Louis Esterhuizen. Twee digters onder gunstelinge vir Nobelprys vir Letterkunde

 

Oor ‘n maand is dit weer tyd vir die aanwys van vanjaar se Nobelpryswenner vir Letterkunde en die jaarlikse raai-raai-riepa-speletjie het reeds begin. So het die beroepswedders verlede week hul loting ten opsigte van gunstelingkandidate bekend gemaak en oudergewoonte wemel die lys met die usual suspects.

Volgens Ladbrokes, wat as die vernaamste van dié speelmaats beskou word, is die Japannese skrywer Haruki Murakami, met ‘n loting van 3 teen 1, die gunsteling om vanjaar vereer te word.  Murakami is al verskeie kere onder die lys uitverkorenes benoem, maar met sy magistrale roman 1Q84 op die tafel, mag dit dalk tog vanjaar sy beurt wees … Ook die keurpaneel vir die Neustad-prys is dié mening toegedaan aangesien Murakami ook prominent figureer op húl lys begunstigdes. (Die Neustadt word as ‘n belangrike voorloper van Nobel-gunstelinge beskou.)

 

Naas Murakami is daar die Amerikaanse gunsteling, Joyce Carol Oates (6 – 1), die Hongaar Peter Nàdas (7 – 1) en die Kanadees kortverhaalskrywer Alice Munro (12 – 1). Die digtersgemeenskap word deur die twee gereelde voorlopers, die Koreaan Ko Un (10 – 1) en die indrukwekkende Siriese digter Adonis (14 – 1) verteenwoordig. En ai, kan dit nie maar vanjaar Adonis se beurt wees nie?

Maar nou ja, op sy beste kan hierdie maar net ‘n prettige speletjie wees, soos The Guardian se beriggewer heel tereg opmerk: “Piecing together the odds is a question of informed guesswork, since the nominations and cogitations of the members of the Nobel Committee for Literature are kept under wraps by the Swedish Academy, which only reveals the conversations of the judicial huddle 50 years after the decision is made.”

 

Volgens Alfred Nobel se wens word die Nobelprys vir Letterkunde jaarliks toegeken aan “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”. Vanjaar se totale prysgeld beloop die magtige bedrag van £780,000.

Vir jou leesplesier volg ‘n langerige gedig deur my persoonlike gunstelingkandidaat.

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Celebrating Childhood

 

Even the wind wants

to become a cart

pulled by butterflies.

 

I remember madness

leaning for the first time

on the mind’s pillow.

I was talking to my body then

and my body was an idea

I wrote in red.

 

Red is the sun’s most beautiful throne

and all the other colors

worship on red rugs.

 

Night is another candle.

In every branch, an arm,

a message carried in space

echoed by the body of the wind.

 

The sun insists on dressing itself in fog

when it meets me:

Am I being scolded by the light?

 

Oh, my past days—

they used to walk in their sleep

and I used to lean on them.

 

Love and dreams are two parentheses.

Between them I place my body

and discover the world.

 

Many times

I saw the air fly with two grass feet

and the road dance with feet made of air.

 

My wishes are flowers

staining my days.

 

I was wounded early,

and early I learned

that wounds made me.

 

I still follow the child

who still walks inside me.

 

Now he stands at a staircase made of light

searching for a corner to rest in

and to read the face of night again.

 

If the moon were a house,

my feet would refuse to touch its doorstep.

 

They are taken by dust

carrying me to the air of seasons.

 

I walk,

one hand in the air,

the other caressing tresses

that I imagine.

 

A star is also

a pebble in the field of space.

 

He alone

who is joined to the horizon

can build new roads.

 

A moon, an old man,

his seat is night

and light is his walking stick.

 

What shall I say to the body I abandoned

in the rubble of the house

in which I was born?

No one can narrate my childhood

except those stars that flicker above it

and that leave footprints

on the evening’s path.

 

My childhood is still

being born in the palms of a light

whose name I do not know

and who names me.

 

Out of that river he made a mirror

and asked it about his sorrow.

He made rain out of his grief

and imitated the clouds.

 

Your childhood is a village.

You will never cross its boundaries

no matter how far you go.

 

His days are lakes,

his memories floating bodies.

 

You who are descending

from the mountains of the past,

how can you climb them again,

and why?

 

Time is a door

I cannot open.

My magic is worn,

my chants asleep.

 

I was born in a village,

small and secretive like a womb.

I never left it.

I love the ocean not the shores.

 

© Adonis (Uit: Selected Poems, vertaal deur Khaled Mattawa. 2010: Yale University Press.)