‘n Interessante, dog uiters belangrike, verwikkeling rondom Donald Trump se verkiesing as president van die VSA, is die teenstem en – strategie wat dit tot gevolg gehad het. So het The Guardian onlangs bekend gemaak dat Paul Auster, wat nie net een van die VSA se mees gerekende skrywers is nie, maar ook vir etlike jare reeds as ondervoorsitter op die bestuur van PEN America dien, hom beskikbaar gestel het vir dié groep se presidentskap in 2018.
Skynbaar was hy al by verskeie geleenthede dié pos aangebied, wat hy telkens van die hand gewys het.
Volgens ‘n onderhoud wat Auster met The Guardian gevoer het, het hy sy besluit soos volg gemotiveer: “In the wake of Trump’s victory,” he says, “I feel utterly astonished that we could have come to this. I find his election the most appalling thing I’ve seen in politics in my life.” […] “I’ve been struggling ever since Trump won to work out how to live my life in the years ahead,” he says. And he has decided to act: “I have come to the conclusion to accept something that has been offered to me again and again over the years – to become president of PEN America. I have been vice-president, and secretary, but I’ve never wanted to take on the full burden. I’ll start early in 2018. I’m going to speak out as often as I can, otherwise I don’t think I can live with myself.”
Wat egter minder bekend is, is dat Auster ook as digter bekend is; trouens hy beskou hom – selfs na ‘n lang, roemryke loopbaan as romanskrywer – ten eerste as digter. Sy versamelde gedigte het in 2004 verskyn en is in 2007 herdruk deur The Overlook Press. Op sy webtuiste tipeer Ted Burke Auster se digkuns soos volg: ““Paul Auster’s style is so clear of superfluous adjectives, verbs and dead weight qualifiers that he gets across some of the mystery involved in composing a verse, a quality that eludes other writers.”
Vir jou leesplesier volg een van Auster se gedigte.
Aluta continua!
Mooi bly.
LE
*
WHITE NIGHTS
No one here,
and the body says: whatever is said
is not to be said. But no one
is a body as well, and what the body says
is heard by no one
but you.
Snowfall and night. The repetition
of a murder
among the trees. The pen
moves across the earth: it no longer knows
what will happen, and the hand that holds it
has disappeared.
Nevertheless, it writes.
It writes: in the beginning,
among the trees, a body came walking
from the night. It writes:
the body’s whiteness
is the color of earth. It is earth,
and the earth writes: everything
is the color of silence.
I am no longer here. I have never said
what you say
I have said. And yet, the body is a place
where nothing dies. And each night,
from the silence of the trees, you know
that my voice
comes walking toward you.
(c) Paul Auster (Uit: Collected Poems, 2007: The Overlook Press)