I år är det exakt femtio år sedan Bruno K. Öijers debutsamling, Sång För Anarkismen, gavs ut. Denne skald, som från första början utmärktes som rebell och som själv uttryckt sin önskan att krossa det kulturella etablissemanget kan ironiskt nog, efter ett halvt sekels författarskap, på sätt och vis räknas bland sin värsta fiendes skara. Eller hur annars ska man klassa någon som är troligen den mest lästa poeten i Sverige idag? Någon vars diktsamlingar säljer obegripligt många exemplar, som vunnit flera av de största kultur- och litteraturpriserna i landet, som lyckats erhålla en statlig inkomstgaranti för sina verk, som uppträtt med några av Sveriges största musikgrupper och läst upp sina dikter på landets mest anrika scener?

På sätt och vis, ja. Men det vore allt detta till trots ändå orättvist att karaktärisera Öijer och hans poesi som något slags bråte som dragits med i den svenska kulturvärldens enkelriktade ström, för trots att vi lever i ett land vars diktare förväntas antingen börja sina banor inom den gråa och stelbenta akademin eller ännu sämre, på de själsutplånande skrivarskolorna (jag tittar på dig, Biskops Arnö), och sedan underhålla sin konst genom några av de mer etablerade kulturella institutionerna, har Öijer faktiskt upptäckt och mognat till sin konst på det enda korrekta sättet–genom att följa sin egen väg och låta äventyret skola honom. Och ända in till våra egna dagar skulle jag inte våga påstå att hans konst gett vika för något annat.

Denna text har för avsikt att på ett övergripande sätt presentera och utvärdera Bruno K. Öijers diktarskap. Det har gått nästan ett decennium sedan han lät utge sitt senaste verk, och med tanke på Öijers ålder (och låt oss vara ärliga–den eviga cigarettlågan mellan hans fingrar måste ha lagt beslag på ett och annat levnadsår) är det inte givet att det kommer fler. Men även om ett nytt diktverk skulle släppas imorgon tycker jag att avsikten är berättigad eftersom Öijer sedan länge varit en mogen poet–en konstnär som länge suttit på kulmen av sina krafter och som inte gett något större tecken på att drastiskt ändra den stil och den diktarröst som han blivit hemmastadd i.

För att göra allt detta kommer jag att betrakta och kommentera verken kronologiskt genom att dela Öijers författarskap in i enligt mig tre tydliga perioder: först den ungdomliga framväxten från Sång För Anarkismen (1973) till och med Giljotin (1981), därefter den poetiska mogenheten mellan Medan Giftet Verkar (1990) till Dimman Av Allt (2001) och slutligen den vinter-höstliga elegisten från Svart Som Silver (2008) och Och Natten Viskade Annabel Lee (2014). Jag kommer att kortfattat poängtera verkens generella drag och visa upp deras styrkor och svagheter genom att citera ett antal dikter som förekommer däri. Avslutningsvis tänker jag ge en kritisk kommentar kring Öijers parallella karriär som estradpoet, vilken jag anser bör betraktas separat från hans faktiska diktarskap.


1973-1981: ungdomens poetiska ökenfärd

Jag har läst någonstans att Öijers andra samling, Fotografier Av Nattens Leende från 1974, skrevs klart innan Sång För Anarkismen, vilken gavs ut året innan. Även om detta inte är sant och fastän det finns påtagliga skillnader dem emellan skrevs och utgavs de i så kort anslutning till varandra att man kan i viss mån betrakta dem gemensamt. Verken, som framför allt den första titeln antyder, är de mest direkt politiskt engagerande i hela Öijers författarskap. Mer än en medömkan gentemot systemets offer drivs de dock oftare av ett förakt och bitterhet gentemot dess överherrar:

Jag ser de kambodjanska småbarnen
med hjärnor besatta av fågelsträck
men tvingade att anfalla över risfälten
med inoljade kulsprutor under armarna
ser verduns slagfält på vykort
i de svenska militärförläggningarna
ser generalerna som tror sig svepa mantlarna
högt över komethimlarna, men som
sveper dem i långa rörelser över sina egna gravmonument…

Ur  “Fotografier Av Nattens Leende” (1974)

Det här är ganska rakt-på-sak, men med detta vill jag inte ge intrycket att Öijers skrifter i dessa första verk är lättillgängliga. De är tidvis mycket svåra och framför allt i Sång För Anarkismen finns det långa, prosaliknande stycken som jag efter mycket omläsning bara kan förstå som svamlande nonsens. Öijer har konstaterat att sitt språkbruk är tillräckligt enkelt för trettonåringar att förstå–okej, då skulle jag vilja att han förklarar för oss på ett konkret sätt vad detta kan betyda:

jag behöver inte veta ett dyft om hur heliga birgitta onanerar i takt med lewi pethrus’ tennsoldater. frågan är vem som gjort alla dom här arresteringarna i technicolor & om bankägarna har tänkt sej några testamenten under den närmaste tiden. bartolomeinätterna kommer instormande i ditt hus & det spelar ingen roll hur många känsliga fingrar du har, när de dövstumma tvingats sälja horoskop om DIN lycka ute på restaurangerna…

“till dom meningsfulla textförfattarna” ur Sång För Anarkismen (1973)

De första åtta åren av Bruno K. Öijers författarskap inrymmer inte färre än fem diktböcker och det vore, även om jag betraktar dessa kollektivt som ungdomsverk, fel att inte uppmärksamma de stora stilistiska och tematiska skillnaderna som finns bland dem. Faktum är att det är dessa skillnader som fått mig att dra slutsatsen att samlingarna utgör ett slags spaning efter en egen poetisk röst och vision och just därför är de mer stilistiskt utsvävande. I C/O Night från 1976, till exempel, är dikterna mer lättförståeliga, mindre fragmentariska och mindre politiska. Ett exempel på ett stilistiskt jippo som endast förekommer i denna bok är att vartenda ord i dikterna börjar med en stor bokstav (se det nästkommande citatet för att se ett exempel på detta).

Öijers poetiska värld är sällan en som skildrar det hänförande i kärleken eller som söker fånga naturens skönhet. Hans dikter är oftast kalla, mörka och nära döden. När jag läser dem inbillar jag mig att de nästan alltid utspelar sig i en övergiven stadsmiljö med ett disigt höstregn och en växlande stank av cigarettrök och alkohol i bakgrunden. Men ibland är detta övermäktigande. Problemet med denna iskalla, ofta nihilistiska skildringen av tillvaron i de tidigare dikterna är att det finns en påtaglig avsaknad av patos som fördjupar tankarna och bildspråket som han vill få fram. I dess avsaknad framstår dikterna snarare som ganska ytliga och pretentiösa. Här är ett typiskt exempel på en sådan dikt från C/O Night:

Jag Jagades
Från Rum Till Rum
Männen Satt
På Kuddar av Mässing
& Slog I Lagböckerna
Med Sina Korta Spjut
Varje Gång
Jag Talade Gick
Ett År
Varje Gång Jag
Ville Röka
Tände Dom Eld
På En Av Mina Fingrar
Min Vän
Steg Upp På Golvet,
Öppnade Sitt Huvud
& Låtsades
Köpa Mej Fri
Han Försvann
Som En Klockklang
& Släpades Ut
Rik På Pengar

“Sömn” ur C/O Night (1976)

Referenser till amerikansk popkultur–alltifrån blues och Hank Williams till gamla westerns–figurerar stort i de flesta av Öijers verk. I Spelarens Sten från 1979 känns det ofta som om detta går något längre, där många av dikterna klingar nästan mer som låttexter än dikter i egen bemärkelse. Här ser vi det i ett av verkens mest citerade verser, Blå Bouquet:

Det tickar regn, min
krackelerade tjej
ta hem
ta hem till din samling
vi möts
på king lone’s bjudning
förklädda
till ett obotligt sår…

Det tickar regn, min
krackelerade tjej
ta hem
ta hem till en uppkavlad arm
vi skiljs
på king lone’s bjudning
klädda
i såpbubblor & kokain
krossblåa ögon,
jag är ett stick i bara golv
hud hittar mej
bär ett skadat steg, bär det skönt…

Från “Blå Bouquet” ur Spelarens Sten (1979)

Men detta kan knappt anses tillföra något större djup till texterna–de känns snarare oftast lika obetydliga och tomma som låttexterna som de påminner om.

Nästa samling, Giljotin, från 1981 är lite för lång för att kunna underhålla läsarens intresse. Dikterna här är ofta kortare än i tidigare samlingar men därtill i regel mer slapphänta och förglömliga. Verket inleds av en olidligt lång svit kortdikter vid namn Confetti som är ganska typisk för verket som helhet. Jag har lite svårt att citera något utdrag från denna men kan i stället ta en senare dikt i samlingen, Dambyte, som känns lika mycket representativ:

Sexuellt sent
sexuellt godis

du förskingrar mej, jag dej

sexuellt betsel
sexuellt golv

vild kärlek kan inte ridas in

sexuell bomull
sexuell gäst

du förskingrar mej, jag dej

“Dambyte” ur Giljotin (1981)

Boken innehåller dock några ljusglimtar: skymtningar av en poet som är på väg att finna den försonande emotionella kraft som skänker liv åt all konst, och som han i framtiden också kommer att finna. Här anas den i en av Öijers mest populära texter, Lät Dom Ligga:

…

Jag kunde ha halat upp två röda för nån sjuk själ
som låg begravd i neon och bensin
på baksätet i en svettig greyhoundbuss
“se här,” skulle jag ha sagt, “dom här löven
låg och vänta på mej en natt i New York City
och ska sanningen fram
så fanns det inget annat jag kände nån värme för
på den tiden
…

“Lät Dom Ligga” ur Giljotin (1981)

1990-2001: Mognaden

Som jag tidigare antytt var de första åren av Öijers författarskap mycket produktiva. Förutom fem relativt stora diktsamlingar som avlöste varandra i snabb följd kan man också uppmärksamma Öijers verksamhet inom poesikollektivet Vesuvius (grundat 1974) utgivningen av en samling Bob Dylan-översättningar (1976), redigerandet av en antologi med svenska sjuttiotalspoeter med titeln Mot alla odds (1977) och till och med en roman, Chivas Regal (1978).

Det som följer efter 1981:s Giljotin är dock en lång tystnad. Många läsare måste förmodligen ha tänkt att Öijer lagt ner pennan för gott men det plötsliga publicerandet av Medan Giftet Verkar år 1990 kom som en oanad orkan. Om Öijers dvala inte var en tid av något slags existentiell rannsakan så måste åren mellan 1981 och 1990 ha åtminstone innefattat ett radikalt omtänkande av poesiskrivandet till att bli en process som var mycket mer långsam, mer eftertänksam, mer introspektiv. 

Medan Giftet Verkar ses som Öijers stora genombrott men jag skulle snarare påstå att det är ett uppbrott med den tidigare diktningen. De första fem samlingarna prövar många olika stilgrepp och teman men förutom någon enstaka strof eller fras här och var har jag faktiskt svårt att finna en enda bra dikt bland dem. Helt annorlunda är det nu. Här framträder en poet som man känner har hittat hem någonstans. Den stora avsaknaden av känsla som jag tidigare nämnt, och som jag började frukta var bortom Öijers räckvidd, kommer böljande ut här i ett flertal av verkets dikter:

jag försöker minnas
första gången jag greps
av det overkliga i människors existens
när jag såg dom röra sig i fönstren
mitt över gatan
och undrade vad som drev dom
vad som fick dom att fortsätta
men den här gången
känner jag bara en enorm trötthet
medan staden och kvällsljuset tar över
och sveper in mej i en vaggande klang
av förhistorisk sorg
som långsamt vibrerar och suddas ut
mellan väggarna i rummet.

Ur “Medan Giftet Verkar” (1990)

Öijers tematik är fortfarande det dystra men det är för första gången en genuin lidelse–en genuin sorg som ersatt den något konstlade ilskan och bitterheten som tidigare dominerat hans diktning. Det är en sorg över det som gått och häller på att gå förlorat, över ensamheten i åldrandet, över en fruktan för döden.

Jag kallar denna tid för en mogenhet också för att den stil och den tematik som finns i Medan Giftet Verkar är snarlika dem som man finner i de påföljande samlingarna, framför allt i Det Förlorade Ordet (1995) och Dimman Av Allt (2001), vilka brukar räknas ihop som ett slags trilogi. Följande dikt från 2001 skulle lika gärna passa in i samlingarna från 1990 och 1995:

Längs hans härjade
föråldrade ansikte faller
stygn av lycka
när han grävt i minnesjorden
efter det begravda fågelskelettet
men i stället
av en ren tillfällighet
råkat hitta sitt gamla vattenfärgsglas
och genast känt igen det
på dom intorkade flagorna av färg
varje gång han böjer sej ner
för att ta upp det regnar solgula streck ur hörnet av himlen
skorstensrök blåser åt ett håll
prinsessans klänning åt ett annat
hon viskar till mot honom
med ögon i rinnande blått
och varje gång han
sträcker ut sin hand efter henne
svävar hon bort
hon svävar längre och längre bort
från honom

Ur “Dimman Av Allt” (2001)

Många av dikterna har en existentiell–ja, till och med en religiös prägel ibland–något som oftast varit helt frånvarande tidigare:

vi föddes
med en oerhörd saknad
genom ett
rusande tågfönster
om natten
ser du en skymt
av rymdens handstil
omöjlig att tyda
någonstans
i den slingrande väven
av gnistrande bläck
finns förklaringen
till våra liv

Ur “Dimman Av Allt” (2001)

2008-2014: Den föråldrade konstnären

I Öijers två sista verk, Svart som Silver (2008) och Och Natten Viskade Annabel Lee (2014) lyckas Öijer inte överträffa sina tidigare verk. Jag vill inte nödvändigtvis hävda att diktningen försämrats då bägge innehåller sina pärlor men han skriver nu som en medvetet gammal man som trots sin berömdhet ej blivit lyckligare–utan mer ensam, mer förbittrad. Den annalkande döden gör sig också mer påmind här. Dikten Skogen från den senaste samlingen handlar om skrivandet och hur döden inte bara blivit en inspirationskälla utan också ett slags konstnärligt mål:

…
här är jag äntligen fri
och kan lägga mej ner i skymningen
höra himmel och vind blanda sina spåkort
här finns varken väg eller stigar
bara Aeneas fotspår
jag vet inte hur länge
han drivit runt skogen
men vi har saker gemensamt
den gyllene grenen värker i hans hand
han letar efter sina döda
vill komma under jord.

“Skogen” ur Och Natten Viskade Annabel Lee (2014)

Men det finns ändå en konkret försämring som kan antydas i några av dessa senare dikter. Det förkroppsligar sig i ett tydligare egoistiskt högmod–i orden från en man som från sin tron ser ned på de oupplysta, hjärndöda massorna och föraktar dem för det. Det finns någonting ofantligt hycklande i en man som å ena sidan kan uttrycka sig på detta vis i en intervju med Sydsvenskan år 1996:

“Att kalla mig posör är detsamma som att kalla Jesu död på korset för en pose”

Bruno “Kristus” Öijer

och å andra sidan skriva en dikt som uttrycker följande:

Jag har enkla vanor
sitter hellre i ett tomt rum och talar med luft
än umgås med människor
som ständigt överskattar sig själva
och sin egen betydelse
när du sticker en nål genom dom
tar inget emot.

”Enkla vanor” ur Och Natten Viskade Annabel Lee (2014)

Jag vill inte påstå att ömsintheten helt flytt Öijer, men det finns en påtaglig saknad av den i några dikter, och detta till deras stora försämring.

Ett slutord om showmannen Bruno K Öijer

Jag, som kanske de flesta andra som upptäckt Öijer på senare tid, lärde först känna dennes dikter genom de uppmärksammade poesiuppläsningarna som han gör landet om och vilka närmast efterliknar rockkonserter utan musiken, och när jag lyssnade på dem för första gången ogillade jag instinktivt hans poesi. Jag har inget emot poesiuppläsning i sig, men eftersom bra diktning är alldeles för komplex för att helt uppskatta genom det talade ordets flyktighet anser jag att man med poesin inte kan skilja på skrift och tal.

Idealet är kanske en blandning båda, men när estradpoesin och dess allra värsta avkomma, poetry slam, gör denna avsågning och förvandlar poesin till något tillräckligt urvattnat för att helt begripa vid en lyssning och sedan ännu värre, göra det till ett egenkärt spektakel med en publik som förväntas applådera och jubla för dess clownshow har jag inget annat än avsmak. Det absurda i fallet Öijer är att han faktiskt skrivit dikter som är bra på deras egna grunder men där hela showen–allt ifrån mascaran och Bob Dylan-utstyrseln till det irriterande, väsande tonfallet och den vrålande publiken vilseleder lyssnaren från dikternas faktiska värde.

Öijer själv stoltserar med att genom allt detta ha “befriat den svenska poesin från boksidan” (Babel, 2014), men i en värld där seriös litteratur fjärmar sig alltmer från en populär läsekrets och där läskunskaperna sjunker är detta djupt beklagligt, framför allt eftersom en av Öijers styrkor är att han kan just framföra komplexa idéer och känslor med ett jordnära men ändå konkrekt skriftligt språk. Hans skrivna dikter skulle sålunda kunna vara en bra inkörsport för någon som vill upptäcka poesins värld men genom att reducera dem till scenkväde har Öijer varken befriat eller utvidgat den svenska poesin överhuvudtaget–han har snarare bidragit till att förringa, förlöjliga och fjärma den för allmänheten.

The majority of the effort that I expend on this website does not go into writing the essays that I publish semi-regularly on this blog. It goes rather more surreptitiously into the library of poems that have been and continue to be uploaded in the various sections of the “best poems” page. So far I have compiled four of them: one in English, one in Swedish, one in French and just recently, one in Italian, all of which I highly encourage my readers who are able to read the respective languages to peruse. I also have in mind to complete a handful of other anthologies: in Spanish, Portuguese, German and two other Nordic languages: Danish and Norwegian. Whether I can go eighteenth-century intellectual full-circle and master Latin and ancient Greek before I give up the ghost, however, is highly doubtful.

These sections ought to be of far more interest than the texts I personally write since each of the completed anthologies (though calling them “completed” is not really honest as they are constantly being updated) contains hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of versified wisdom and delight from minds far finer than my own. My hope is that the labour that has gone into them–from first winnowing them out of tens of thousands of poems that didn’t make the cut, creating separate web pages for the respective authors, typing up their poems, editing the format and proofreading them–will not have been in vain.

The motivation behind this desire is certainly not financial–this website is and always will be unmonetised, and so if it is to be considered anything other than a labour of love, this entire project can only be deemed a great failure and liability for its owner in terms of the time and money spent creating it. My sole interest was, is and I hope ever shall be to propagate for the diffusion of high-quality poetry among a more popular readership. That’s it.

I am thus glad that Looking to Leeward has continued growing since its inception but am somewhat disappointed that the posts that I have written tend to be viewed more than the works of many of the titans that these libraries feature–some of which cannot be found elsewhere on the web. I am particularly annoyed, but not so surprised quite frankly, by the fact that the most viewed page on this website by far (it has almost 30,000 views and counting) is also the page that contains the website’s single worst examples of poetry by far–namely, those that Andrew Tate has written.

I would therefore like to take the opportunity to write a post advertising the poetic library of Looking to Leeward. I will be doing this by briefly presenting one of the sections of that library–the one of Italian poetry. I shall glancingly survey its historical development from its beginning through the Renaissance and above all highlight its larger legacy on the development of poetry outside Italy, all the while exhibiting some poems that appear in the anthology. I shall be quoting the originals in Italian and providing hasty, prosaic translations of my own immediately below these.

Although the non-Italian reader will not get a justified artistic rendition into English thereby, there is another, more important reason for writing this post in English. That is because it’s not Italians, but foreigners who need to be reminded of how vast the poetic inheritance from this part of the world is in their own respective languages. Italy during the late mediaeval period, the Renaissance and a good part of the Baroque lay at the very forefront of the birth and development of a poetic vernacular in Europe and was so influential in this position that it would be impossible to envision an alternative reality in which the poetic traditions of other European languages could be extricated from it. With the exception of the poetic legacy of the ancient world, I believe that there is scarcely any other culture that has had such a profound influence in the shaping of poetry written in just about every major European language. I like to think sometimes that the poetry of the western world was conceived Graeco-Roman, baptised biblical and then to a very large extent Italian in its schoolboy years. The legacy of this influence centuries down the line today is both undeniable and inseparable.

***

Laudato sie, mi’ Signore, cum tucte le tue creature, spetialmente messor lo frate sole, lo qual è iorno, et allumini noi per lui; et ellu è bellu e radiante cum grande splendore: de te, Altissimo, porta significatione.

Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per sora luna e le stelle: in celu l’ài formate clarite et pretiose et belle.

Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per frate vento et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo, per lo quale a le tue creature dài sustentamento.

Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per sor’aqua, la quale è multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta.

(…)

Praise be to you, my Lord, together with all your creatures, and especially my lord the sun, through whom you shine light upon us; for he is beautiful and radiant and with great splendour and carries the meaning of you.

Praise be to you, my Lord, for sister moon and the stars: in the heavens you have shaped them, clear and precious and beautiful.

Praise be to you, my Lord, for brother wind and the air that is calm or clouded and every season through which you nourish every living thing.

Praise be to you, my Lord, for sister water, who is useful and humble and precious and chaste.

(…)

From “Canticle of Creatures” by Saint Francis of Assisi

Italian poetry begins thus, with the words of one of the most extraordinary Europeans to have ever existed–Saint Francis of Assisi. The ingenious boldness of opening the gates of poetry to the vernacular–the significance of which tends to be overlooked–was simply a continuation of Saint Francis’ religious conviction that God’s wisdom and the beauty of his creation could be expressed in the tongue of common men. Think about how radically democratic such an act must have been in a world where only Latin and Greek were deemed worthy of religious subjects for centuries to come. Perhaps no other single figure has since had such a lasting effect on the development of religious verse and the spirit seen here in the Canticle of Creatures above rings in so much religious verse that I can think of. Here it is for example in the next major Italian inheritor–a fellow franciscan from the thirteenth century by the curious name of Jacopone da Todi:

Fresca riviera                 ornata di fiori,
tu se’ la spera                di tutti colori:
guida la schiera             di noi peccatori,
sì ch’asavori                   de la tua beninanza.

Ave Maria,                      di gratïa plena
tu se’ la via                     ch’a vita ci mena:
di tenebria                      traesti e di pena
la gente terrena,            ch’era ‘n gran turbanza.

Fresh landscape            covered in flowers,
you are the prism           of every colour:
lead the herd                  of us sinners
that I may taste              of your goodness.

Hail Mary                       full of grace:
you are the path            which leads us to life,
You brought away         all humankind
in great distress             from darkness and pain.

from “Altissima luce” by Jacopone da Todi

The first major literary flourishing of a secular nature in Italy congregated further south however and around another one of those most extraordinary of Europeans–Frederick II, the Holy Roman emperor, who was also a contemporary of Saint Francis. Inspired by the courtly love of the troubadours (also largely contemporary), here came the first examples of a collective poetic tradition. Here is a sample from one of them, Guido delle Colonne, who was active in Messina around the mid-thirteenth century:

Ben passa rose e fiore
la vostra fresca cera,
lucente più che spera;
e la bocca aulitosa
più rende aulente aulore
che non fa d’una fera
c’ha nome la pantera,
che ’n India nasce ed usa.
Sovr’ogn’agua, amorosa — donna, sete
fontana che m’ha tolta ognunqua sete,
per ch’eo son vostro più leale e fino
che non è al suo signore l’assessino.

Your youthful face,
more brilliant than a star,
surpasses that of roses and flowers,
and your perfumed mouth
emits a finer smell
than that creature called a panther*
which is born and lives in India.
More than any lovely water–my dear, you are
the fountain that slakes all thirst,
to whom I am more loyal and true
than the assassin is to his lord.

*A medieval myth that the panther emitted a pleasing smell in order to allure its prey.

from “Gioisamente canto” by Guido delle Colonne

Although they wrote in Sicilian, (still quite easily readable by modern Italian standards), they gave direct impetus to the second great blooming of Italian poetry in Tuscany, whose various figures (among others, Brunetto Latini, Guido Guinizelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cecco Angiolieri, Cino da Pistoia, and not least, Dante Alighieri) would help cement the Tuscan dialect as the eventual lingua franca of the Italian peninsula. In both style and form this poetry was initially very similar to the Sicilian school. One very significant import from the former would be the sonnet form, which it would export in turn all over the rest of Europe.

But Tuscany would also become the hotbed for a significant stylistic development called the Dolce stil nuovo (the “sweet new style”). Not without its detractors (see this poetic invective by Bonagiunta Orbacciani as an example), the Stilnovisti, particularly Guinizelli, Cavalcanti and Dante gave the love poetry in the troubadour and Sicilian fashion an introspective and more platonic depth that would later be taken even further by Petrarch. Just look at the carnality of love in Guido delle Colonne’s poem above: it is almost fierce–it seems to want to impose itself on the world. Compare it with the almost cold introspection of this sonnet by Dante:

Cavalcando l’altr’ier per un cammino,
pensoso de l’andar che mi sgradia,
trovai Amore in mezzo de la via
in abito leggier di peregrino.

Ne la sembianza mi parea meschino,
come avesse perduto segnoria;
e sospirando pensoso venia,
per non veder la gente, a capo chino.

Quando mi vide, mi chiamò per nome,
e disse: “Io vegno di lontana parte,
ov’era lo tuo cor per mio volere;

e recolo a servir novo piacere”.
Allora presi di lui sì gran parte,
ch’elli disparve, e non m’accorsi come.

Riding along a path the other day,
wistful of the bitterness of parting,
I met Love in the middle of the road
clad in the simple clothes of a pilgrim.

He was a pitiful wretch to look at,
and looked as though he’d lost his titles;
sighing, thoughtful, he came, his head
bent low, so as not to see other people.

But seeing me, he called me by name,
and said: “I come from a distant land,
where I held possession of your heart;

I carry it now to serve a new pleasure.”
And I felt such empathy with him,
that he vanished and I cannot recall how.

Riding along a path the other day by Dante Alighieri

We must stop here to give particular mention to Dante and his Commedia, a work of such immensity that it has to be considered as something of a parenthesis or even an anomaly within the trajectory of not just medieval Italian literature, but of all literature ever written. Yes, the work is heavily rooted in 13th-century Florence–it is a complex intellectual microcosm of that very world that Dante knew and lived in, but artistically it cannot be encapsulated by any school, movement or style either before or since. It is a work that really can properly be called universal–not just because of its appeal, but because it is a grand plumbing of the full scope of human experience, and as such transcends any particular period or genre. It contains parts written in just about every imaginable style: from the philosophical to the elegiac, farcical, parodical and realistic all the while touching on seemingly every imaginable subject. Besides this, so many parts of it feel entirely out of place in the expectations of mediaeval-era literature and read much more like later developments from the romantic or even the modern era. Just compare the idealised, dare I say exaggerated nature of love in Guido delle Colonne (or any other contemporary, for that matter) with Dante’s realistic handling of the subject in the famous episode of Paolo and Francesca, from Canto V of the Inferno. Murdered by Francesca’s husband because of their infidelity, for which they now suffer eternal torment together, she relates the story of how they fell in love with each other:

Ma s’a conoscer la prima radice
del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto,
dirò come colui che piange e dice.

Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto
di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse;
soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto. 

Per più fïate li occhi ci sospinse
quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso;
ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse. 

Quando leggemmo il disïato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante,
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, 

la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.

But if you really want to know
Where and when our love began I’ll tell you

as one who both speaks and weeps.

One day, for pleasure, we were reading
of Lancelot and how love gripped hold of him,
we were alone and nothing was suspicious.

But from time to time, our eyes suspended
from reading and our faces turned pale;
but there was one moment that defeated us.

It was when we read of her laughing smile,
and how many a lover longed to kiss it,
and then he, who shall never leave me here,

all atremble, his lips kissed mine.

from Canto V of the Inferno by Dante Alighieri

How ravishing this is. Dante contrasts the fake representation of love in the courtly tradition of the book they are reading with a very realistic portrayal of a moment where a young couple fall in love. Love is not a grandiloquent explosion–it’s subtle and comes gradually and silently in the small glances that Paolo and Francesca exchange and then Dante shows how terrifyingly beautiful the final, “defeating” moment can be–they grow pale when they realise what is happening and Paolo is shaking, almost with terror, when he finally kisses her. Absolutely sublime.

Although Dante is the fountain from which all Italian literature since issues, the first Italian who would have a direct cosmopolitan influence was Petrarch, who in his Canzoniere turned lyric poetry into something far more linguistically complicated than it had been earlier–into a more compact exposition of thought layered in metaphor, complex imagery and wordplay. As such, with Petrarch it really feels like poetry takes a stylistic leap into a form that is much more similar to the poetry of today and his was a style that was directly imitated by succeeding poets all over Renaissance Europe. In English the debt to Petrarch is most blatantly obvious during the Tudor period, with poets such as Thomas Wyatt (who also wrote fine translations of his), Henry Howard, Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville and Edmund Spenser. Even Shakespeare’s sonnets read like largely like Petrarch’s, don’t you think?

Erano i capei d’oro a l’aura sparsi
che ’n mille dolci nodi gli avolgea,
e ’l vago lume oltra misura ardea
di quei begli occhi, ch’or ne son sì scarsi;

e ’l viso di pietosi color’ farsi,
non so se vero o falso, mi parea:
i’ che l’esca amorosa al petto avea,
qual meraviglia se di sùbito arsi?

Non era l’andar suo cosa mortale,
ma d’angelica forma; e le parole
sonavan altro, che pur voce humana.

Uno spirto celeste, un vivo sole
fu quel ch’i’ vidi: e se non fosse or tale,
piagha per allentar d’arco non sana.

Her golden hair was dispersed on the air
and tied in a thousand sweet knots
and the weak light burned beyond measure
from those lovely eyes, which has since died down;

her face took on such pitiful hues
that I could not tell if they were false or true,
I had love’s bait within my breast,
why wonder then, that I was all aflame?

She did not walk with a mortal step,
but an angelic form, and her words
spoke with a different, inhuman sound.

A heavenly spirit, a living light
was what I saw, and though time has changed,
my wounds don’t heal, struck by that distant archer.

Compare this with Saint Francis, delle Colonne or even Dante where the language is far simpler–less figurative, more direct. The most conspicuous absence in these former poets is perhaps the use of metaphor–although they exist here and there, such as in Saint Francis’ “brother wind” and “sister water” or in Dante’s allegory, they are quite tame and few and far between. Petrarch’s on the other hand is just swimming in them (the light burns–his love is a bait–love is a cruel archer etc.), not to mention other rhetorical devices like contrasts (most obviously between the mortal and the divine), and just the wittiness of it all–look at the first line where the noun “aura” (air) together with the definite article “l’” is a conscious play on his beloved’s name, Laura.

Scarcely any later figure of the Italian renaissance was spared of this influence. One of the major successors was Matteo Maria Boiardo who is most famous for writing perhaps the first great epic of Italian literature, the Orlando innamorato, inspired by the chivalresque story of Roland. It would have a direct influence on the publication of two other major epics within less than a century: Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto and Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso, by which time Italian poetry had really established a literary tradition. Owing no doubt to its vogue, it’s noteworthy that all three of these works were translated into English already during the sixteenth century and their common use of the ottava rima must no doubt have been a major influence on its later adaptation in English into a number of major works such as Don Juan by Lord Byron and the invention of the Spenserian stanza in The Faerie Queene.

Torquato Tasso, probably the most of read the three aforementioned authors today, was a Neapolitan and during the later Renaissance Naples had established itself as a cultural nexus. One of the most important of its Renaissance figures was Jacopo Sannazaro, who probably more than any other artist was responsible for reviving and re-elaborating the pastoral ideal of Arcadia in his eponymously titled work, written around the year 1480. Whether or not this was a source of inspiration for Sir Thomas More’s appropriation of the Arcadian ideal in his philosophical work Utopia from 1516 is uncertain, but its artistic legacy is undeniable in works such as Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Milton’s great pastoral elegies, to mention just a few. One interesting novelty with pastoral literature is the strong presence of the natural world being in symbiosis with human civilisation. Looking back on the ancient world as an ideal, the pastoral poem also tends toward a tone of lament for something that has been lost:

Poi che ‘l soave stile e ‘l dolce canto
sperar non lice più per questo bosco,
rincominciate, o Muse, il vostro pianto.

Piangi, collo sacrato, opaco e fosco,
e voi, cave spelunche e grotte oscure,
ululando venite a pianger nosco.

Piangete, faggi e querce alpestre e dure,
e piangendo narrate a questi sassi
le nostre lacrimose aspre venture.

Lacrimate voi, fiumi ignudi e cassi
d’ogni dolcezza, e voi fontane e rivi,
fermate il corso e ritenete i passi.

E tu, che fra le selve occolta vivi,
Eco mesta, rispondi a le parole
e quant’io parlo per li tronchi scrivi.

Piangete, valli abbandonati e sole;
e tu, terra, depingi nel tuo manto
i gigli oscuri e nere le viole.

Since the soft manner and sweet song
can no more be hoped for in this wood,
strike up again, o Muses, your mournful song.

Weep, sacred hill, grown dark and gloomy,
and you deep and darkened caves,
come and howling join in our wail.

Weep, you beeches and strong, alpine oaks
and weeping, recount to these rocks
of our bitter and mournful fate.

Shed tears, you bare and futile streams
stripped of sweetness, and you fountains and shores,
cease your journey, hold your step.

And you, who live hidden among the woods,
mournful Echo, give answer to my words
and write what I speak upon the trunks of trees.

Weep, you abandoned, lonely vales,-
and you, earth, paint dark the lilies
and black the violets with your cloak.

From “Arcadia” by Jacopo Sannazaro

Irrespective of its historic importance, Sannazaro’s poem is a masterpiece and still reads fantastically today.

All the works cited here were written before the sixteenth century, and it is really striking how early Italian poetry and the Italian language solidifies into a very concrete form. While English was still in its fledgling Middle form with only a few major works under its belt (and which can often be quite hard for contemporary readers to get through), Italian already looked more or less identical to the language spoken today and could boast scores of enduring authors and masterpieces. Although Italian literature would continue to exert a major influence in Europe throughout the Baroque and beyond, it would also increasingly contend with rivals of equal strength. I will outline the legacy from this period through to our current day in a later post.

Noonday Axeman – Les Murray

Axe-fall, echo and silence. Noonday silence.
Two miles from here, it is the twentieth century: 
cars on the bitumen, powerlines vaulting the farms.
Here, with my axe, I am chopping into the stillness.

Axe-fall, echo and silence. I pause, roll tobacco, 
twist a cigarette, lick it. All is still.
I lean on my axe. A cloud of fragrant leaves
hangs over me moveless, pierced everywhere by sky.

Here, I remember all of a hundred years: 
candleflame, still night, frost and cattle bells, 
the draywheels’ silence final in our ears, 
and the first red cattle spreading through the hills

and my great-great-grandfather here with his first sons, 
who would grow old, still speaking with his Scots accent, 
having never seen those highlands that they sang of.
A hundred years. I stand and smoke in the silence.

A hundred years of clearing, splitting, sawing,
a hundred years of timbermen, ringbarkers, fencers
and women in kitchens, stoking loud iron stoves
year in, year out, and singing old songs to their children

have made this silence human and familiar
no farther than where the farms rise into foothills, 
and, in that time, how many have sought their graves 
or fled to the cities, maddened by this stillness? 

Things are so wordless. These two opposing scarves
I have cut in my red-gum squeeze out jewels of sap
and stare. And soon, with a few more axe-strokes, 
the tree will grow troubled, tremble, shift its crown

and, leaning slowly, gather speed and colossally
crash down and lie between the standing trunks.
And then, I know, of the knowledge that led my forebears
to drink and black rage and wordlessness, there will be silence.

After the tree falls, there will reign the same silence
as stuns and spurns us, enraptures and defeats us, 
as seems to some a challenge, and seems to others
to be waiting here for something beyond imagining.

Axe-fall, echo and silence. Unhuman silence.
A stone cracks in the heat. Through the still twigs, radiance
stings at my eyes. I rub a damp brow with a handkerchief
and chop on into the stillness. Axe-fall and echo.

The great mast murmurs now. The scarves in its trunk
crackle and squeak now, crack and increase as the hushing
weight of the high branches heels outward, and commences
tearing and falling, and the collapse is tremendous.

Twigs fly, leaves puff and subside. The severed trunk
slips off its stump and drops along its shadow.
And then there is no more. The stillness is there
as ever. And I fall to lopping branches.

Axe-fall, echo and silence. It will be centuries
before many men are truly at home in this country, 
and yet, there have always been some, in each generation, 
there have always been some who could live in the presence of silence.

And some, I have known them, men with gentle broad hands, 
who would die if removed from these unpeopled places, 
some again I have seen, bemused and shy in the cities, 
you have built against silence, dumbly trudging through noise

past the railway stations, looking up through the traffic
at the smoky halls, dreaming of journeys, of stepping
down from the train at some upland stop to recover
the crush of dry grass underfoot, the silence of trees.

Axe-fall, echo and silence. Dreaming silence.
Though I myself run to the cities, I will forever
be coming back here to walk, knee-deep in ferns, 
up and away from this metropolitan century, 

to remember my ancestors, axemen, dairymen, horse-breakers, 
now coffined in silence, down with their beards and dreams, 
who, unwilling or rapt, despairing or very patient, 
made what amounts to a human breach in the silence, 

made of their lives the rough foundation of legends-
men must have legends, else they will die of strangeness-
then died in their turn, each, after his own fashion, 
resigned or agonized, from silence into great silence.

Axe-fall, echo and axe-fall. Noonday silence.
Though I go to the cities, turning my back on these hills, 
for the talk and dazzle of cities, for the sake of belonging
for months and years at a time to the twentieth century, 

the city will never quite hold me. I will be always
coming back here on the up-train, peering, leaning
out of the window to see, on far-off ridges, 
the sky between the trees, and over the racket

of the rails to hear the echo and the silence.
I shoulder my axe and set off home through the stillness.



I’ve heard it said that falling in love is never quite as wonderful as the first time. That’s a bit hard for me to evaluate with human relations, but how true it is with so many poets that I have read! This was the first Murray poem that really transfixed me and although I have come to come to love a number of other poems from his work, after all the time that has passed, no other stands out quite as dearly to me as Noonday Axeman out of his first collection, The Ilex Tree from 1965. Is it his best poem or just simply my favourite? Or is that perhaps just the same question?

Form

Twenty-one unrhymed stanzas, all of which are quatrains with the exception of the last which is a couplet. There is no particular metrical pattern,

Analysis

The poet is chopping a tree down and the poem presents itself as a contemplation within the silent pauses of the axe-strokes. His first meditation is on the relative manifestations of time–here, on the outskirts of no-mans-land where countryside meets bush, time stands effectively still while only a short distance away, the vicissitudes of the twentieth century churn on.

As the boundary of time vanishes, so is Murray reminded of his pioneer ancestors who colonised this part of Australia:

Here, I remember all of a hundred years: 
candleflame, still night, frost and cattle bells, 
the draywheels’ silence final in our ears, 
and the first red cattle spreading through the hills

and my great-great-grandfather here with his first sons, 
who would grow old, still speaking with his Scots accent, 
having never seen those highlands that they sang of.
A hundred years. I stand and smoke in the silence.

The poem then turns to contemplate the immense silence of this place. It is something inimical–that drives people away or makes them mad. So Murray wants to celebrate the heroism of people like his ancestors who confronted and made an effort to civilise it:

A hundred years of clearing, splitting, sawing, 
a hundred years of timbermen, ringbarkers, fencers
and women in kitchens, stoking loud iron stoves
year in, year out, and singing old songs to their children

have made this silence human and familiar
no farther than where the farms rise into foothills, 
and, in that time, how many have sought their graves 
or fled to the cities, maddened by this stillness?

The poet realises that with the last axe-knock that will finally fell the tree, he will also have to confront this silence full-on. Although that is something terrifying, beyond it, there is a mystical attraction to it as well:

After the tree falls, there will reign the same silence
as stuns and spurns us, enraptures and defeats us, 
as seems to some a challenge, and seems to others
to be waiting here for something beyond imagining.

Murray muses that though most people require a civilsation “building up” against this awesome silence, there is also a minority who need and seek it.

Axe-fall, echo and silence. It will be centuries
before many men are truly at home in this country, 
and yet, there have always been some, in each generation, 
there have always been some who could live in the presence of silence.

In the last meditation of the poem, Murray indicates that though he has great reverence for such people, he is not really one of them himself–he admits that he too feels compelled to flee to the twentieth century. And yet that alluring silence is something that always calls him back. Writing of this mystery, here come perhaps the most beautiful stanzas Murray ever wrote:

Axe-fall, echo and silence. Dreaming silence.
Though I myself run to the cities, I will forever
be coming back here to walk, knee-deep in ferns, 
up and away from this metropolitan century, 

to remember my ancestors, axemen, dairymen, horse-breakers, 
now coffined in silence, down with their beards and dreams, 
who, unwilling or rapt, despairing or very patient, 
made what amounts to a human breach in the silence, 

made of their lives the rough foundation of legends-
men must have legends, else they will die of strangeness-
then died in their turn, each, after his own fashion, 
resigned or agonized, from silence into great silence.

At the end of the poem, the job of felling the tree is done. I like think that the axeman slinging his axe on his shoulder and walking off is also Murray the poet putting the pen down and moving on to something else. 

I suppose that reading the Qur’an can be approached from three different angles: a theological one, a historical one and an aesthetic one. The first, and the primary for most of its readers since they are muslim, aims at religious truth; the second, mainly suited to the historian, seeks what it can tell us about sixth and seventh century Arabia; the third is an appreciation of its artistic quality. It is purely in this last realm that I am writing this post and so anything that I state that might be contrary to the consensi of either religious or historical scholarship on any issue is probably just going to be a result of this fact.

I understand that reading the Qur’an as a poem does not do it justice. Large portions are just not poetically interesting and the Qur’an itself makes it clear that reading it as poetry would be a rather serious mistake, an offense even, for it namely expresses quite a negative attitude towards poetry and poets in general:

And the poets — the perverse follow them;
hast thou not seen how they wander in every valley
and how they say that which they do not?

(Ash-Shu’ara, verses 224-226)

This is further supported by the fact that the Qur’an relates how Muhammad’s own enemies deride him for being no more than a poet whose supposed “revelations” are nothing other than the ramblings of demonic passion:

Nay, but they say: “A hotchpotch of nightmares!
Nay, he has forged it; nay, he is a poet!
Now therefore let him bring us a sign,
even as the ancient ones were sent as Messengers. “

(Al-Anbiya’, verse 5)

Nonetheless, one really cannot ignore how poetic the Qur’an is and its eloquence is something that Arabic speaking muslims will often talk about. Even the Qur’an itself is aware of its eloquent beauty and claims that this is evidence of its divine origin:

Or do they say, “He has forged it “? Say:
“Then bring you ten suras the like of it, forged;
and call upon whom you are able,
apart from God, if you speak truly. “

Then, if they do not answer you, know that it
has been sent down with God ‘s knowledge,
and that there is no god but He.
So have you surrendered?

(Hud, verses 13-14)

And so I think that approaching the Qur’an as a work of art can in some sense be justified, though certainly not if one’s goal is to comprehensively capture its contents. There are at least two good reasons that I can think of for this. Firstly, it would help liberate the reader (particularly the unbelieving one like myself) from prejudices that they otherwise could attach to the religion of Islam. Secondly, I think it would in some cases make the Qur’an easier on the whole to grasp. The Qur’an is often described as a difficult read and this perhaps in part arises from people expecting it to conform to some features of an already familiar genre. Perhaps they expect a clear narrative similar to the stories of the Bible or a thematically structured treatise where the first part, for example, defines God’s nature, the second how society ought to be ruled, the third what the afterlife is like, and so forth.

The Qur’an is none of that. The chapters, or “surahs” that make up the book, are presented as separate instances of divine revelation and can, in the space of a handful of verses, move from subjects as diverse as God’s absolute sovereignty to descriptions of the afterlife; from stories about Old Testament prophets to guidelines on how long a mother ought to wait before weaning her child. The genre of this non-linear, often very vividly descriptive flux of text where ideas, insights and certain fixed phrases appear and recede and then later reappear again (the Qur’an, like poetry, is very repetitive) and which in the Arabic original at least is heavily rhymed and highly melodious, is comparatively perhaps most closely similar to a vast book of poems unified by a coherent style and theme.

And yet, as an unbeliever with no understanding of Arabic whatsoever, I am aware that reading the Qur’an in translation does not, in the end, do even the poetic effect of the original any proper justice. I must admit that I am rather skeptical towards translations of poetry in general and think that unless one reads a work in the poet’s original idiom, one really hasn’t read his or her work at all, and so I confess that in one way I can hardly even say to have read the Qur’an–but rather somebody’s retelling of it. This idea is also held by the very same quranic translator that I will be citing here, A.J. Arberry, in his aptly titled Interpretation of the Koran. It is a translation which, as its title suggests, is aware of its shortcomings in reproducing the source but which nonetheless has aimed to present a balance between content and aesthetic effect. Since I don’t read Arabic I will not be able to determine whether or not Arberry is successful in this, but rather trust that he has done a sufficiently good job in casting light on at least some of the quality of the original.

The Sovereignty of God

If there is one main theme that runs through the Qur’an I would say it is that of God’s sovereignty and the incomparable, absolute power of his being. The insistence on this probably stems from the context in which this book was first written (or “revealed”–take it as you will), for it appeared in a society that was mainly polytheistic, whose gods and goddesses were anthropomorphic and therefore kept as idols. The Qur’an firmly rejects any comparison between God and the characteristics of other beings (supernatural or human) and so the language used to describe his uniqueness is often very original, very poetic in its own right:

What, are you stronger in constitution
or the heaven He built?
He lifted up its vault, and levelled it,
and darkened its night, and brought forth its forenoon;
and the earth–after that He spread it out,
therefrom brought forth its waters and its pastures,
and the mountains He set firm,
an enjoyment for you and your flocks.

(An- Nazi’at, verses 27-33)

Note the clever recurrence of verbs that communicate the physical nature of his creation: he “builds”, “lifts up” “levels”, “brings forth”, “spreads out”, and “sets”.

This overarching theme is so dominant that many of the other smaller ones just seem to issue from it. “Islam”, as is commonly known, translates as “submission”, and so the only relationship that man can have in the face of the greatness of such a being as God is one of total surrender of one’s self. In this relationship man must also unbare his pettiness:

The likeness of those who disbelieve in their Lord:
their works are as ashes,
whereon the wind blows strong
upon a tempestuous day;
they have no power over that they have earned–
that is the far error!
Hast thou not seen that God created
the heavens and the earth in truth?
If He will, He can put you away
and bring a new creation;
that is surely no great matter for God.

(Ibrahim, verses 18-20)

The Beauty of the Natural World

The Qur’an is actually quite reasoning in its nature–it tends to want to lay forth evidence for the various claims that it makes. A very frequently cited proof of God’s power is the beauty of the natural world. One can’t help but delight in descriptions of landscapes such as this:

Hast thou not seen how that whatsoever is in the heavens
and in the earth extols God,
and the birds spreading their wings?
Each — He knows its prayer and its extolling; and God knows
the things they do.
To God belongs the Kingdom of the heavens and the earth,
and to Him is the homecoming.
hast thou not seen how God drives the clouds, then composes them,
then converts them into a mass,
then thou seest the rain issuing out of the midst of them?
And He sends down out of heaven mountains, wherein is hail,
so that He smites whom He will with it, and turns it aside
from whom He will;
wellnigh the gleam of His lightning snatches away the sight.

(An-Nur, verses 41-43)

God is majestic and therefore his creation shows majesty, but it is also a reflection of his goodness and his mercy because nature is there to serve, sustain and guide man:

It is God who splits the grain and the date- stone,
brings forth the living from the dead; He
brings forth the dead too from the living.
So that then is God; then how are you perverted?
He splits the sky into dawn,
and has made the night for a repose,
and the sun and moon for a reckoning.
That is the ordaining of the All- mighty, the All-knowing.
It is He who has appointed for you the stars, that
by them you might be guided in the
shadows of land and sea.
We have distinguished the signs for a people who know.

(Al-An’am, verses 95-97)

What an extraordinary image that first one is: of God splitting the grain and the date stone and then how the effect of this image is magnified by paralleling it with the grandeurs of creation in the succeeding verses. The force that nourishes human life through the miniscule sprout cleaving its seed is at the same time equated with the force that orchestrates all the wonders of creation–all the way up to turns of night and day, the cycle of seasons and the steadfastness of constellations in the night sky. It continues:

To God belongs the Unseen in the heavens
and in the earth.
And the matter of the Hour is as a twinkling of
the eye, or nearer.
Surely God is powerful over everything.

And it is God who brought you forth,
knowing nothing, from your mothers’ wombs,
and He appointed for you hearing,
and sight, and hearts,
that haply so you will be thankful.

Have they not regarded the birds, that are subjected
in the air of heaven?
Naught holds them but God;
surely in that are signs for a people who believe.

(The Bee, 77-79)

The Day of Judgment

Perhaps the most frequently recurring reminder in the surahs is that of the recompense that humankind will receive in the afterlife. While there are numerous references to the rewards of paradise, more frequently the reader is being threatened with the everlasting torment of hell for his unbelief and unrighteousness. The descriptions of these are horrific but actually do not make for such interesting poetry (it’s always as bad as you can imagine–lots of fire, boiling water, etc.) What is more interesting, poetically speaking, are rather the descriptions of the related day of judgment. It is similar to the traditional Christian concept–it first entails a bodily resurrection of the dead, a divine arraignment and finally a meting out of either eternal punishment or reward. The images contained in these passages can on the other hand be nightmarishly original:

Upon the day when heaven shall be as molten copper
and the mountains shall be as plucked wool-tufts,
no loyal friend shall question loyal friend, as
they are given sight of them. The sinner will wish that he
might ransom himself from the chastisement of that day even
by his sons, his companion wife, his brother, his kin who
sheltered him, and whosoever is in the earth, all together,
so that then it might deliver him.

(Al-Ma’arij, verses  8-14)

Or how about this:

Upon the day when heaven spins dizzily
and the mountains are in motion,
woe that day unto those that cry lies,
such as play at plunging,
the day when they shall be pitched into the fire of Gehenna:
This is the fire that you cried lies to!

(At-tur, verses 9-14)

The Poet of the Qur’an

There is a great divide between most muslim scholars and western historians on what we can know about the central historic figure behind the Qur’an, Muhammad. Islamic tradition maintains that there are very meticulous and reliable biographical details about him that have been handed down to us through the hadith, records of the sayings and actions of Muhammad composed centuries after his death. Western scholars, on the other hand, by and large reject their reliability and hold that there are very few things that we can certainly know about the man.

Knowing about the circumstances of Muhammad’s life can no doubt greatly clarify much of the Qur’an, but I think these details should mainly be of interest to the theologian or the historian. With this in mind, and having had the enjoyment of the reading the Qur’an purely as a work of literature, I am reminded of the mystery that enshrouds authors like Homer and Shakespeare and how unnecessary the knowledge of their lives is for appreciating an their work. The mystery behind the poet of the Qur’an however does not at all mean that there is no human spirit behind it. Particularly towards the end of the Qur’an, where the surahs become short in length and read very much like lyric poems, one really can feel all the human passions that have gone into them–charged nonetheless with what I actually believe was its author’s genuine encounter with the divine. I will close this text by quoting one such surah in its entirety. It is the penultimate one, called Al-Falaq or “Daybreak”, and is presented as a prayer of succour from the many manifestations of evil in the world:

Say: ?I take refuge with the Lord of the Daybreak
from the evil of what He has created,
from the evil of darkness when it gathers,
from the evil of the women who blow on knots,*
from the evil of an envier when he envies

Al-Falaq

*A reference to a pre-Islamic practice of putting a curse on someone.

Arv och eget

En slaga går en slaga slår
långt borta i mitt blod.
Igenom långa led av män
hör jag den trygga takten än
som jag först sent förstod.

En åra går en åra slår
emot en relings kant
långt borta i det blod jag ärvt
och sjömäns shanties klinga djärvt
bakom min bröstkorgs spant.

Det är min lynnes dubbla lott
att jordens ro och havets gång
ej sluta med sitt växelspel.
Den är den vackra arvedel
som skapar trygg fast flyhänt sång.

Och bort går år och det blir vår
och genom blodet bärs igen
en rytm från rons och orons män.
God är den jord jag jämt är när
men all min lust är inte där.

Och när det redes mig en grav
Där Glumslövs källsprång gå,
skall det på stenen stå:
“Själv sjöng jag blott en liten stund,
sjung för mig evigt, Öresund.”

Finns det någon i vårt numera alltför genomglobaliserade land som kan vara lika fäst till det lokala som Gabriel Jönsson var till sina hembygdstrakter? I modern tid har Skåne producerat en rad fina diktare såsom Frans G. Bengtsson, Sven Alfons, Hjalmar Gullberg, Hans Dhejne och Anders Österling, men förutom möjligen denna sistnämnda så måste Jönsson ändå vara Skånes modernist par excellence, inte för dennes estetiska kvaliteter utan helt enkelt på grund av den geografiska förankringen. Det finns knappt en dikt av Jönssons som inte genomsyras av Skåne: dess landskap, dess historia, dess folk–och detta hela vägen ner till versernas mest minutiösa detaljer. Även när det rör sig om något så oansenligt som en blomma vid vägkanten eller krusningar på vattnet så känns dessa så utvidgade och fördjupade av poetens nostalgiska kärlek till en väldigt specifik plats på denna jord.

Gabriel Jönsson är ytterligare en numera förbisedd gestalt i den svenska litteraturen (hans verk är ur tryck idag) som jag skulle vilja uppmärksamma med denna blogg. Han är kanske mest känd för att ha författat texten till visan Flicka från Backafall (eller “Vid vakten”–en mycket fin dikt i egen rätt) men förtjänar en större läsekrets för sitt övriga författarskap. Fler dikter av Jönssons kan ni hitta här.


Form:

Fem strofer i jambisk tetrameter. Rimschemat i de olika stroferna varierar något.


Analys:

De första två stroferna är ljudliga minnen vars efterklanger får en betydligt djupare innebörd i skrivande stund. Det är dessa till synes ringa detaljer ur barndomen (i den första strofen, ljudet från ett primitivt tröskningsredskap och i den andra, en åra mot en reling) som också pekar mot ett betydligt större “arv” som har gått ned i ett långt led av generationer och nu blivit en olöslig del av den poeten är:

Igenom långa led av män
hör jag den trygga takten än
som jag först sent förstod.

Dessa två minnen belyser också de två största beståndsdelarna av detta arv. Jönssons Glumslöv är och var lika mycket ett jordbruks- som kustsamhälle och sålunda är det både jord och hav som format honom och inspirerat hans diktning:

Det är min lynnes dubbla lott
att jordens ro och havets gång
ej sluta med sitt växelspel.
Den är den vackra arvedel
som skapar trygg fast flyhänt sång.

Jag är osäker när just denna dikt författades men vissa rader antyder att den skrevs på senare år. Mot slutet blir skalden varse tidens gång och sålunda den annalkande döden, och precis som han fötts och formats mot bakgrund av jordens och havets växelverkan så har han också berett sig en sista vilostad där dessa skall evinnerligen sammanblandas:

Och när det redes mig en grav
Där Glumslövs källsprång gå,
skall det på stenen stå:
“Själv sjöng jag blott en liten stund,
sjung för mig evigt, Öresund.”

I can hardly think of anything more depressing than the idea of humanity being made redundant by artificial intelligence. Even when looking beyond the worst-case scenarios of genocidal annihilations and envisioning for myself a future in which human beings are spared from all forms of labour and physical discomfort by a network of servile automatons–in which our race could wholly dedicate itself to an existence of pure pleasure–seems utterly dystopian to me: of mankind being reduced to a parody of life, a hedonistic slavery, a mere existence.

Artificial intelligence has and inevitably will continue to take over many facets of human ingenuity and effort, but one of the last spheres in which I am yet to see it make any real incursion is in things emotional in nature. It is on this plane that art primarily functions and until a robot capable of sentimental expression is invented–something like the HAL 9000 system of 2001: A Space Odyssey–any truly inspired creation that goes beyond a simple technical flourishing will inevitably be beyond its reach.

The latest brouhaha in the media concerning artificial intelligence has been related to the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The thing that has primarily been noted is its linguistic articulateness and its capability of generating pithy, well-structured texts in answer to user commands. Now, if it can but metrically arrange such texts and, more vitally, infuse them with feeling, then it will have all the foundations necessary to make the artistic leap.

So let’s put it to the test!

The American poet Robert Frost quite correctly wrote, I think, that poetry functions on three of our organs–the ear, the eye and the heart. The auricular effect lies in the metrical composition and the impact of the conscious choice of the sound of words, the ocular in the vividness and the originality of the imagery and the cardiac–that most vital and elusive of all–to the mysterious, intangible capacity the words have of moving us. I will be using these three criteria in evaluating some poems that ChatGPT generated for me.

The Ear

To evaluate this criterion I decided that I would simply test the limits of ChatGPT’s technical capabilities. First, I asked it to define the abstract term “art”:

Art is a diverse range of human activities and creations that express ideas, emotions, or tell stories through various mediums such as painting, sculpture, music, literature, dance, film, and architecture. It is a way for people to creatively express themselves and communicate with others, and it can take many forms. Art can be used to document or comment on events and ideas, to inspire and evoke emotions, or simply to create something beautiful or meaningful. The concept of art is highly subjective and can vary widely from one person to another, as different people have different interpretations and appreciations of art. Ultimately, art is a way for people to express and understand the world around them in a creative and meaningful way.

Succinct, uncontroversial and totally unpoetic. Then I asked it to rewrite it all as a sonnet:

Art is a thing of beauty and of power,
A way to bring our deepest thoughts to life,
To give a voice to all the joy and pain
That lurk within our hearts and minds. It’s how

We see the world, and how we share our view
With others, who might see it differently.
It’s not one thing, but many, all combined
To make us feel, to make us think, to guide

Our steps through life. It’s music and it’s paint,
It’s words and it’s movement, all in one.
Art is a way to make our mark upon
The world, to leave a trace of who we are,

To show the depth and breadth of all we are.

This was generated in about five seconds and for the speed this is mighty impressive–by far beyond anything a human could do. The speed of the computer and the comparative plod of the human being, however, highlight a fundamental difference between the AI-as-creator and the human artist: namely, in the capacity the human has of polishing and re-elaborating what he creates with the purpose of improving it. When I asked ChatGPT to rewrite this poem, I was either served the same text again or given a new one that in no way felt like an improvement of the old, just another sample of mediocrity generated from scratch. I doubt whether artificial intelligence will ever be able to program that reflective and self-critical eye that is so necessary to the production of good art.

But getting to the poem itself: there are a number of defects here. The most obvious is that it didn’t write a sonnet for me: the poem has thirteen lines and these only vaguely rhyme in certain instances. With the exception of line ten, which scans very poorly, however, this is surprisingly tight, metrically speaking. But it’s too tight, almost suffocatingly so. It’s missing the natural variation and freedom that iambic pentameter affords even the most rigid of formalists. This poem is not a gracious waltz on the signature of five feet and ten syllables, but reads more like a tap-dance on stilts.

I asked it to try and fix this by rewriting it in rhymed iambic pentameter:

Art is a force that brings both beauty and might,
A way to share the depths of our emotions,
To give a voice to joy and to the plight
Of sorrows hidden in our hearts and minds. It’s how

We see the world, and how we share our view
With others, who might see it differently.
It’s not one thing, but many, all aligned
To make us feel, to make us think, to guide

Our steps through life. It’s music and it’s paint,
It’s words and it’s movement, all in one.
Art is a way to make our mark upon
The world, to leave a trace of who we are,

To show the depth and breadth of all we are.

But this is even worse. There are some rhymes and half-rhymes there, but it is all too slipshod to be of interest.

Now then, since we have exposed its technical weaknesses, let’s push it up against the ropes and go in for the finish–by technical knockout:

“Rewrite the poem as a villanelle, in iambic tetrameter, with a caesura on the fourth syllable of every line. The rhymes must all be feminine.”

Art is a way to speak and feel,–
to be,
With materials and forms, techni–
ques in hand,
To create works that speak to you–
And me.

It takes on many shapes, both old–
and new,
Like paint and sculpture, literature,–
song,
A way to share our thoughts and feel–
ings, true.

It varies from culture to culture,–
you see,
And is subjective, each to their–
own mind,
But it’s a way to connect, and–
be set free.

A powerful force, self-expression–
and art,
It brings us closer, through beauty–
and emotion,
A universal language, from–
the start.

So let us embrace it, let it–
be our guide,
As we create and appre–
ciate, side by side.

Check mate.

Evaluation: 3/10 points

For all my criticisms however, I think that artificial intelligence’s potential to write technically impeccable verse is absolutely within its reach. I think that the issue is simply that ChatGPT has primarily been designed for prose and that it needs to collect more information in its database on the details of versification for it to sound better.

Let’s move on.

The Eye

This next criterion, however, will be far harder to master. Where metre and prosody can to a large extent be boiled down to a handful of rules, writing vivid and original imagery cannot. The human artist subsumes all he has read but works against it to fling forth something profoundly different when he writes. In doing so he imposes an artistic vision onto the world that doesn’t necessarily see further than anyone else but sees differently–uniquely. Artificial intelligence might very well be able to integrate every single poem that has ever been published into its database but I have a hard time imagining that it would consolidate them into anything more than an incongruent pastiche or a recycling of trite clichés.

I asked ChatGPT to write a moralistic verse this time:

“Write a poem, in any form you like, on the intrinsic value of life and the necessity of rejecting violence”:

It is not right to ask or answer a question
That involves violence, harm, or death, my friend
We must respect the value of each person
And work towards creating a world that’s peaceful and

Safe. To use violence, or to even consider
It as a means of solving problems or making
Decisions, is never acceptable or proper
We must strive for love and understanding, taking

The high road, and choosing peace over violence
We are all human, with the same hopes and fears
Let’s work towards a world where love and kindness
Are the norm, and violence and harm disappear

It’s obvious here that ChatGPT has been programmed to embrace certain values and reject others. I actually like its candid, almost naive, honesty here–it feels as though it’s spoken by an old man putting his hand on my shoulder and giving me some honest, though very platitudinous, counsel.

Being platitudinous is above all an artistic defect, however. There is pretty much nothing in the language here that’s poetically interesting at all. The few examples of figurative language here are clichéd and very tame. But sure, I accept the truth of ‘taking the high road’ by ‘working towards a world’ where we choose ‘peace over violence’.

Evaluation: 0/10

The Heart

This is, as I have mentioned already, the most vital and the most difficult to put reins on. A poem can be as metrically solid and as you want and be marbled in every line with a complex and original language and yet not speak to the soul at all. Such poetry is of little artistic value. I can on the other hand think of poems that are perhaps melodically obtuse and/or linguistically simple yet whose lines just inexplicably seem to be carrying voltage, whose words are almost palpitating on the pages where they are printed. These are the works of true artistic power and arise out of the maelstrom of a very profoundly human soul.

And in evaluating this supreme criterion one really must take into account the whole of its constituent parts. As such, the earlier criteria: the impact on the ear and the eye, can be just as relevant here if through these something is moved in the reader. It reminds me of some wonderful lines by Emily Dickinson:

An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear.
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.

I will cut ChatGPT a little bit of slack with regards to the poems we looked at above. One problem with them is the subject matter: they invite all too easily to a pragmatic, encyclopaedic and emotionally shallow exposition for them to be poetically interesting. I am aware that computers don’t have emotions, but I at least wanted to try to get ChatGPT to feign something personal in nature. The answer I got was perhaps all too telling about its artistic limits though:

“Can you please write a text where you pretend that you are grieving over a loss?”

–I’m sorry, but I am an artificial intelligence and do not have personal experiences or feelings. I am unable to pretend to grieve over loss as I do not have the capability to feel emotions. However, I can provide information and insights about grief and how people may experience it.

So I tried to get it to write a poem on a subject that is abstract and very open–that would hopefully not elicit a direct answer as much as it would a reflection. This is the best I could get it to produce.

Write a free verse poem on the brevity of existence:

Existence is fleeting, a moment in time
A mere blip on the radar of the universe
We’re here one moment, gone the next, a chime

Life is a journey, a winding road to traverse
Full of ups and downs, twists and turns, and bends
We make our mark, leave our legacy, disperse

Time is a thief, stealing moments that transcend
Memories, love, and laughter, all fade away
Leaving us with a sense of loss to comprehend

But in the brevity of existence, we may
Find beauty, meaning, and purpose in our days
Embrace each moment, make it worth the stay.

Although this is rife with clichés, there is an artistic sense to the anaphoric beginnings of the first three stanzas where an abstract noun is developed using a metaphor (“Existence is fleeting…”, “Life is a journey…”, “Time is a thief…”) and the contrast of these with the twist in the final one (“But in the brevity of existence…”).

There’s also one example of imagery here in which there is something to be redeemed (the one about time “stealing moments that transcend memory”–that’s quite good!) but other than that this is just a collection of clichés as pretty as plastic beads strung on a string. The recurring presence of such vapid descriptions as  “life is a journey”, “a winding road”, “twists and turns”, “making a mark”, “leaving a legacy, “fading away”, “a sense of loss” and “embracing each moment” indicates that this is a work of little depth, either emotional or intellectual, for it to be of artistic worth.

Evaluation: 3/10

Conclusion

ChatGPT, and artificial intelligence in general I would say, is a long way off from creating good poetry. If it can ever get there is another question though. Since I had my doubts on this issue, I took out my crystal ball the other day and gazed deeply into it to see if I could divine any answer. While I mostly thought I could see a world where some humans still dedicated their efforts to artistic pursuits, in a convex corner, distorted by a prism of light that made it even harder for me to see the details, I thought I just caught the glimpse, perhaps, of someone opening an application on his phone and with the flick of a button, generating a million  Iliads, Sistine Chapel ceilings and Masses in B-minor, each distinct from the next, over and over again, and I was so consumed by a feeling of terror that I dared not look any further.

Om någon läsare har lite mer noggrant granskat denna webbsidas poesibibliotek skulle han eller hon möjligen ha kunnat uttyda en viss fäbless för humoristisk och intellektuellt opretentiös vers. Om ni skulle vilja se exempel på vad jag menar med detta skulle jag kunna hänvisa till några av dikterna på sidorna om Kellgren, Fröding, Aspenström, Henriksson eller varför inte denna lilla raring av Efraim Rosenius?

Det humoristiska innefattar ett tillfälligt uppbrott med, ja närmast ett kallsinne gentemot vår förmåga att visa empati. Om vi skrattar åt den man som halkar efter att ha trampat på ett bananskal måste vi avhumanisera honom för att det ska framstå som roligt–så fort vi hyser något slags ömkan för hans missöde (att han till följd av sin olycka slog sitt huvud, avled och lämnade som ensam försörjare hustru och fyra barn i ekonomiskt fördärv, till exempel) upphör det komiska omedelbart och blir rent tragiskt istället.

Det är sålunda enkelt att vilja se humoristisk konst som mer lågsinnad och ytligare än det tragiska. Men det komiska är av mycket större vikt än vi ibland vågar erkänna. Den franske filosofen Henri Bergson undersökte komik i en serie essäer som han kallade Le Rire (“Skrattet” på svenska) och tillskrev det komiska en grundläggande betydelse för samhället–ja, till och med en evolutionär nödvändighet. Han menade att det komiska uppenbarar mänsklighetens tillkortakommanden och att dess fysiska uttryck, skrattet, är ett slags kollektivt straff som pekar ut och signalerar brister och beteenden som inte bör existera i “den riktiga världen”. I exemplet ovan skulle en sådan brist möjligen vara “klumpighet” eller “vårdslöshet”.

Är det därför jag tycker om humoristisk vers? Det är nog omöjligt för mig att säga… Jag vet endast att jag tycker lika mycket om att se, höra eller läsa någonting som ger mig ett gott, hederligt skratt som det som rör och för mig till tårar.

I Sverige var den kanske främste humoristen från 1800-talet en numera orättvist bortglömd författare vid namn Wilhelm von Braun. Den komiska effekten, det särskilt ekivoka som utmärker dennes poesi, kan ofta förstås bäst genom att betrakta hans verk mot bakgrunden av samtidens rådande romantiska estetik och dess högdragna ideal. Jämfört med dessa framstår hans dikter som ett mycket mer realistiskt förödmjukande av den mänskliga tillvaron. I hans allra bästa verk uppenbaras dock, detta tillplattande till trots, ett mycket mer allvarligt djup under ytan–i Mitt konterfej, dikten som nu ska analyseras, träder en närmast bottenlös sorg fram under dess glättiga fasad.

Form

Åtta strofer vilka utgörs av nio-eller tiostaviga parrimmade rader, främst med stigande versfötter (jamber och anapester).

Mitt konterfej

Se ej på de ögons himmel, se ej på de lockars gull!  
–Tegnér

Det var för rasande lustigt! Nej!  
Skall detta vara mitt konterfej?  
Är denne “gubbe”, så tjock i synen  
och med de rynkande ögonbrynen  
min egen, älskade, såte vän,  
den sig så kallande B-r-n?  
Den där poeten, som jämt vill bråka  
att komma fram med det “ekivoka”?  
Den där, som damerna aldrig läst,  
och som av dem blir tillbörligt snäst?  
Ja, det är verkligen just densamme,  
som nu på linan är åter framme,  
att visa sig för det täcka kön,  
oemotståndlig och “manligt skön.”

Jag länge tvekade huruvida  
jag borde släppa mig lös – och sprida  
min fagra bild över Sveriges land  
och sätta tusende bröst i brand;  
ty, ack! en aning mig redan säger,  
att det blir gråt i de skönas läger.  
Det är naturligt; det kostar på,  
att se mig ständigt–och ej mig få.  
Det är naturligt; jag är så vacker …  
Här blir vapörer, här blir attacker,  
och mitt porträtt bäddar mången grav,  
när det till slutet blir lungsot av.  
Jag kan ej hjälpa det, flickor täcka!  
Jag, på sin höjd, blott för en kan räcka;  
men det var verkligen icke rätt  
att så er fresta med mitt porträtt,  
jag bort haft medömkan för de svaga,  
som aldrig kunnat min bild förjaga;  
den framstår ständigt, vid tårars ström,  
i dagens tanke och nattens dröm.

I, arma, som jag har givit soten!  
O, kunde också jag ge er boten!  
Jag vill försöka. Djärvt på mig sen!  
Det är en tröst, om den ock är klen,  
ty man står lättare mot en fara,  
om vid dess åsyn man vänjes bara…  
Här sitter jag då på understol,  
ett mål för kärliga blickars sol.  
Här sitter jag. Mig i handen tagen  
och mig bekiken Guds långa dagen!–  
Nåväl! Vad sägen I om min bild?  
Är ej min blick obeskrivligt mild?  
Är pannans valv ej ett fridens tempel,  
där själva skönheten tryckt sin stämpel?  
Och munnen sedan med sina fjun?…  
Om konstnärn givit mig en basun  
och satt i handen en liljestängel,  
I säkert tagit mig för en ängel.  
Vad är all honung, som jorden har,  
mot mina leende läppars par?  
Det vore något att mig få klappa  
och kalla mig för: “Du lilla pappa!”

Men vad är detta? I skriken “fy!”  
och synens färdiga till att fly.  
Jag hör er ropa, förskrämda, skygga:  
“Vad dessa ögonbryn äro stygga!  
De kunna anstå en leopard,  
men ej en lekande, munter bard.  
Se, hur han blänger, den ättikssure!  
Vi föreställt oss en lustig ture,  
en hygglig, självsvåldig, glad garçon,  
med magra kinder och näsa lång  
och vackert hår och mustascher nätta;  
men intet funno vi av allt detta.  
När glada rimmare grina så,  
o gudbevars för de sorgsna då!  
Det var ett ansikte, just, att ritas!  
Det ser ju ut, som det ville bitas.”

Hör du, mitt käraste konterfej!  
Det där var säkert en pik åt dej.  
Håll du tillgodo, min vän! Förlåt mig!  
Jag tar den aldrig i tiden åt mig.  
Du är väl jag, men jag är ej du,  
där ligger skillnaden, ser du ju,  
om än var flicka i döden ginge,  
om blott mig själv hon att skåda finge.  
Men om du skulle mig vara lik,  
jag ändå äger en tröst, så rik,  
ty var jag friar, jag undfår korgen,  
och med detsamma jag undgår sorgen.

Men, allvarsamt, du min stackars bild,  
så långt från mig och–det sköna skild!  
Jag minns en tid, då jag var den glade,  
ty jag förskönande speglar hade;  
det var ett strålande ögonpar,  
och, däri sedd, du så grym ej var,  
ty kärlek livade sträva dragen,  
som öknen livas av solskensdagen.  
När mig den älskade gav en blick,  
ett annat uttryck mitt öga fick.  
Och drog till löjen hos rosenmunnen,  
från mig all dysterhet var försvunnen;  
och med dess vänsälla hand i min,  
i mina speglar jag djupt såg in.  
Och jag var lycklig och glad till sinnet,  
var nöjd med världen, var nöjd med–skinnet.  
Men döden speglarna sönderslog,  
och med detsamma min glädje dog;  
och mörka sorgmoln mitt anlet höljde,  
ty hjärtat henne i graven följde…

Men jag skall skämta, är det ej så?  
Det vill förläggarn. Nå hopp! låt gå!  
Det är bra roligt att vara rolig,  
när man med saknaden är förtrolig!  
Men, lika gott! Man har blivit van  
att tro mig vara en lustig fan.  
Hopp! därför, pajas! Det går väl över;  
i graven gyckla du ej behöver.  
Hur lycklig den, som är lyckligt död!  
Jag måste skratta, för att få bröd…  
Om folk blott visste, hur glädjen brister  
för de så kallade humorister,  
de skulle tacka sin Gud för det  
han utan humor dem födas lät.  
Som benen ligga i helgonskrinet,  
det ligger sorg i det ystra grinet;  
dock vad bryr världen sig om det där,  
om humoristen blott “rolig” är!  
Men han I skådat hans skrivdon, dårar?  
En törntagg pennan, och bläcket–tårar.

Och nu min gunstiga allmänhet,  
du bilden sett av en glad poet,  
som sig numera åt litet gläder,  
åt mycket litet–blott fyra bräder.

Analys

Von Braun begrundar ett porträtt som ska föreställa honom och angriper dess brister att gestalta hur verkligheten faktiskt är betingad. Då detta handlar om sitt eget porträtt–sitt “konterfej”–vill dikten särskilt ta sig an det överdrivet idealistiska sättet som man i romantikens anda porträtterade just poeter. Det är därför citatet från Tegnér, Sveriges kanske främste romantiker, inleder dikten–det är liksom sådana beskrivningar och idéer som von Braun vill bestrida här. I diktarens faktiska gestalt syns därför varken “lockars gull” eller “ögonens himmel” utan blott en “gubbe” som är “tjock i synen” och med “rynkade ögonbryn”.

I den andra strofen antar dock diktjaget denna starkt överdrivna fåfänga. Han funderar huruvida han ska offentliggöra sitt konterfej och låta dess skönhet erövra unga kvinnohjärtan över hela Sverige. Notera det krigiska i ordvalet här–det kommer att närmast efterlikna en skonlös invasion, en plundring:

Jag länge tvekade huruvida 
jag borde släppa mig lös – och sprida 
min fagra bild över Sveriges land 
och sätta tusende bröst i brand; 
ty, ack! en aning mig redan säger, 
att det blir gråt i de skönas läger. 
Det är naturligt; det kostar på, 
att se mig ständigt – och ej mig få. 
Det är naturligt; jag är så vacker … 
Här blir vapörer, här blir attacker, 
och mitt porträtt bäddar mången grav, 
när det till slutet blir lungsot av. 

Det är mer av samma fåfängliga skryt i den tredje strofen, men mot dess slut inträder faktiskt en viss tvekan från poetens håll. Det faktum att han ställer en rad frågor om sin skönhet antyder en viss osäkerhet huruvida den är sanningstrogen eller ej :

Nåväl! Vad sägen I om min bild?
Är ej min blick obeskrivligt mild?
Är pannans valv ej ett fridens tempel,
där själva skönheten tryckt sin stämpel?
Och munnen sedan med sina fjun? …
Om konstnärn givit mig en basun
och satt i handen en liljestängel,
I säkert tagit mig för en ängel.
Vad är all honung, som jorden har,
mot mina leende läppars par?

Ty denna skönhet får aldrig någon utomstående bekräftelse–kvinnornas kommentarer om poetens utseende är snarare helt skoningslösa:

Se, hur han blänger, den ättikssure! 
Vi föreställt oss en lustig ture, 
en hygglig, självsvåldig, glad garcon, 
med magra kinder och näsa lång 
och vackert hår och mustascher nätta; 
men intet funno vi av allt detta. 
När glada rimmare grina så, 
o gudbevars för de sorgsna då! 
Det var ett ansikte, just, att ritas! 
Det ser ju ut, som det ville bitas.”

Och så kommer förödmjukelsen. Von Braun försöker att trösta sig själv genom att också tillskriva porträttet dessa osmickrande beskrivningar, men samtidigt måste han ändå erkänna att om porträttets skönhet faktiskt vore sin egen så skulle han kanske inte heller vara ensam:

Men om du skulle mig vara lik,
jag ändå äger en tröst, så rik,
ty var jag friar, jag undfår korgen,
och med detsamma jag undgår sorgen.

Von Braun går tillbaka i tiden till sin ungdom. Han försöker inte nödvändigtvis försköna sitt utseende, men vill ändå minnas en tid då hans gestalt kunde både locka och lockas till kärlek. Strofen avslutas med att nämna “döden”. Jag tror inte att detta syftar på någon specifik bortgång–döden är snarare ett avbrott med kärleken–han har upphört att kunna älska samt vara älskvärd:

Men döden speglarna sönderslog, 
och med detsamma min glädje dog; 
och mörka sorgmoln mitt anlet höljde, 
ty hjärtat henne i graven följde ..

I den näst sista strofen skriver von Braun om att vara poet och framför allt humorist i dessa omständigheter. Diktaren är medveten att han har blivit någorlunda berömd genom sitt författarskap men detta har inte gett honom någon lycka. Snarare har hans personliga identitet också blivit fängslad av allmänhetens förväntan av en poet som skriver humoristisk vers. Förläggare och läsare förväntar sig något falskt och förvrängt och vill inte läsa texter av ett allvarligare slag då de redan bestämt sig att han är oförmögen att skapa sådana:

Det är bra roligt att vara rolig, 
när man med saknaden är förtrolig! 
Men, lika gott! Man har blivit van 
att tro mig vara en lustig fan. 
Hopp! därför, pajas! Det går väl över; 
i graven gyckla du ej behöver. 
Hur lycklig den, som är lyckligt död! 
Jag måste skratta, för att få bröd … 
Om folk blott visste, hur glädjen brister 
för de så kallade humorister, 
de skulle tacka sin Gud för det 
han utan humor dem födas lät. 

Ensamheten är total vid diktens slut. Poeten ser ingen förhoppning om lycka. Det finns blott en sak att se fram emot–döden. “Brädorna” i diktens sista strof syftar till en likkista:

Och nu min gunstiga allmänhet, 
du bilden sett av en glad poet, 
som sig numera åt litet gläder, 
åt mycket litet – blott fyra bräder.

Fler dikter av Wilhelm von Braun: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/wilhelm-von-braun-1813-1860/

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.