Alphabet

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Sexto Piso, otra de esas editoriales inquietas, se han lanzado a una nueva aventura, en este caso poética y el primer libro que han escogido, “Alfabeto” de la danesa Inger Christensen, es una absoluta delicia.

How can this be a translation? How did Susanna Nied do this? Alliteration, syllabification, Fibonacci sequence, while also retaining the imagery? I think of those Oulipo artists, and the feat of translating something like Perec's A Void - surely this must have been as difficult as that. The apricot is an attractive, tasty fruit, but, as Christensen surely expects here readers to know, its pit contains poison. It is an alphabetical sequence: each of the fourteen sections essentially begins with a successive letter of the alphabet, from A through N, with that letter then often dominating the section. This is the first time that I've realized how the images, metaphors, and doomsday fears of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War-era can be read to represent the crisis of climate change and species extinction (the end of the world as we know it).

June 2023

Y aunque escribamos poesía como escribía una estación, el resultado de esa escritura poética, aunque esté “marcado por la muerte”, se acercará a lo sublime: De første 5 digte er en opremsning af verdens bestanddele, en slags inventarliste, som blot konstaterer at de findes, uden at deres indbyrdes sammenhæng forklares: "cikaderne findes; cikorie, chrom/ og citrontræer findes; cikaderne findes;/ cikaderne, ceder, cypres, cerebellum". Men i takt med at talrækken accelererer, bliver digtene længere, får mere fylde og beskriver nu, hvordan noget findes: "fiskehejren findes, med sin gråblå hvælvede/ ryg findes den", ligesom digtet selv begynder at stille spørgsmål ved verbet "findes", som det indtil nu har brugt uden at ryste på hånden: "martsbække findes, hvis bækkene findes/ hvis ilten i bækkene findes". At digtene er skrevet under Den kolde krig med bevidstheden om atomvåbnets eksistens og menneskenes umenneskelighed, fremgår både implicit: "fissionsprodukterne findes [...] fejlene findes, de grove, de systematiske,/ de tilfældige; fjernstyringen findes" og eksplicit: “atombomben findes/ Hiroshima, Nagasaki/Hiroshima den 6./ august 1945/ Nagasaki den 9./ august 1945”. Når Inger Christensen skriver "abrikostræerne findes, abrikostræerne findes" er det derfor ikke kun en konstatering af at de findes, men også en inderlig bøn om, at de fortsat skal findes i verden, inden den tilintetgøres. Christensen, der er kendt for at gøre brug af systemer i sin digtning, heraf prædikatet "systemdigter", trækker i alfabet på to systemer: nemlig alfabetet og Fibonaccis talrække (hvis ophavsmand er den italienske middelalder-matematiker Leonardo Fibonacci). Det er denne talrække – hvor hvert tal er summen af de to foregående (dvs.: 1 2 3 5 8 13 osv.) – der bestemmer længden af hvert af de i alt 14 digte, som samlingen består af. Således er det første digt blot en verselinje lang, mens det sidste digt har en længde på 321 verselinjer. Man aner her, at digtets strenge form har nået en grænse. alfabet stopper ved bogstavet n (og ikke å som Halfdans ABC); hermed bryder digtet for første gang med Fibonaccis talrække, som krævede, at det fjortende og sidste digt skulle være næsten dobbelt så langt (610 verselinjer). But to return to the writing process: although she sees a place for secrets and labyrinths in her work, she doesn't go along with creating a mystique around how she writes. Her elaborately constructed sequence of poems on the Cold War and nuclear holocaust, alphabet, written in 1980, came about by happenstance rather than forethought: "The Cold War never seemed to end and I thought, `why write poetry; why not write something useful?' I found myself listing things, words starting with "a", and then "b", and "c". I was reading the encyclopaedia one day when I came across Fibonacci's numeric sequence, in which each number is equal to the sum of the two preceding numbers: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and so on. I realised I could combine the numbers and the words."

Christensen also wrote works for children, plays, radio pieces, and numerous essays, the most notable of which were collected in her book Hemmelighedstilstanden ( The State of Secrecy) in 2000. The measured but ultimately explosive growth of the Fibonacci sequence, feeding on itself, is appropriate for the poem. De ahí que vaya más allá en esta comparación, la bomba de hidrógeno es la evolución de dicha destrucción, de esa falta de existencia, en un párrafo que rompe el ritmo anterior y lo emparenta directamente con la muerte, en un instante, un ritmo de versos cortos con encabalgamientos continuos que transmiten una rapidez mortal a un instante en el que se acaba todo: In her careful and hesitant English she explains that this year for the first time, two of her books, a novel (The Painted Room, published by Harvill) and a book of poetry (alphabet, published by Bloodaxe), have been issued in English translations (a second book of poetry, Butterfly Valley - a Requiem, will appear in translation from Ireland's Dedalus press in the autumn). Her trip to Dublin to give a reading at the Dublin Writers' Festival on Sunday will be another first - her first visit to Ireland.

More by this poet

She has one son, of whom she says wryly: "He is 27 and studying for his PhD in literature. I tried to make him interested in science, but I didn't succeed. I tried to keep it a secret from him, that there is a future in literature." The example of her own life tells another story, however. As well as six collections of poetry, Christensen has written radio drama, two novels, and two books of essays. She has won several major European awards, including the Nordic Prize of the Swedish Academy and the Grand Prix des Biennales Internationales de Poesie. Her work has been translated into French and German, and she gives many readings in Germany and Austria. Note that the eighth section, in fact, does not literally begin with H in the English translation, and the eleventh doesn't begin with K.) En sjælden glæde, når man forsøger at nå igennem en bundløs to-be-read bunke ("Hvad er den nederste bog i bunken? Nej, nej, det er bøger all the way down .) er at genlæse et værk. En glæde, der til gengæld er forholdsvis hyppig, er oplevelsen af selv at have vokset og være modnet og møde bogen med et nyt udgangspunkt. Nogle bøger lever ikke op til den distance, man selv har rykket sig, nogle følger med en, og nogle venter med åbne arme, glad for at se at man endelig er der, hvor man kan sætte pris på dem. Det er altid tilladt at blive klogere. Mine venner, jeg tog fejl, Om Alfabet (og en masse andre, nu hvor vi er i gang, <3 Stolthed og Fordom <3 undskyld min aller kæreste), og jeg beklager. In 1978, she was appointed to the Royal Danish Academy; in 1994, she became a member of the Académie Européenne de Poésie ("European Academy of Poetry"); [3] in 2001, a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin. [4] She won the Grand Prix des Biennales Internationales de Poésie in 1991; She received the Rungstedlund Award in 1991. [5] Der österreichische Staatspreis für Literature (" Austrian State Prize for European Literature") in 1994; in 1994, she won the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize, known as the 'little Nobel'; the European Poetry Prize in 1995; The America Award in 2001; [3] the German Siegfried Unseld Preis in 2006; [6] and received numerous other distinctions. Her works have been translated into several languages, and she was frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. [3] Works [ edit ] As she moves forward in the alphabetical sequence. the second formal constraint which Christensen is respecting becomes apparent. The lines of the poem follow Fibonacci’s sequence, a mathematical sequence beginning 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…, in which each number is the sum of the two previous numbers. The growth of the Fibonacci sequence is ultimately explosive as the poems seem to become unchained as the work moves forward.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-10-15 10:07:14 Associated-names Nied, Susanna Bookplateleaf 0010 Boxid IA40259904 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier The ecological crisis forms the starting point for a part ecstatic homage to the world and nature, which in spite of everything is still found: partly in the active sense that it exists, partly in the passive sense that it is discovered and understood – by the poet and by us.’– Erik Skyum-Nielsen En efecto, en primer lugar la famosa serie de Fibonacci, cada verso es la suma de los dos precedentes y, desde luego, el alfabeto que le da nombre. Sin embargo, como bien dice, la editorial, no denota rigidez, muy al contrario, es tan variada en la forma de tramar los temas y los estilos que supone un pequeño caos poético que se une a la aparente “rigidez” estructural para conseguir una mezcla ciertamente subyugadora.Har man bare lidt kendskab til dansk litteratur i det 20. århundrede, er man før eller siden stødt på linjen "abrikostræerne findes, abrikostræerne findes". Sætningen stammer fra Inger Christensens hovedværk fra 1981, digtsamlingen alfabet. a b Fox, Margalit (12 January 2009). "Inger Christensen, Scandinavian Poet, Is Dead at 73". New York Times. Archived from the original on December 9, 2013 . Retrieved 13 February 2013. The beautiful supple irony of the book is most easily encapsulated in the first image of “apricot trees.” These trees represent springtime, luscious fruit, life, but also danger as the pit of an apricot contains poison. Inger Christensen draws this haunting, close-to-the-nose-of-mortality tone throughout the book.

Williamson, Marcus (2 February 2009). "Inger Christensen". The Independent. Archived from the original on 11 April 2013 . Retrieved 13 February 2013. alphabet is a hymn to the microscopic and macro: the enormous and the unfathomably insignificant; a lulling, effervescent refrain that hisses with the misty sounds of creation and continuation. Life is a process; a continuous series of cycles to which Christensen pays homage in this haunting Fibonaccian progression. Susanna Nied's translation was awarded the 1982 American-Scandinavian Foundation PEN Translation PrizeAlthough one of the most morbid sections of the poem, this is a wonderful example of the powerful repetition that Christensen uses so effectively throughout the poem.