen in the other, “traditional” art forms as well. I am not, and I doubt whether anyone is, capable of properly diagnosing it now, but there are many lamentable symptoms which I feel I can identify and which might also be at least a part of the cause of the problem. In this post I will be be singling out one of them: the death of poetry criticism.

The relationship between critic and artist has generally been framed as one of antagonism, and there are a number of examples of bitter clashes between the two. Incidentally, a post that I published on the 20th of July this year features a painting by James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold, which was the origin of one such aesthetic stoush. Reflecting on it being listed for two hundred guineas back in 1877, (about 140000 US dollars today), the great Victorian critic John Ruskin commented that

I have have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.

This led to a libel suit which ended in a loss for Ruskin, though he was only asked to compensate the plaintiff with a farthing (a quarter of a penny). Even if Ruskin’s comment here is taken as a misjudgment, there is something admirable in a critic being so firm in his opinions, particularly when they’re directed towards an artist as established as McNeill Whistler was at the time. Can anyone envision such confident causticity in a reviewer today? There are more literary reviews out there than ever before in history, with reviews of poetry collections being published every single day, and yet the quality of the criticism across the board–that fundamental knack of being able to distinguish between the good and the bad in a work and explain it, has almost disappeared entirely. At best, contemporary poetry reviewers tend to be some kind of oscillating fence-sitters, formulating vague opinions in such a nebulous waffle that they inform us very little about the poems that they have read.

What is particularly conspicuous is the lack of boldness–or, for lack of a better word, the balls–to be concretely negative about any aspect of the poetry at hand. A critic must be able to sense, for example, a lack of pathos, a presence of cliché, a clumsy prosody or an incongruousness between form and feeling when he or she reads a poem. While I am sure that some of these reviewers do pass these kinds of criticism in private (God forbid they actually happen at the universities though), they are few and far between in the places where they matter most: in the popular circulation of media such as literary journals, newspapers or even literary blogs like this. The presence of such honest criticism, as it has once existed, even when full of egregiously maligned judgments, is at least the sign of a readership and a society that takes poetry seriously.

One wonders when it all went wrong. Look at any poetry review from a hundred years ago and compare them with those that are published today. The following is an excerpt of the first contemporary review I found on the internet of T.S. Eliot’s, Prufrock and Other Observations, printed in the Times Literary Supplement in 1917:

Mr. Eliot’s notion of poetry–he calls the ‘observations’ poems–seems to be a purely analytical treatment, verging sometimes on the catalogue, of personal relations and environments, uninspired by any glimpse beyond them and untouched by any genuine rush of feeling. As, even on this basis, he remains frequently inarticulate, his ‘poems’ will hardly be read by many with enjoyment.

That’s scarcely aged well, but as much of a blunder as that comment is, it should earn some respect because it clearly communicates what its author didn’t like about Eliot’s verse. Compare that with this review that I found in The Guardian today. Now, before anyone accuses me of cherry-picking this, I will affirm this was the first review that popped up in my browser. And it doesn’t matter that it was this one I haphazardly chose, because almost all poetry reviews today read like this one does. The only reason why it comes The Guardian is simply because it is one of few periodcals that doesn’t have a paywall, so you can read it for yourselves and see. Anyway, the review starts like this:

Mark Pajak’s debut does not read like a debut: there is no fumbling beginner’s luck, no rough moments or threadbare patches – its polished craftsmanship throughout is striking. Slide suits the book’s atmosphere: these supple poems seem to be about to give you the slip but go on to prove tenacious and to linger pleasingly in the mind. Pajak is a Liverpudlian poet and his defining quality is the composure with which he encourages his readers into a false sense of security. He is a safe pair of hands writing about unsafe things.

There’s a whole lot to look at here. With the phrase “there is no fumbling beginner’s luck…” in the first sentence the reviewer is actually suggesting that good poetry can be written by accident. Does she really believe that? If so, what does that look like, then? Then there comes a contradiction between the first and second sentences: Pajak’s poetry is described as “striking” at the end of the first and then in the very next one is described as subtle and evasive (whose poems are “about to give you the slip”). The final sentence is a non-sequitur. It starts by informing us that Pajak is from Liverpool. The expectation from the rest of it therefore is that the poet’s background is reflected in his writing. Instead, it reads that “his defining quality is the composure with which he encourages his readers into a false sense of security”. I don’t know what that means, nor do I know what the connection between that and coming from Liverpool is. If you know, please inform me.

Besides being bad writing, this is bad criticism–not because it is a misjudgment but because it doesn’t say anything of worth about the poems that have been read. Can anybody reasonably say that the author has enlightened us about Pajak’s work? The contradictory descriptions and the vague explanations make that very hard.

What ought to follow in a poetry review is some kind of thematic and formal description of the book as a whole. Let’s see if the reviewer can redeem themselves here. No, they do not. Instead, without any meaningful context, the reviewer goes right into quoting an extract from the opening poem:

She chafes a flame from the lighter,
listens to its gush of butane. (…)
She holds her breath and plugs in
the hot lighter. Her lips clench white,
eyes into walnuts, the metal cap
fizzing into skin and fat and this
is how she deletes herself.

The reviewer says they like this. Well, then they should also care to explain why, but they don’t, and even admit their inability of explaining what is good about it:

Why is it that the walnuts are so good and surprising? Is it that they turn the girl into an older sufferer, eyes wrinkled in pain? Whatever the answer, the violence is mitigated by the compassion with which Pajak concludes…

One of the most irking things however is the almost fawning level of praise that the reviewer heaps on the poet. There is not a single negative comment here, and while it might be possible that there is not a single bad thing about Pajak’s verse, I cannot imagine that this is on such a level of literary greatness. Rather, the reticence in being critical is just the standard thoroughfare of contemporary poetry reviews. Just look at some of the examples of vague laudation from the rest of the text:

His elegant, unflinchingly controlled imagination;

(H)e uses his lyric gift to deliver endings that make unifying sense;

This conceit, gently underworked, comes off perfectly.

Does this convince you? Does this really make you feel like running to the closest bookshop to buy Pajak’s work? Does this make you feel, as these descriptions at least suggest to me, that we have discovered a new poetic genius? Each of the statements above ought to be exemplified and expanded upon in order for them to be credible, but once again, they aren’t and all their potential weight has therefore been all but sapped.

Before closing this introduction and going on to Pope’s poem, I want to partially refute the description (partially accentuated by the choice of painting) that I earlier mentioned of the relationship between critic and artist as being antagonistic. The critic’s sting might very well be painful, but proper criticism should at the same time be of benefit to the production of art. The good critic points to an ideal and so ought to help shape the art that is produced in that direction. Sometimes I like to think of the critic as a bit of a gardener who disturbs and occasionally hurts his plants when weeding their beds and pruning their branches but in doing so also provokes better yields. Unforunately, the one responsible for the tending of the magnificent garden that is English poetry has seemingly stopped showing up for the job and let the garden run to seed. It is certainly not just possessed by things rank and gross in nature, but it is becoming hard for its visitors to distinguish the fruits from the weeds.

Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism

The introductory text to this poem that you have just read above became significantly longer than I first thought. Originally I considered posting it separately but since it very much related to the poem at hand I decided against it. In the text above I have perhaps been a bit vague as to what good criticism is supposed to look like. I will accept that critique but will let Alexander Pope do the answering to that question since I don’t think there is any summary of the critic’s method that is as succinctly laid out as it is in Pope’s An Essay on Criticism.

This is incidentally the poem by Pope that I like the best. While I have great admiration–a real awe, even–for his almost unparalleled wit and wisdom, a lot of his other works are so grounded in the petty quarrels of his day that without consulting footnotes on every third line they are rather difficult to get through. This work was written very early in Pope’s poetic career (early drafts suggest he started it before he turned eighteen) and before he became embroiled in the spectacles of the 18th-century literary world. Perhaps this is the reason why it is easier for us to read it today.

The poem is too long to quote in its entirety, but it can be read by clicking here. I will briefly just outline what principles Pope outlines in this poem, all the while quoting from it, of course.

Form

Squeaky-clean iambic pentameter (the only exception being a one-line alexandrine used to prove a point about it’s inappropriacy in English). The whole lot is, of course, in rhyming couplets.

Analysis

The poem is divided into three parts. These shall be examined respectively.

PART I

Pope sees the critic as possessing a greater level of responsibility than the artist with regards to artistic taste since the critic is the one who more directly influences our sense of judgment. A bad critic is therefore more pernicious than a bad artist because whereas the latter will only go unnoticed the former nonetheless has a capacity to corrupt. Throughout the poem Pope tries to distinguish the characteristics of a bad and good critic. Besides an incorrect judgment, more often than not as the result of a poor education, the bad critic is characteristed as being resentful and overly proud of his own knowledge. The good and therefore honest critic is instead one that knows his own limitations:

But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a Critic’s noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your Genius, Taste, and Learning go,
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where Sense and Dulness meet.

The good critic bases his judgment on the standard of “Nature”. Pope doesn’t define what this means, but he probably means an unalloyed truth–of stating things as they are:

First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same;
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of Art.

A theme that shines through the entire work is Pope’s classicism. The ancient ideal is one that should be pursued as it was a society in which critic and poet worked for mutual benefit:

Still green with bays each ancient altar stands
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands,
Secure from flames, from Envy’s fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving Age.
See from each clime the learn’d their incense bring!
Hear in all tongues consenting Paeans ring!
In praise so just let ev’ry voice be join’d,
And fill the gen’ral chorus of mankind.
Hail, Bards triumphant! born in happier days,
Immortal heirs of universal praise!
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found!

PART II

Part II reads a bit like a practical manifesto. It starts by detailing the characteristics of a good critic. Once again, Pope stresses the need for humility as pride is the main vice that impairs our judgment. Besides this, the critic ought to be someone who is learned:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

He then warns against falling into the bad critic’s habit of not appreciating a work as a whole, but letting minor imperfections, which there will always be, be a sort lynchpin on which the whole also collapses:

In Wit, as Nature, what affects our hearts
Is not th’exactness of peculiar parts;
‘Tis not a lip or eye we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.

In what follows one gets the feeling that Pope is not turning towards the critic as much as he is towards the poet. Here he lays out some principles on good and bad practice when writing poetry. The first thing that he takes aim at is pretention: a lofty eloquence devoid of feeling:

False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on every place;
The face of Nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay;
But true expression, like th’unchanging sun,
Clears and improves whate’er it shines upon;

Then Pope goes into the technicalities of metre, prosody and rhyme. The poet should avoid clichéd rhymes and any lines of verse that are longer than a pentameter:

While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where’er you find ”the cooling western breeze,”
In the next line, it ”whispers thro’ the trees;”
If crystal streams ”with pleasing murmurs creep,”
The reader’s threaten’d (not in vain) with ”sleep;”
Then, at the last and only couplet, fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

Besides this, the form and sound of the verse should capture the nature of the imagery that they contain:

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labours, and the words move slow:

After laying forth these criteria on poetry he once again turns to the critic. He lambasts judgment that is partial to a certain school and cautions qualifying a work based on anything outside the work itself, such as the individual who created it:

Some ne’er advance a judgment of their own,
But catch the spreading notion of the town;
They reason and conclude by precedent,
And own stale nonsense which they ne’er invent.
Some judge of authors’ names, not works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

Pope says that bad critics will always exist and this explains why all great artists have always been subjected to critical attacks in their lifetime. If nothing else, Pope suggests that it is because of envy:

Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,
Zoilus again would start up from the dead.
Envy will Merit as its shade pursue,
But like a shadow proves the substance true;

Then we return to the theme of the supremacy of the ancients. He even suggests that in comparison, the best of his contemporaries’ poetry will not survive much beyond their lifetimes:

No longer now that Golden Age appears,
When partiarch wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev’n that can boast:
Our sons their fathers’ failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is shall Dryden be.

He ends Part II by returning to the old principle: a good critic should be humble- and not be too harsh with artistic shortcomings since these will innocuously pass by. One of the main things that he admonishes the critic from stooping to is vulgarity and in this alone does he give them license to be ruthless in their task:

These monsters, Critics! with your darts engage,
Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!
Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice,
Will needs mistake an author into vice:
All seems infected that th’infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye.

Part III

We follow on directly from Part II. Pope has portrayed the ideal critic now and it is this kind of critic that existed in ancient times:

But where’s the man who counsel can bestow,
Still pleas’d to teach, and yet not proud to know?
Unbiass’d or by favour or by spite;
Not dully prepossess’d nor blindly right;
Tho’ learn’d, well bred, and tho’ well bred sincere;
Modestly bold, and humanly severe;
Who to a friend his faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the merit of a foe;
Bless’d with a taste exact, yet unconfin’d,
A knowledge both of books and humankind;
Gen’rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;
And love to praise, with reason on his side?
Such once were critics; such the happy few
Athens and Rome in better ages knew.

Examples of such critics are Horace, Longinus, Quintillian and Aristotle (The Stagyrite).

Although we might never live up to the greatness of the ancients, the poem ends on a somewhat optimistic note, however–indicating that the spirit that gave impetus to the learning and the artistic sense of the ancient world is rising from its ashes and spreading itself north of the Mediterranean. Pope, however, does not treat The British isles particularly well in this, charging them, with some small exceptions, with still being particularly hostile the ideals of the ancient world:

But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,
Their ancient bounds the banish’d Muses pass’d;
Thence arts o’er all the northern world advance,
But critic learning flourish’d most in France;
The rules a nation born to serve obeys,
And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.
But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised,
And kept unconquer’d and uncivilized;
Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,
We still defied the Romans, as of old.

En verklighet (drömd)

Jag tror inte på ett liv efter detta
Jag tror på detta liv
Och nu, när saven slutat stiga och jag har hunnit
till sensommarn, min årstid, minns jag
hur ångestfullt jag förr tyckte syrsorna filade
tycker så inte längre.

Det är redan skumt
och åkervägens smala rödskiftande band
försvinner in i dungar, löper ut ur dungar:
Om varje vägkrök ett mysterium
av färgernas och ljusets egenliv
Det är skönt att gå
En gammal gärdsgård är också med
Det är den stund då stenarna tänker som bäst
Det är den stund då denna stora varelse
andas och doftar. Vilka färger i skymningen!
Trädorna lila, stenar i tankfullt skiftande blått
och lövskogen så rik på skiftningar
som vore den sitt eget sus!
Ett gult löv är ännu en dyrbarhet
På ena sidan vägen sädesfält
och på den andra sidan barrskog
och säden gul till röd och i skylarna guldbrun
och den sandröda vägen, jag älskar sådana enkla vägar
bara för gående och för grova fordon efter fromma hästar
Sådana vägar tycks mig lika goda som någon livsfilosofi

Och varje landskap, varje skiftning i landskapet, innehåller
                                            alla möjliga landskap
och detta liv innehåller alla möjliga liv:
Syrsornas, lysmaskens, grävlingens – alla tänkbara liv
Och det är detta liv som skall fortsätta, som fortsätter
också högre och högre upp, i andra sfärer
Där pågår just nu detta liv
som också är kvällsmolnens liv, och stjärnornas, och de
                                           befolkade världarnas,
och de osynligas liv, och de dödas
ty något annat liv finns inte:
Alla lever de och skall leva
och alla ger av sitt ljus åt alla och lånar sitt ljus åt alla
och alla gömmer sitt ljus för alla och lever av och på alla
och det är inte ett gott och inte ett ont
Det bara är

Det finns en lyckokänsla som kommer sällan men kommer
                                           ändå
Det finns detta vårt förnimmandes vittnesbörd
och detta att vara till.
Flyktigt är allt medvetande
men flyktigt är inte fåfängligt.
Så sluts min bukoliska sång. 

Är skrivande stund, den 3:e augusti, för tidig för att betecknas “sensomrig”? Under dagen väntas 28 grader där jag bor så det kan kännas lite väl absurt och brådmoget att betrakta den som något slags höstlig övergång, men för denna dikts skull kommer jag att anta att så ändå är fallet. Vad vår världs tidsbundna flyktighet angår kan jag inte heller bry mig, ty inom detta mästerverks skapelsesfär står tiden för evigt still för mig. I dess kraft kommer såväl den mörkaste februaridag som den mest brinnande augusti att tyglas och omvandlas.

Jag har nämligen tänkt, ända sedan denna webbsidas begynnelse för ungefär ett år sedan, att skriva ett inlägg om denna dikt då det troligen är den svenskspråkiga dikt som jag har närmast hjärtat, och lite som en förälskelsesaga kom den till mig under helt oförväntade omständigheter. Det var omkring tretton år sedan (kanske är det samspelet av dikt och minne som bedrar, men jag vill faktiskt minnas att det var en sensommardag). Jag var en nybliven universitetsstudent och befann mig i den tysta läsesalen på Stockholms universitetsbibliotek för att läsa ur någon påtvingad faktatext. Under en av de korta pauserna som man tar från denna möda för att blott låta ögonen vandra så fann vi varandra. Inramad på väggen, precis ovanför mig: där hängde den. Huruvida den stod där i dess helhet eller bara som ett fragment kommer jag inte längre ihåg, men jag vet att jag på en gång var handfallen och att resten är historia, som man säger. Den har allt sedan dess varit mig en trogen och givande tröstare i livet och jag hoppas sannerligen att den står kvar på samma vägg i universitetsbiblioteket än idag.

Av det jag kan tyda är detta en dikt som inte är bland Ekelöfs mest uppmärksammade och antologiserade. Det är dock synd då det onekligen är bland hans, för att inte tala om det svenska lyrikens, bästa.

Form

Frivers. Med undantag av den sista strofen, notera avsaknaden av punkter för att markera slutet på syntaktiska meningar. I stället måste man lägga märke till de rader där Ekelöf börjar med stora bokstäver–där avslutas och börjas nya meningar.

Analys

Detta är inledningsdikten i samlingen Om hösten från 1951. Då var Ekelöf i 50-årsåldern och sålunda är både “hösten” från samlingens titel och “sensommarn” (“min årstid”!) som denna dikt utspelar sig under personligt symboliska: de är tecken på den annalkande döden. Poeten försöker dock inte bestrida den utan omfamnar dess slutgiltighet här. Därför kan han också finna något vackert i det hela:

Jag tror inte på ett liv efter detta
Jag tror på detta liv
Och nu, när saven slutat stiga och jag har hunnit
till sensommarn, min årstid, minns jag
hur ångestfullt jag förr tyckte syrsorna filade
tycker så inte längre.

Det som kommer i följande strof måste vara en av de vackraste landskapsskildringarna i det svenska språket. I dess sammanvävning av natur och traditionella, kultiverade landskap träder någonting evinnerligt vackert fram. Acceptansen av dödens slutgiltighet i föregående strof ska inte ses som något ateistiskt manifest–detta är ett verk av djup religiös prägel. Notera därför ord och fraser som “mysterium“, “denna stora varelse” och “fromma hästar” här:

Det är redan skumt
och åkervägens smala rödskiftande band
försvinner in i dungar, löper ut ur dungar:
Om varje vägkrök ett mysterium
av färgernas och ljusets egenliv
Det är skönt att gå
En gammal gärdsgård är också med
Det är den stund då stenarna tänker som bäst
Det är den stund då denna stora varelse
andas och doftar. Vilka färger i skymningen!
Trädorna lila, stenar i tankfullt skiftande blått
och lövskogen så rik på skiftningar
som vore den sitt eget sus!
Ett gult löv är ännu en dyrbarhet
På ena sidan vägen sädesfält
och på den andra sidan barrskog
och säden gul till röd och i skylarna guldbrun
och den sandröda vägen, jag älskar sådana enkla vägar
bara för gående och för grova fordon efter fromma hästar
Sådana vägar tycks mig lika goda som någon livsfilosofi

I nästa strof skildras den vitala livskraften som finns i detta landskap, och hur alla detaljer i landskapet genomsyras av denna–såväl levande som icke-levande ting. Jag har redan nämnt att inledningen av dikten uttrycker en acceptans av livets förgänglighet. Detta må vara sant för det individuella ödet, men i denna strof kommer också en tröst om att livet på det stora hela kommer att fortsätta. Ekelöf beskriver hur alla liv rör sig uppåt och sammanblandas till en manifestation av en abstrakt, universell essens:

Och varje landskap, varje skiftning i landskapet, innehåller
                                            alla möjliga landskap
och detta liv innehåller alla möjliga liv:
Syrsornas, lysmaskens, grävlingens – alla tänkbara liv
Och det är detta liv som skall fortsätta, som fortsätter
också högre och högre upp, i andra sfärer
Där pågår just nu detta liv
som också är kvällsmolnens liv, och stjärnornas, och de
                                           befolkade världarnas,
och de osynligas liv, och de dödas
ty något annat liv finns inte:
Alla lever de och skall leva
och alla ger av sitt ljus åt alla och lånar sitt ljus åt alla
och alla gömmer sitt ljus för alla och lever av och på alla
och det är inte ett gott och inte ett ont
Det bara är

I och med den där sista meningen (“Det bara är“) kan man på sätt och viss konstatera att dikten är klar. Sista strof ska ses som poetens eftertanke:

Det finns en lyckokänsla som kommer sällan men kommer
                                           ändå
Det finns detta vårt förnimmandes vittnesbörd
och detta att vara till.
Flyktigt är allt medvetande
men flyktigt är inte fåfängligt.
Så sluts min bukoliska sång. 

Denna stora skald, vars diktning, och inte minst personliga liv, har komplicerats av en djup psykisk och själslig kris har nu, nästan lite osedvanligt, redogjort för denna så hänförande vackra och harmoniska skildring av tillvaron. Han är dock väl medveten att denna sinnesstämning inte kommer att bestå (det är “en lyckokänsla som kommer sällan”) och därtill är den också någonting som inte är helt verkligt (observera titeln–det är en en “drömd” verklighet). Detta behöver dock inte betyda att den är av ringare värde.

Rocket Show

As warm north rain breaks over suburb houses,
Streaming on window glass, its drifting hazes
Covering harbour ranges with a dense hood:
I recall how eighteen months ago I stood
Ankle-deep in sand on an Otago beach
Watching the fireworks flare over strident surf and bach,
In brain grey ash, in heart the sea-change flowing
Of one love dying and another growing.

For love grows like the crocus bulb in winter
Hiding from snow and from itself the tender
Green frond in embryo; but dies as rockets die
(White sparks of pain against a steel-dark sky)
With firebird wings trailing an arc of grief
Across a night inhuman as the grave,
Falling at length a dull and smouldering shell
To frozen dunes and the wash of the quenching swell.

There was little room left where the crowd had trampled
Grass and lupin bare, under the pines that trembled
In gusts from the sea.  On a sandhillock I chose
A place to watch from.  Then the rockets rose,
O marvellous, like self-destroying flowers
On slender stems, with seed-pods full of flares,
Raining down amber, scarlet, pennies from heaven
On the skyward straining heads and still sea-haven.
Had they brought death, we would have stood the same,
I think, in ecstasy at the world-end flame.

It is the rain streaming reminds me of
Those ardent showers, cathartic love and grief.
As I walked home through the cold street by moon-light,
My steps ringing in the October night,
I thought of our strange lives, the grinding cycle
Of death and renewal come to full circle,
And of man’s heart, that blind Rosetta stone,
Mad as the polar moon, decipherable by none.

While certainly distinct from each other, I really believe that Australian and New Zealand poetry ought to be read and appreciated as belonging to a common tradition. Notwithstanding the obvious historical and cultural similarities between the two, the main reason, I hold, is that a more profound reciprocal readership would enrich and widen our understanding of what Australian and New Zealand poetry is and can be. Shortly put, we have much to learn and gain of each other.

I think I might have mentioned elsewhere on this blog how unknown many of the best Australian poets are among an international audience, but, speaking as an Australian, I can’t say that we have given our antipodean brethren any more of a fair go. During secondary school in Australia we must have studied a score of Australian poets but not a mention was made of a single one from New Zealand. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that this ignorance lived on until very recently when I discovered the poetry of James K. Baxter, who, I am further ashamed to admit, is the only New Zealand poet represented in this website’s anthology of English-language poetry. His poetry had been unjustly overlooked by me since it is as good as any written by an Australian.

A few years ago a deep blow was dealt to Baxter’s posthumous legacy when it was revealed, through the public surfacing of a letter he had written to a friend, that he had committed marital rape. While the execrableness of the act is beyond words, it should not take away anything from his poetry, which ought to and will live unconditionally on through its own merit. Nonetheless, I can well imagine that it has already led to or will lead to the partial banishing of Baxter’s poetry from libraries, bookshops and school curricula (judging google searches for his poetry, it seems like his poetry is regularly studied at school in New Zealand). Denying the immense heritage bequeathed by this very fine artist is tragic and will be to the great detriment of New Zealand culture and literature in the future.

Form

Three stanzas of semi-bound verse. While there are some genuine rhyming couplets and lines of iambic pentameter, much of the rhyming is constituted of half-rhymes and much of the poem is metrically irregular.

Analysis

The first three lines describe a rainfall and over a landscape. This recalls a memory in the poet’s mind, when just eighteen months ago, he was standing on a beach in the Otago region of New Zealand, watching a fireworks display. At that moment in his life the poet found himself in a melancholy state (“in brain grey ash”). The cause behind this must have been a loss of love but the end of the first stanza indicates that a new love is starting to take root: “one love dying and another growing.”

The second stanza is a description of how love begins and ends and the connection between this and the memory of the fireworks display is made clearer here. Love is born hidden and unnoticed (“like the crocus bulb in winter”) and dies, like the rocket, in an explosion of anguish before extinguishing into vacuity:

as rockets die
(White sparks of pain against a steel-dark sky)
With firebird wings trailing an arc of grief
Across a night inhuman as the grave,

In the following stanza Baxter returns to the memory. He recalls the crowded beach and everybody’s attention at watching the fireworks. The fireworks are made ambivalent here: on the one hand they are something beautiful (“marvellous”) but also violent (“self-destroying”). Their connection to something much more perilous is made at the end of the stanza, where Baxter writes that the crowd would have been just as rapt looking upon the fatal flares of a battlefield:

Had they brought death, we would have stood the same,
I think, in ecstasy at the world-end flame.”

In the final stanza the poet returns briefly to the present before returning to his memory. As he looks on the falling rain he was reminded of the falling flares of the fireworks. He then recalls walking home after the display. While doubtlessly still melancholy, there is something soothing in his understanding of the cyclical, ever-shifting nature of love:

As I walked home through the cold street by moon-light,
My steps ringing in the October night,
I thought of our strange lives, the grinding cycle
Of death and renewal come to full circle,

The poet does not, however, want to indicate that he has found an answer or solution to his problems–the only discovery he has made is of love’s enigmatic mystery:

man’s heart, that blind Rosetta stone,
Mad as the polar moon, decipherable by none.

Melodi

Bara du går över markerna,
lever var källa,
sjunger var tuva ditt namn.
Skyarna brinna och parkerna
susa och fälla
lövet som guld i din famn.

Och vid de skummiga stränderna
hör jag din stämmas
vaggande vågsorl till tröst.
Räck mig de älskade händerna.
Mörkret skall skrämmas.
Kvalet skall släppa mitt bröst.

Bara du går över ängarna,
bara jag ser dig
vandra i fjärran förbi,
darra de eviga strängarna.
Säg mig vem ger dig
makten som blir melodi?

Denna dikt av Bo Bergman är troligen mer känd för dess fina lilla tonsättning av Wilhelm Stenhammar. Om läsaren inte är bekant med denna uppmanar jag honom/henne att lyssna på den (länk till stycket finns på slutet av detta inlägg) endast efter att ha läst dikten i dess helhet några gånger. Skälet till detta är inte för att dikten nödvändigtvis är bättre men helt enkelt därför att om texten inte också kan betraktas självständigt så riskerar en stor del av dess egna kraft att förskingras i musiken.

Bergmans dikt ger uttryck för en kärleksfull ömhet–en skör, intim, nästan tystlåten sådan. I Stenhammars tonsättning ryms kanske den vemodskänsla som dikten också förkroppsligar, men takten känns för rask för diktens kortare versrader och pianots och sångens ibland framböljande kraft klingar ganska främmande i jämförelse med textens övergripande sinnesstämning.

Detta påstående ska inte ses som en brist i Stenhammars konstnärskap, och jag vill gärna framhäva att samspelet mellan text och musik i tonsättningen ska betraktas som fulländat i sig. Dock vill jag samtidigt påpeka att vi bör förhålla oss lite skeptiska till försök att förena och harmoniera olika konstformer utan att den ena underordnas den andra. När musik och litteratur sammandrabbas, som i detta fall, blir det oftast den senare som får ge vika. Vem lyssnar på en lied, en motett eller en opera för litteraturens skull? Knappt någon.

Form

Tre strofer med sex rader vardera. Rimmen följer mönstret ABCABC. Metriskt sett består raderna av fallande versfötter (daktyler/trokéer).

Analys

På många sätt ger alla tre strofer uttryck för samma mening och känsla, och därför är det lite svårt att analysera denna dikt strof för strof, som jag annars brukar göra. I dikten iakttar diktaren en person som han är förälskad i (för enkelhets skull ska jag förmoda att det är en kvinna, fast det behöver inte nödvändigtvis vara så). Huruvida denna individ är någon han känner intimt är oklart då det finns ett påtagligt fysiskt avstånd mellan betraktare och den som är betraktad–han ser enbart henne “vandra i fjärran förbi”.

Dikten är sinnligt sett väldigt visuell och i samtliga tre strofer står den älskade i förgrunden mot ett landskap. Å ena sidan sammansmälts hon något med omgivningen (notera till exempel hur hennes röst blandas med vågsorlet i den andra strofen) men samtidigt får hon genom kärlekens kraft ett bemästrande över denna–hon ger liv åt världen (“Bara du går över markerna/lever var källa”) och kan avlägsna det onda (“mörkret skall skrämmas”) och därför liksom lovprisar landskapen henne (“sjunger var tuva ditt namn”). I den tredje strofen träder diktaren in något mer i texten då det nämns att hon också besitter en makt som väcker något i honom–inte bara en kärlekskänsla, utan en impuls att sjunga och dikta om den, därav diktens titel.