Torgeir,
Thank you for these. I downloaded the volume edited by Robert Bly, The
Half-Finished Heaven: Selected Poems.” Here are a few comments from Bly’s
introduction in case any others are as ignorant of Transtromer as I am:
Transtromer made his living as a psychologist. “For some years he worked at a
boys’ prison I Linkoping.” The haiku poem “Prison,” a poem he wrote after his
stroke, perhaps long after, suggests that his experiences as a prison
psychologist were relived time and time again. “Once during a reading in New
York, a member of the audience asked him if his work had affected his poetry.
He did reply, but mentioned how odd it seemed that so few people asked him:
‘How has your poetry affected your work?’ Did my poetry affect my work? I was
“the writer” for a lot of engineering activities and taught a couple of writing
classes for engineers and contract administrators at one time, but can’t really
bring to mind anything that might indicate that my poetry influenced my work.
Transtromer obviously thought that his poetry did influence his work, but I
wonder how.
Further down, Bly writes, “If you are addicted to certainty, there’s no point
in going toward his poems – they’ll just lead you into islands that disappear a
moment later.
“In general, the Swedish writing community likes everyone to walk in step.
Bjorn Hakansson, a well-known Swedish critic and poet, attacked Transtromer for
having too much solitude. His poetry, ‘passive and contemplative,’ achieves
peace, Hakansson said, but ‘does so at the expense of any impulse to intervene
and change the world.’”
My impression has been that the American writing community is the same. I’m
sure that Robert Lowell was lionized in part because he did attempt to
intervene and change the world. Many of his attempts were morphed by his
psychosis into imagining that he was a great political or literary figure from
the past. His activities during his manic periods embarrassed his friends and
later on after he was out of his manic phase and back on his medications they
embarrassed him, but he like so many American poets did write “to intervene and
change the world.”
I do like the Prison poem.
In the second Haiku I want to read that the freezing wind is passing the names
of demons through the house at night but the semicolon won’t let me. I read a
lot of Haiku in the past and recall poems like this one, with the last line
making a statement that draws from the first part as this poem does; so I’m
sure a dash at least is needed, but I don’t understand who these demons are
that are named – unless this is a personal poem: the freezing wind his wife’s
treatment of him after an argument, the “name of demons” the chaotic thoughts
that keep him from sleep.
In the “Black Postcards” poem I assume that the first word in the last line
should be “lead” and that makes a fine image. The sea in a certain light might
look like lead. I like this poem: the “folk song without a homeland –
uncertain future – shadows wrestling on the dock”: Very nice”
I’m not sure about “Sometimes death arrives in the middle of life // to measure
man.” Obviously it is the death of someone important to a man, but if so, how
can such a death be soon forgotten? I don’t understand when I think of Susan
who died July 4th 1915. But if I think of my grandmother who died when I was
12 and many other relatives and friends who died, I can say “life goes on.”
But if “our suit” is sewn from such forgotten experiences does that account for
the silent sewing? Or perhaps it just means that the suit that is our life is
being sewn and will go on being sewn regardless of the people dying about us.
I only seem to be able to write about feelings I personally have. I don’t
recall being able to write well in the second person. Transtromer in the poems
you translate and in the poems I’ve thus far read translated by Bly seems
comfortable in the third person. That seems to work best from the Haiku
perspective, that is, a third-person description of some sort and then an
ending that shows how this is personal and what the effect is – in this
Transtromer succeeds.
Thanks again,
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Torgeir Fjeld
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 5:23 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Three poems by Thomas Tranströmer
Die Seele ist nur der
Schlaf des Geistes.
GWF Hegel, Die Philosophie des Geistes
Three poems by Thomas Tranströmer
"Tomas Tranströmer (1931 – 2015 ), a Swedish poet, has been universally
acclaimed as one of the most important European and Scandinavian writers since
1945. He was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. Tranströmer suffered a
stroke in 1990, and after a six-year silence published his collection
Sorgegondolen, translated into English as The Grief Gondola [2010]." (from
thomastranstromer.net/about/)
FÄNGELSE
Pojken dricker mjölk
och somnar trygg i sin cell,
en moder av sten.
PRISON
The boy's drinking milk,
sleeping safely in his cell,
mother made of stone
* * *
En pinande blåst
drar genom huset i natt -
demonernas namn.
A freezing wind is
passing through our house to-night;
the name of demons
* * *
SVARTA VYKORT
I
Almanackan fullskriven, framtid okänd.
Kabeln nynnar folkvisan utan hemland.
Snöfall i det blystilla havet. Skuggor
brottas på kajen.
II
Mitt i livet händer det att döden kommer
och tar mått på människan. Det besöket
glöms och livet fortsätter. Men kostymen
sys i det tysta.
BLACK POSTCARDS
1.
A calendar fully booked. A future uncertain.
The wire is humming quietly on a folk song
without homeland. Snow falls on an ocean of
led. Shadows wrestle on the dock.
2.
Sometimes death arrives in the middle of life
to measure man. It is a visit that is soon
forgotten; life goes on. Our
suit is sewn in silence.
Mvh. / Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld, PhD
http://torgeirfjeld.com/
