Danksy die digwerk van Thomas Tranströmer, en ook die Finse digter Pia Tafdrup, het ek nog altyd ‘n bepaalde entoesiasme jeens die Skandinawiese digkuns vertroetel. Daarom dat ek onlangs ‘n artikel oor die Sweedse digkuns met groot verwagting op die internet raakgelees het. Dié bepaalde oorsig van die Sweedse digkuns is deur Johannes Göransson geskryf en is saam met die gedigte van sewe van Swede se meer prominente digters tans, op die webruimte TypoMag geplaas.
By wyse van inleiding: “Scandinavian literature has a distinctive relationship to both European and American literatures – it is both part of European literature and isolated on the edge of Europe. As such, Swedish-language poetry is characterized both by periods of intense interaction with the rest of Europe and periods of isolation or rejection of European ideas.”
Volgens Göransson is dit egter eers in die 1920s, met die toetrede van Edith Södergran, dat die Skandinawiese digkuns die era van modernisme betree het: “Modernism didn’t truly revolutionize Scandinavian poetry until Edith Södergran, Russian-born and German-educated, published a series of brash, radical books of free verse in the second half of the decade. Her controversial books provided the impetus for a second generation of Finland-Swedish poets – including Elmer Diktonius and Gunnar Björling who began publishing in the early 1920s, and even a third generation – including Russian-born Henry Parland – who began publishing at the end of that decade.”
Nog ‘n keerpunt, aldus Göransson, was in 1960s toe ‘n magdom nuwe internasionale tekste hul weg via vertaling na Skandinawiese gebiede gevind het: “A second massive wave of internationalism struck Sweden in the 1960s, as a whole new generation of poets discarded the nature mysticism of the previous generation (including Tranströmer) for a more urban, and politically explicit poetry. In part caused by the influx of refugees during World War II and in part a reaction to US imperialism […] The literary journals from this period are startlingly international. BLM, perhaps the central journal of the time, devoted entire issues to works in translation.”
Dié oorsig van ‘n besonder dinamiese digkuns is helaas maar bra dun gepleister; nogtans bly dit die lees werd. Vreemd genoeg het Göransson besluit om Swede se vername digters soos Harry Martinsson, Thomas Tranströmer en Bruno K. Öijer net ‘n sydelingse kyk te gee. En dít vind ek jammer, want in alle eerlikheid: die sewe digters wie se verse te lese is, is nou waaragtig so inspirerend soos eergister se malvapoeding.
Nietemin, die een digter, Ann Jäderlund, se verse het my tog wel geïnteresseer vanweë die besonderse aanslag op die geykte patroon van prosaverse. Vir jou leesgerief plaas ek hulle onder aan vanoggend se Nuuswekker. (Maar gaan kyk gerus na die ander en oordeel self. Myns insiens is die meerderheid van gedigte wat tans in Afrikaans geproduseer word, ligjare beter as wat dié ‘Kliek van 7‘ het om te bied.)
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Vanoggend is ons opgewonde om vanjaar se Woordfees-program bekend te kan maak. Kyk gerus solank watter besonderse items almal vanjaar van 4 tot 13 Maart geniet kan word. Inderdaad, ‘n fees der feeste!
Gebruik dan sommer ook jou tyd vanoggend om op agterstallige leeswerk in te haal.
Mooi bly.
LE
Close to the opened mouth grow the leaves in dried bunches. Large darkly blushing camphor leaves. Dried for you in the already dead. Carefully selected motifs. Opiates with virgin eyes. Peeled away little by little. Until only they in your inner flow out. You cannot open their calyxes. But that which is inside the buds flows out and forms miniature buds. The small murk-green pelvis down there. In the depths of the ugly mountains. Where your dead stone-heart juts out above the opened bay. Like a desolate point with the red heart following after it.
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Summer is strange. Pale frog-leaves are lit up. By naked lightning. White child-limbs that open up and coil around the Good God’s throat. Snake-ferns sleep by a forest path. Stars glimmer in a virgin brush. Black larkspurs that want to dry and penetrate your dead camphor cabinet. The little capsule in your evil heart. The forest should be the cruel star Or the stars in my virgin hair. Black waterlily water. With deep and desolate mud bottoms. Where the cold unfolds like a father harbor. A small female eider drowns in your murky reeds. Or in the murky limbs of your Male-limbs. What I forsake to your gaze.
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White-flower and flower. In love’s garden there is a silver garden. A cool heart-thread. Which boldly spreads out in its flesh. The way the white worm moves in the flower head. And above this garden the heavens are always painted. The strong fields of the strong color. Close to the dead bowl. Where heavy pearl fruits open up and run down across the canals of the garden. The large foreign garnet drops. They lay entwined in each other. The way the comely hands darkly twine around the stalk of the beautiful flower. I am the pure Rose the Lord is sending Thee.
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The big valley is a vast mother-of-pearl mirror. There walks the large dead swan in her dead shroud. And there walks the mother-of-pearl children. Or the fragile foundling clumps. That grow out of the virgin mother’s throat. They led the swan into a forest and placed beautiful white stones of mother-of-pearl on her back. Go now and eat that which you have taken from the swans. Then one ran up and cut a branch from the tree and grabbed a burning branch and stuck it into her throat. And scrubbed her both up top and down below. Until the swan’s flesh fell off in beautiful heavy clumps. For some time the swan lay in the bushes and slept. And black merchants came riding on black mother-of-pearl horses. Then they took the swan and carried her away.
© Ann Jäderlund (Uit: Soon into the summer I will walk out)
Vertaling deur: Johannes Göransson