As the readership might have observed the ads have disappeared from Lars Gustafsson s Blog since beginning of February.This is not the expression of a policy on my part - I rather liked them even if the money -never paid out - seems to be microscopic.I liked to see an ad for furniture at the side of an article on forest devastation etc.
Anyhow,the ads disappeard as sudden as they had come and a careful research into the system, which consists in referring you from a webpage to the next ,in endless procession has given no rational answer.
Attempts at a rational explanation are welcome on this page.
Lrs Gustafsson Webmaster
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
The Hare
In March the Swedish original edition of my selected and new poems "Elden och döttrarna" will arrive at Atlantis Stockholm.
A German edition,translated by Barbara M Carlson and Verena Reichel in joint translation is contracted with Hanser in Munich.For the English edition contract is still pending.
As a specimen the first poem of the book "Haren" will be given here, in original, in Maria Freijs English and in Barbara M CArlsons German.
--------------------------------------------------------
Haren
En eftermiddag fanns han plötsligt.
Alldeles stilla mellan syrénen och vinbärsbusken.
Precis som hos Dürer;
öronen längre än huvudet
och undersidan vit.Stora milda ögon.
Varför satt han så stilla
frusen till bild i eftermiddagsljuset ?
Hade han ett större förtroende
till oss än till andra människor ?
Vad hade han för skäl till det ?
Mycket rörd,nästan smickrad
stängde jag dörren. Gick tillbaka.
Till mitt eget.Nästa dag
fann jag honom liggande
i en egendomlig ställning,
något mellan sovande och embryo
utanför verkstadsdörren.
Några droppar ur vattenkannan
fick honom att ta några tveksamma steg
som om han inte längre hade tilltro
till världen och dess bilder
Det var nästa dag som jag insåg
att han måste vara blind.
Det var när jag fann honom
drunknad och mjuk som en trasa
intill båtbryggan. Vad jag hade
sett som stilla lugn och tilltro
var blindhet och ingenting annat.
”Naturen är god” står det
På vissa paket. Av märket Bregott.
Naturen är god.
Och hur vet ni det
margarinmånglare ?
The Hare
One afternoon, he was just there.
Totally still
between the lilac and the black currants.
Just like Dürer’s:
its ears longer than its head
and white underneath. Big, mild eyes.
Why was he sitting so still,
frozen into an image in the afternoon light?
Had he a greater confidence
in us than in other people?
What was his reason for that?
Very moved, almost flattered,
I closed the door. Went back.
To mine. The next day
I found him lying
in an odd position,
somewhere between sleeping and embryonic,
by the door of the shed.
A few drops from the watering can
made him take a few hesitant steps
as if he no longer trusted
in the world and its images.
It was the next day that I realised
that he must be blind.
It was when I found him
drowned and soft like a rag
next to the jetty. What I had
seen as a quiet calm and trust
was blindness and nothing else.
‟Nature is good,” state
certain packages.
Of the brand Bregott.
And what would you know of that,
margarine mongers?
Der Hase
Eines Nachmittags war er plötzlich da.
Unbeweglich zwischen Flieder und Johannisbeeresträuchern.
Genau wie bei Dürer;
die Ohren länger als der Kopf
auf der Unterseite weiß. Große sanfte Augen.
Warum sitzt er so still
im Nachmittagslicht wie eingefroren in ein Bild?
Hatte er größeres Vertrauen
zu uns als zu anderen Menschen?
Welchen Grund gab es dafür?
Bewegt, fast geschmeichelt
schloss ich die Tür. Ging zurück
zu dem, was mein ist. Am nächsten Tag
fand ich ihn, liegend
in einer seltsamen Stellung,
zwischen schlafend und embryonal
vor der Tür zur Werkstatt.
Wenige Tropfen aus dem Wasserhahn
ließen ihn einige zweifelnde Schritte tun
als hätte er kein Vertrauen mehr
zur Welt und seinen Bildern.
Am nächsten Tag erst begriff ich
daß er blind war
als ich ihn fand
ertrunken und weich wie einen Lappen
am Bootssteg. Was ich für
große Ruhe und Vertrauen hielt,
war Blindheit und nichts anderes.
”Die Natur ist gut” steht
auf manchen Verpackungen. Der Marke Bregott.
Die Natur ist gut.
Woher wisst ihr das,
ihr Krämerseelen?
A German edition,translated by Barbara M Carlson and Verena Reichel in joint translation is contracted with Hanser in Munich.For the English edition contract is still pending.
As a specimen the first poem of the book "Haren" will be given here, in original, in Maria Freijs English and in Barbara M CArlsons German.
--------------------------------------------------------
Haren
En eftermiddag fanns han plötsligt.
Alldeles stilla mellan syrénen och vinbärsbusken.
Precis som hos Dürer;
öronen längre än huvudet
och undersidan vit.Stora milda ögon.
Varför satt han så stilla
frusen till bild i eftermiddagsljuset ?
Hade han ett större förtroende
till oss än till andra människor ?
Vad hade han för skäl till det ?
Mycket rörd,nästan smickrad
stängde jag dörren. Gick tillbaka.
Till mitt eget.Nästa dag
fann jag honom liggande
i en egendomlig ställning,
något mellan sovande och embryo
utanför verkstadsdörren.
Några droppar ur vattenkannan
fick honom att ta några tveksamma steg
som om han inte längre hade tilltro
till världen och dess bilder
Det var nästa dag som jag insåg
att han måste vara blind.
Det var när jag fann honom
drunknad och mjuk som en trasa
intill båtbryggan. Vad jag hade
sett som stilla lugn och tilltro
var blindhet och ingenting annat.
”Naturen är god” står det
På vissa paket. Av märket Bregott.
Naturen är god.
Och hur vet ni det
margarinmånglare ?
The Hare
One afternoon, he was just there.
Totally still
between the lilac and the black currants.
Just like Dürer’s:
its ears longer than its head
and white underneath. Big, mild eyes.
Why was he sitting so still,
frozen into an image in the afternoon light?
Had he a greater confidence
in us than in other people?
What was his reason for that?
Very moved, almost flattered,
I closed the door. Went back.
To mine. The next day
I found him lying
in an odd position,
somewhere between sleeping and embryonic,
by the door of the shed.
A few drops from the watering can
made him take a few hesitant steps
as if he no longer trusted
in the world and its images.
It was the next day that I realised
that he must be blind.
It was when I found him
drowned and soft like a rag
next to the jetty. What I had
seen as a quiet calm and trust
was blindness and nothing else.
‟Nature is good,” state
certain packages.
Of the brand Bregott.
And what would you know of that,
margarine mongers?
Der Hase
Eines Nachmittags war er plötzlich da.
Unbeweglich zwischen Flieder und Johannisbeeresträuchern.
Genau wie bei Dürer;
die Ohren länger als der Kopf
auf der Unterseite weiß. Große sanfte Augen.
Warum sitzt er so still
im Nachmittagslicht wie eingefroren in ein Bild?
Hatte er größeres Vertrauen
zu uns als zu anderen Menschen?
Welchen Grund gab es dafür?
Bewegt, fast geschmeichelt
schloss ich die Tür. Ging zurück
zu dem, was mein ist. Am nächsten Tag
fand ich ihn, liegend
in einer seltsamen Stellung,
zwischen schlafend und embryonal
vor der Tür zur Werkstatt.
Wenige Tropfen aus dem Wasserhahn
ließen ihn einige zweifelnde Schritte tun
als hätte er kein Vertrauen mehr
zur Welt und seinen Bildern.
Am nächsten Tag erst begriff ich
daß er blind war
als ich ihn fand
ertrunken und weich wie einen Lappen
am Bootssteg. Was ich für
große Ruhe und Vertrauen hielt,
war Blindheit und nichts anderes.
”Die Natur ist gut” steht
auf manchen Verpackungen. Der Marke Bregott.
Die Natur ist gut.
Woher wisst ihr das,
ihr Krämerseelen?
Sunday, February 12, 2012
An Interview with R R Tolkien from OXFORD June 1961
Some of my face book friends have recently expressed a wish to see my Interview withTolkien,published in Dagens Nyheter August 1961 under the title - not chosen by me -"Den besynnerlige Professor Tolkien".
MR Morgan Thomsen has recently recentlu translated mu original into English for Tolkien Studies,University of Wester Virginia.
So Here it is (Copyright Lars Gustafsson and Morgan Thomsen ):
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In front of me a man sits in a room filled to overflowing with books, prints, odds and ends, piles of manuscripts and Victorian ornaments. His features are so sharp that you might think him a bird of prey, or perhaps some kind of troll. His eyes as well are like those of a bird of prey, the one part of him not aged; theirs is a quick vigilance, perhaps also suspicion; they shyly flick away or suddenly drill into whatever he is looking at with enormous focus. He speaks in a muffled voice, a pipe constantly in his mouth; speaking to him makes you nervous, listening to his words makes you worried. He is a totally unique human being; he could serve as a warning to storytellers taking a step too far, enveloping themselves too deeply within their tale, but he could also serve as a model for everyone wanting to create story, for in his stories you find a concreteness, a hallucinatory clarity making them enter the dreams of their readers, giving new colour to all they see. And yet they are only fairy tales.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, exception and eccentric, England’s and the world’s last teller of fairy tales, or perhaps their first in a very long time, sits in front of me in his house on the outskirts of Oxford, and says:
“For many years I wrote without publishing a word. Now that I’ve finally begun publishing, it brings me nothing but inconvenience. There are so many letters, whole bundles of letters from people believing themselves to know better than I how my story shout be interpreted, people who want to find proof in it for their belief in reincarnation, and I don’t know what else. Some try to read my books as allegory. They believe them to be about the conflict between East and west, and some send me their own illustrations and suggestions for improvements. It’s as if they all want to be part of it. Yes, it is strange for an old philologist to step into the literary world.”
An old philologist, certainly. Tolkien is a retired Professor of Celtic philology at Oxford, of a Saxon family, the son of an English banker in South Africa, an eminent scholar of Celtic and Icelandic sagas, Middle-English dialects, and the Celtic language. What has transformed him into a suddenly emerging, different and irritating literary phenomenon is the fact that since a few years he has published a many thousand pages long epic fairy tale, The Lord of the Rings. Two volumes of The Lord of the Rings have already been translated into Swedish, and on the whole he has enjoyed an overwhelming success, almost as if what he wrote is a response to some need; he is even being translated into Polish, and reviews have oscillated from fascination to irritated aversion.
The fairy tale written by Tolkien, winding its way through three thick volumes like an extended, convoluted giant labyrinth, is very strange. It is bizarre, dark, violent and in parts so softly idyllic that reading it feels like reading poetry; it is written in a heavy, powerful, slightly elderly and pedantic prose. It makes easy reading, since it is extremely exciting, and its overall character makes it extraordinarily difficult to describe. You might say that it is linked to a tradition not represented in literature since Beowulf and Kalevala, and yet there is nothing about it suggesting pastiche, nothing of a literary chamber of curiosities. It is archaic, not antiquated.
And above all it is a sample of both extraordinarily powerful and, in parts, profound storytelling.
In an academic paper on Beowulf, written in 1939, Tolkien argues that what is absurd and bizarre in the tale is not due to ignorance or barbarism in the unknown author, but simply an artifice, a purposeful style. Beowulf with its quirky storytelling technique, where seemingly significant historical events are pushed out to the periphery while fanciful battles with dragons occupy the centre, where monster is piled upon monster, in Tolkien’s view is an entirely purposeful work of art, and its structure makes it an effective tool in illustrating moral essentials, courage, doubt, loneliness, the struggle between good and evil.
That view is highly applicable to Tolkien’s own fairy tale. It is set in a distant and unknown archaic world of other countries, mountain ranges, oceans and continents from ours. The perspective is immense, historical; the central story arch concerns an immense struggle for power between peoples and countries, where a lost ring of tremendous magical power plays a main role. The beings featured are as alien and fascinating as the landscapes, and are portrayed with the same hallucinatory clarity. There are humans, knights and warriors, but as stylized as the pieces in a Gothic chess set. The true actors, given individual features, are all sorts of fairy creatures, evil or good; there are trolls, dwarves, a people of friendly and lovably idyllic two-foot creatures called hobbits, there is a kind of ancient tree giants, and there are loathsome man-eating beings, and ghostly demons floating on the nightly air spreading their coldness to all living things. Their master is a being of condensed evil, aiming at the conquest of the world.
The story is centred on a small, insignificant hobbit, who will bear total responsibility for the victory of good. It is a tale of responsibility, of someone put to a superhuman test; a message sent us of an indefinite, archaic time in a bizarre world, but depicted so transparently and clearly that we perceive its validity; the impossibility of taking on responsibility, of being a hero.
In some parts, the fairy tales is frightening and pathologically cruel, but throughout it fascinates since every scene is unbelievably clearly visualized. Mountains and cities, forests and lakes appear before the reader’s eye as if by magic. You can feel the stones pressing against your foot soles along the roads in the fairy-tale world, and you believe yourself hearing the wind in trees that have never been. Tolkien even manages to evoke the impression of past; in every word uttered there is the weight of a dark and fateful past, a history or prehistory as full of dark and enchanting stories as the one you are reading, as full of the endless struggle between evil and bravery, of as great trials and failures. And while the story with its adventures, wonders and battles winds its way on, you are filled with the sense of a kind of endlessness; there is no end. It is a tour-de-force of imagination, and it shows you what a dangerous, almost extra-human force imagination can be.
The most fascinating aspect of the fairy tale is its distinct consistency. Everything is considered, every part of the story points to the same centre: the experience of carrying an unreasonable responsibility. One facet of the tale is that it makes the actors part of the situation in which they are involved; in the end, you feel more as if you had witnessed a play than heard a story. Everything Tolkien writes seems pervaded by a fundamental pessimism; his insights into power and betrayal convince you; man is caught in an unreasonable web of interconnections.
The old gentleman with the sharp eyes and bushy eyebrows regards me with suspicion before deciding to tell me more.
“It’s all about power, of course, and about virtue struggling against power. The story is about an insignificant creature put to a test transcending his abilities, and about how that changes him, how it draws out the strength within him.”
And after a further moment of thought, with much sucking on his pipe:
“Of course it is a pessimistic story. I have tried to make it timeless, to show that evil is timeless, that it prevails as often as good.”
When did Tolkien begin to write? And how did he come up with such an odd idea?
“It started with languages. I was hospitalized during the First World War [or, given his age, possibly “the Great War” JH] and spent my time reading the Kalevala. And then I got the idea to try to do it all over, you see, to write my own fairy tale. But it would have a different atmosphere, a completely other feeling that that provided by the Finnish names. With the help of a language I made up myself, I invented new individual names; writing fairy tales and inventing languages were two favourite pastimes of my childhood. The names gave me ideas and visions. And I have continued ever since.”
“This is how I work:”
And he throws binders on the floor in front of my feet; maps, sketches, a photograph of the latest eruption of volcano Hekla (“Such things interest me”), talented watercolours, tables that have helped him keep track of the multitudinous characters and events in his story, diagrams showing the movements of armies on a battlefield.
“The tale isn’t finished, and it is longer than you believe, much longer. You must remember that I’ve kept at it since 1917.”
And in a corner of his room he shows me a huge pile of manuscripts in folders, which I hadn’t noticed before. What has been published so far comprises some three thousand pages. In this room, he keeps around fifty thousand! For a moment, I feel my whole power of comprehension rear up: how can this be possible? Is the actual truth that Professor Tolkien is lost in a world of his own fairy tales since 1917, muted and blinded by an imagination akin to a force of nature? Or have I misheard him?
I hadn’t misheard.
“What I have published, you see, is just a part of a much larger tale. It is very long, spanning about a thousand years. And there are so many stories. My idea is to publish most of it before I die, if anyone is interested in it. As a whole, it makes up a kind of history. I also tried to carry the story on forward in time, but I couldn’t.”
Why not?
“It became so dark that it frightened me.”
I truly wonder how that fairy tale might have turned out. Already what I have read is sometimes immensely frightening and bleak. And he tells me a little part of the unpublished tale and his character changes as he speaks. His eyes become friendlier, almost twinkling. He stops as suddenly as he began:
“Well, there are so many stories.”
“There are” – he keeps using the indicative mood, as if it all really had happened. To him, his fairy tale is not literature; it is life, growing through him as a tree through a rock.
And I suspect that he considers it more real than he would like to admit. Professor Tolkien is truly a strange man. What frightens me most is the feeling of depth, the feeling of his having unlimited depths of story to draw from, or seeming to have. His problem doesn’t seem to be that of other authors, that of finding a story. Obviously he is struggling not to be drowned by stories, caught is this absurd multitude.
“Of course, some have said that I am some sort of escapist, that I’ve remained in some sort of prolonged boyhood stage. But to write that, isn’t that just an instance of plain, simple lovelessness?” [If not this, I suspect Tolkien might have used “lack of charity”. JH]
Last of all he brought me to his window and showed me a great tree, a birch. At some point during its growth a wall had forced it aside. Now the trunk grew in a strange curve, warped and slanting.
MR Morgan Thomsen has recently recentlu translated mu original into English for Tolkien Studies,University of Wester Virginia.
So Here it is (Copyright Lars Gustafsson and Morgan Thomsen ):
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In front of me a man sits in a room filled to overflowing with books, prints, odds and ends, piles of manuscripts and Victorian ornaments. His features are so sharp that you might think him a bird of prey, or perhaps some kind of troll. His eyes as well are like those of a bird of prey, the one part of him not aged; theirs is a quick vigilance, perhaps also suspicion; they shyly flick away or suddenly drill into whatever he is looking at with enormous focus. He speaks in a muffled voice, a pipe constantly in his mouth; speaking to him makes you nervous, listening to his words makes you worried. He is a totally unique human being; he could serve as a warning to storytellers taking a step too far, enveloping themselves too deeply within their tale, but he could also serve as a model for everyone wanting to create story, for in his stories you find a concreteness, a hallucinatory clarity making them enter the dreams of their readers, giving new colour to all they see. And yet they are only fairy tales.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, exception and eccentric, England’s and the world’s last teller of fairy tales, or perhaps their first in a very long time, sits in front of me in his house on the outskirts of Oxford, and says:
“For many years I wrote without publishing a word. Now that I’ve finally begun publishing, it brings me nothing but inconvenience. There are so many letters, whole bundles of letters from people believing themselves to know better than I how my story shout be interpreted, people who want to find proof in it for their belief in reincarnation, and I don’t know what else. Some try to read my books as allegory. They believe them to be about the conflict between East and west, and some send me their own illustrations and suggestions for improvements. It’s as if they all want to be part of it. Yes, it is strange for an old philologist to step into the literary world.”
An old philologist, certainly. Tolkien is a retired Professor of Celtic philology at Oxford, of a Saxon family, the son of an English banker in South Africa, an eminent scholar of Celtic and Icelandic sagas, Middle-English dialects, and the Celtic language. What has transformed him into a suddenly emerging, different and irritating literary phenomenon is the fact that since a few years he has published a many thousand pages long epic fairy tale, The Lord of the Rings. Two volumes of The Lord of the Rings have already been translated into Swedish, and on the whole he has enjoyed an overwhelming success, almost as if what he wrote is a response to some need; he is even being translated into Polish, and reviews have oscillated from fascination to irritated aversion.
The fairy tale written by Tolkien, winding its way through three thick volumes like an extended, convoluted giant labyrinth, is very strange. It is bizarre, dark, violent and in parts so softly idyllic that reading it feels like reading poetry; it is written in a heavy, powerful, slightly elderly and pedantic prose. It makes easy reading, since it is extremely exciting, and its overall character makes it extraordinarily difficult to describe. You might say that it is linked to a tradition not represented in literature since Beowulf and Kalevala, and yet there is nothing about it suggesting pastiche, nothing of a literary chamber of curiosities. It is archaic, not antiquated.
And above all it is a sample of both extraordinarily powerful and, in parts, profound storytelling.
In an academic paper on Beowulf, written in 1939, Tolkien argues that what is absurd and bizarre in the tale is not due to ignorance or barbarism in the unknown author, but simply an artifice, a purposeful style. Beowulf with its quirky storytelling technique, where seemingly significant historical events are pushed out to the periphery while fanciful battles with dragons occupy the centre, where monster is piled upon monster, in Tolkien’s view is an entirely purposeful work of art, and its structure makes it an effective tool in illustrating moral essentials, courage, doubt, loneliness, the struggle between good and evil.
That view is highly applicable to Tolkien’s own fairy tale. It is set in a distant and unknown archaic world of other countries, mountain ranges, oceans and continents from ours. The perspective is immense, historical; the central story arch concerns an immense struggle for power between peoples and countries, where a lost ring of tremendous magical power plays a main role. The beings featured are as alien and fascinating as the landscapes, and are portrayed with the same hallucinatory clarity. There are humans, knights and warriors, but as stylized as the pieces in a Gothic chess set. The true actors, given individual features, are all sorts of fairy creatures, evil or good; there are trolls, dwarves, a people of friendly and lovably idyllic two-foot creatures called hobbits, there is a kind of ancient tree giants, and there are loathsome man-eating beings, and ghostly demons floating on the nightly air spreading their coldness to all living things. Their master is a being of condensed evil, aiming at the conquest of the world.
The story is centred on a small, insignificant hobbit, who will bear total responsibility for the victory of good. It is a tale of responsibility, of someone put to a superhuman test; a message sent us of an indefinite, archaic time in a bizarre world, but depicted so transparently and clearly that we perceive its validity; the impossibility of taking on responsibility, of being a hero.
In some parts, the fairy tales is frightening and pathologically cruel, but throughout it fascinates since every scene is unbelievably clearly visualized. Mountains and cities, forests and lakes appear before the reader’s eye as if by magic. You can feel the stones pressing against your foot soles along the roads in the fairy-tale world, and you believe yourself hearing the wind in trees that have never been. Tolkien even manages to evoke the impression of past; in every word uttered there is the weight of a dark and fateful past, a history or prehistory as full of dark and enchanting stories as the one you are reading, as full of the endless struggle between evil and bravery, of as great trials and failures. And while the story with its adventures, wonders and battles winds its way on, you are filled with the sense of a kind of endlessness; there is no end. It is a tour-de-force of imagination, and it shows you what a dangerous, almost extra-human force imagination can be.
The most fascinating aspect of the fairy tale is its distinct consistency. Everything is considered, every part of the story points to the same centre: the experience of carrying an unreasonable responsibility. One facet of the tale is that it makes the actors part of the situation in which they are involved; in the end, you feel more as if you had witnessed a play than heard a story. Everything Tolkien writes seems pervaded by a fundamental pessimism; his insights into power and betrayal convince you; man is caught in an unreasonable web of interconnections.
The old gentleman with the sharp eyes and bushy eyebrows regards me with suspicion before deciding to tell me more.
“It’s all about power, of course, and about virtue struggling against power. The story is about an insignificant creature put to a test transcending his abilities, and about how that changes him, how it draws out the strength within him.”
And after a further moment of thought, with much sucking on his pipe:
“Of course it is a pessimistic story. I have tried to make it timeless, to show that evil is timeless, that it prevails as often as good.”
When did Tolkien begin to write? And how did he come up with such an odd idea?
“It started with languages. I was hospitalized during the First World War [or, given his age, possibly “the Great War” JH] and spent my time reading the Kalevala. And then I got the idea to try to do it all over, you see, to write my own fairy tale. But it would have a different atmosphere, a completely other feeling that that provided by the Finnish names. With the help of a language I made up myself, I invented new individual names; writing fairy tales and inventing languages were two favourite pastimes of my childhood. The names gave me ideas and visions. And I have continued ever since.”
“This is how I work:”
And he throws binders on the floor in front of my feet; maps, sketches, a photograph of the latest eruption of volcano Hekla (“Such things interest me”), talented watercolours, tables that have helped him keep track of the multitudinous characters and events in his story, diagrams showing the movements of armies on a battlefield.
“The tale isn’t finished, and it is longer than you believe, much longer. You must remember that I’ve kept at it since 1917.”
And in a corner of his room he shows me a huge pile of manuscripts in folders, which I hadn’t noticed before. What has been published so far comprises some three thousand pages. In this room, he keeps around fifty thousand! For a moment, I feel my whole power of comprehension rear up: how can this be possible? Is the actual truth that Professor Tolkien is lost in a world of his own fairy tales since 1917, muted and blinded by an imagination akin to a force of nature? Or have I misheard him?
I hadn’t misheard.
“What I have published, you see, is just a part of a much larger tale. It is very long, spanning about a thousand years. And there are so many stories. My idea is to publish most of it before I die, if anyone is interested in it. As a whole, it makes up a kind of history. I also tried to carry the story on forward in time, but I couldn’t.”
Why not?
“It became so dark that it frightened me.”
I truly wonder how that fairy tale might have turned out. Already what I have read is sometimes immensely frightening and bleak. And he tells me a little part of the unpublished tale and his character changes as he speaks. His eyes become friendlier, almost twinkling. He stops as suddenly as he began:
“Well, there are so many stories.”
“There are” – he keeps using the indicative mood, as if it all really had happened. To him, his fairy tale is not literature; it is life, growing through him as a tree through a rock.
And I suspect that he considers it more real than he would like to admit. Professor Tolkien is truly a strange man. What frightens me most is the feeling of depth, the feeling of his having unlimited depths of story to draw from, or seeming to have. His problem doesn’t seem to be that of other authors, that of finding a story. Obviously he is struggling not to be drowned by stories, caught is this absurd multitude.
“Of course, some have said that I am some sort of escapist, that I’ve remained in some sort of prolonged boyhood stage. But to write that, isn’t that just an instance of plain, simple lovelessness?” [If not this, I suspect Tolkien might have used “lack of charity”. JH]
Last of all he brought me to his window and showed me a great tree, a birch. At some point during its growth a wall had forced it aside. Now the trunk grew in a strange curve, warped and slanting.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Chinese and Russian vetos in the UN
The Chinese and Russian vetos of the resolution in the UN to stop the Syrian genocide,morally disgusting a it is,has great explanatory power.It is enormously revealing as to how the rulers in China and Russia foresee possible developments in their own countries.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
In Memory of Wislawa Szymborska
Wislawa Szymborska,one of the truly great poets in my generation and a lovely lady has left us.And left the impressive ,fascinating landscape of Polish and central European Poetry.
My photo was taken at our reading together in Krakow on May 25th 2011.
Ingrid Elam om jaget i litteraturen
”Jag” är ett konstigt ord.Kom inte och säg att det är meningslöst.”Jag kom först” eller ”Jag har inte skjutit vargen” kan vara nog så meningsfulla.I sina sammanhang.Det intressanta är hur ordet ”jag” får mening.Det har svävande referens.Alla människor har samma rätt att kalla sig ”jag” och bara en enda.I likhet med ”här” och ”nu” får ordet mening på sitt eget sätt.De empiriska filosoferna ,med David Hume i spetsen,påpekade att den som söker efter ett slags substans ett solitt någonting ,subjektet,som referens till det lilla ordet,skall söka förgäves.Ser jag jag in i mig själv,lodar jag mitt medvetande på djupet, finner jag idel sinnesintryck och minnen av sinnesintryck staplade på varann,ordnade eller oordnade i begreppsliga mönster,men något subjekt finner jag inte.
Schopenhauer har ett mycket tänkvärt resonemang i ”Världen som vilja och föreställning”.Materialisterna i hans samtid försöker härleda det tänkande subjektet ur fysik och kemi.Idealisterna,med den särskilt förhatlige Hegel i spetsen försöker härleda hela den fysikaliska verkligheten ur det tänkande subjektet.Ingendera är rimligt säger Schopenhauer.Subjektet är ingendera.Det hör inte hemma i någondera världen.Det är vecket i papperet,nollkorridoren mellan negativa och positiva värden.”I verklighet är du ingen”,skriver Ekelöf i en anmärkningsvärd dikt.Och så tiden,denna permanenta förlust.Vi tror den rör sig,men egentligen är det bara vi som ständigt förlorar oss själva.Vi tror oss vara en substans men är en process.Om detta har Marcel Proust skrivit den slutgiltiga romanen,”På spaning efter den tid som flytt”.
”Vem är jag?” ger alltså upphov till mycken bra occh dålig filosofi,men också till mycket bra och dålig skönlitteratur.Ingrid Elam,en av våra finaste litteraturkritiker,har nu skrivit en väldigt genomtänkt och mycket lärd bok om det litterära subjektet och dess spegelbilder.Den heter självklart ”Jag” med undertiteln ”En fiktion” – vilket faktiskt är ett viktigt ställningstagande.(Bonniers 2011).Ingrid Elam börjar långt tillbaka i tiden med det som brukar kallas ”centrallyrik”,Saphos subtil registrerande av förälskelsens symptom och Catullus långt senare kärleksdikter,så mycket grövre i texturen, men så insiktsfull i sin berättelse om hur känslor föds och dör .
Rousseau,Emily Dickinson och Charlotte Bronte, får representera intressanta stadier i den moderna jagromanens utveckling.Jag är litet förvånad över att hon inte gör mer av Strindberg.”En dåres försvarstal” är ju en ytterst intressant bok ,dels därför att den egentligen avstår från att bevisa någonting och dels för att den kombinerar psykologi med sociologiska klasstudier på ett sätt som vi annars nästan bara ser hos Flaubert.Men varför så litet om de andra delarna i den märkliga subjektroman som från ”Tjänstekvinnans son” via sådana mästerverk som ”Inferno” tar sig fram till ”Ensam” ? Och hade inte Knut Hamsuns ”Sult” förtjänat en mera ingående analys ? Den är ju så viktig för hela den moderna romantraditionen.Ja,för den moderna romantekniken.Jämfört med den själsdödande berättarstil modell 1860 som så totalt dominerar Sveriges samtida underhållningslitteratur är ju Hamsun det nyaste,det mest experimentella man kan tänka sig.
Bland de senare kapitlen har jag särskilt beundrat behandlingen av Jan Myrdals ”Samtida” och ”Barndom” .Ingrid Elam har inte bara lyckats förklara varför dessa – numera orättvist utskällda – romaner om en autentisk vänsterintellektuells väg en gång blev så viktiga.Hon har också förstått varför de – i likhet med alla andra litterära jagdykningar är dömda att förbli fiktioner.
Sen kommer då den allra senaste samtiden med dess veritabla översvämning av ”självutlämnande” och av sensationshungriga medier uppblåsta bekännelseböcker.”Självutlämnande” betyder i dessa starkt kommersiella och konstnärligt helt triviala sammanhang ,som alla vet ,en litteratur som gärna,på kvällstidningsvis och veckotidningsvis, utlämnar andra.
Medan en roman som Jan Myrdals ”Samtida bekännelser av en europeisk intellektuell” uppenbart representerar en sådan personlighets allvarliga försök att komma fram till en sanning om sig själv,en sanning som ter sig alltmer ouppnåelig, saknar det mesta av dagens alltför omfångsrika jagromaner varje självanalytisk ambition.Här finns en egendomlig föreställning att varje trivial inköpsrond på NK hos Lars Norens dagbok eller varje bakfylla hos Knausgård har något slags egenvärde.Detta är uppblåst ,litterärt likgiltig mediaindustri och inget annat.Den beundransvärt tålmodiga Ingrid Elam behåller den litteraturvetenskapliga laboratorierocken på även inför dessa randfenomen.Hon kunde gott ha gjort sin egen värdering av en bok som har den otroliga smaklösheten att efter Hitler kalla sig ”Min kamp” litet tydligare.Detsamma gäller Lars Norens ofta vettlösa angrepp på samtida,där inte deras karaktärer utan för det mesta helt obefogade beskrivningar av deras utseenden blir till argument emot dem.
Till denna plötsliga jagöversvämning har hon en förklaring någonstans i början av boken,en som vore värd en mycket mera ingående diskussion än vad som kan tryckas här:är det så,frågar hon sig,att fenomenet har att göra med att ett slags centralperspektiv har gått förlorat,att vi befinner oss i ett samhällstillstånd där allt har börjat dra isär ?
( En mera ingående diskussion av begreppet återfinns i min filosofiska studie "Språk och lögn"Stockhholm 1978 s.27-36,245-248 och 277-279
Schopenhauer har ett mycket tänkvärt resonemang i ”Världen som vilja och föreställning”.Materialisterna i hans samtid försöker härleda det tänkande subjektet ur fysik och kemi.Idealisterna,med den särskilt förhatlige Hegel i spetsen försöker härleda hela den fysikaliska verkligheten ur det tänkande subjektet.Ingendera är rimligt säger Schopenhauer.Subjektet är ingendera.Det hör inte hemma i någondera världen.Det är vecket i papperet,nollkorridoren mellan negativa och positiva värden.”I verklighet är du ingen”,skriver Ekelöf i en anmärkningsvärd dikt.Och så tiden,denna permanenta förlust.Vi tror den rör sig,men egentligen är det bara vi som ständigt förlorar oss själva.Vi tror oss vara en substans men är en process.Om detta har Marcel Proust skrivit den slutgiltiga romanen,”På spaning efter den tid som flytt”.
”Vem är jag?” ger alltså upphov till mycken bra occh dålig filosofi,men också till mycket bra och dålig skönlitteratur.Ingrid Elam,en av våra finaste litteraturkritiker,har nu skrivit en väldigt genomtänkt och mycket lärd bok om det litterära subjektet och dess spegelbilder.Den heter självklart ”Jag” med undertiteln ”En fiktion” – vilket faktiskt är ett viktigt ställningstagande.(Bonniers 2011).Ingrid Elam börjar långt tillbaka i tiden med det som brukar kallas ”centrallyrik”,Saphos subtil registrerande av förälskelsens symptom och Catullus långt senare kärleksdikter,så mycket grövre i texturen, men så insiktsfull i sin berättelse om hur känslor föds och dör .
Rousseau,Emily Dickinson och Charlotte Bronte, får representera intressanta stadier i den moderna jagromanens utveckling.Jag är litet förvånad över att hon inte gör mer av Strindberg.”En dåres försvarstal” är ju en ytterst intressant bok ,dels därför att den egentligen avstår från att bevisa någonting och dels för att den kombinerar psykologi med sociologiska klasstudier på ett sätt som vi annars nästan bara ser hos Flaubert.Men varför så litet om de andra delarna i den märkliga subjektroman som från ”Tjänstekvinnans son” via sådana mästerverk som ”Inferno” tar sig fram till ”Ensam” ? Och hade inte Knut Hamsuns ”Sult” förtjänat en mera ingående analys ? Den är ju så viktig för hela den moderna romantraditionen.Ja,för den moderna romantekniken.Jämfört med den själsdödande berättarstil modell 1860 som så totalt dominerar Sveriges samtida underhållningslitteratur är ju Hamsun det nyaste,det mest experimentella man kan tänka sig.
Bland de senare kapitlen har jag särskilt beundrat behandlingen av Jan Myrdals ”Samtida” och ”Barndom” .Ingrid Elam har inte bara lyckats förklara varför dessa – numera orättvist utskällda – romaner om en autentisk vänsterintellektuells väg en gång blev så viktiga.Hon har också förstått varför de – i likhet med alla andra litterära jagdykningar är dömda att förbli fiktioner.
Sen kommer då den allra senaste samtiden med dess veritabla översvämning av ”självutlämnande” och av sensationshungriga medier uppblåsta bekännelseböcker.”Självutlämnande” betyder i dessa starkt kommersiella och konstnärligt helt triviala sammanhang ,som alla vet ,en litteratur som gärna,på kvällstidningsvis och veckotidningsvis, utlämnar andra.
Medan en roman som Jan Myrdals ”Samtida bekännelser av en europeisk intellektuell” uppenbart representerar en sådan personlighets allvarliga försök att komma fram till en sanning om sig själv,en sanning som ter sig alltmer ouppnåelig, saknar det mesta av dagens alltför omfångsrika jagromaner varje självanalytisk ambition.Här finns en egendomlig föreställning att varje trivial inköpsrond på NK hos Lars Norens dagbok eller varje bakfylla hos Knausgård har något slags egenvärde.Detta är uppblåst ,litterärt likgiltig mediaindustri och inget annat.Den beundransvärt tålmodiga Ingrid Elam behåller den litteraturvetenskapliga laboratorierocken på även inför dessa randfenomen.Hon kunde gott ha gjort sin egen värdering av en bok som har den otroliga smaklösheten att efter Hitler kalla sig ”Min kamp” litet tydligare.Detsamma gäller Lars Norens ofta vettlösa angrepp på samtida,där inte deras karaktärer utan för det mesta helt obefogade beskrivningar av deras utseenden blir till argument emot dem.
Till denna plötsliga jagöversvämning har hon en förklaring någonstans i början av boken,en som vore värd en mycket mera ingående diskussion än vad som kan tryckas här:är det så,frågar hon sig,att fenomenet har att göra med att ett slags centralperspektiv har gått förlorat,att vi befinner oss i ett samhällstillstånd där allt har börjat dra isär ?
( En mera ingående diskussion av begreppet återfinns i min filosofiska studie "Språk och lögn"Stockhholm 1978 s.27-36,245-248 och 277-279
Sunday, January 15, 2012
From my Workshop VIII. The Posh Lady
Japanese razor saw and Swedish Mora knife on driftwood. 2005. Artist s private collection.
One of the charming surprises which are close at hand when you take the step into the three-dimensional,from canvas to woodwork,is the astounding number of profiles that you can produce with one,and only one ,piece.
This is why I like this ,obviously very elegant and posh lady, on her walk down the street. She is either out on some highly important mission (visiting a lover ? ) or returning from some party where she feels that she was not satisfactorily observed.
On some other occasion,when I have found the right piece of wood I shall provide her with a rather stretched dog,of course a dachshund.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
