Men's Voices
by Inger Christensen
tr. Susanna Nied
Men’s voices in the dark
— once in a temple —
men’s voices in the sun
— once I was caryatid
number nine —
men’s voices in the park
— I was a statue
untouchable naked
with no other mirror
than the fingers of the air
yielding to thought after thought
with no other sadness
than the rustling of leaves —
men’s voices in the park:
why did they waken me?
41 notes
·
View notes
5.
early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;
seclusion and angels exist;
widows and elk exist; every
detail exists; memory, memory's light;
afterglow exists; oaks, elms,
junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;
eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar
exist, and the future, the future
Inger Christensen, Alphabet fragment
(based structurally on Fibonacci's sequence)
trans. by Susanna Nied and Pierre Joris
56 notes
·
View notes
‘‘Today life opened inside me like an egg’’
Avocados are my favorite fruit. Every Sunday my grandfather used to bring me an avocado pear hidden at the bottom of his briefcase under six soiled shirts and the Sunday comics. He taught me how to eat avocados by melting grape jelly and french dressing together in a saucepan and filling the cup of the pear with the garnet sauce. I felt homesick for that sauce. The crabmeat tasted bland in comparison.
‘I’ve got to talk to you, have you got time?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘let’s have an orange.’
•••
[Text ID in Alt Text]
Anne Sexton, Live / mango tree at my grandparents / William Carlos Williams, This is just to say / Syliva Plath, The Bell Jar / Katherine Larson, Radial Symmetry / Inger Christensen, Alphabet / Call Me By Your Name / Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts / Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the only fruit / Syliva Plath, The Bell Jar / Virginia Woolf, Room of One's Own / Kiki's Delivery Service
296 notes
·
View notes
from Alphabet by Inger Christensen
25 notes
·
View notes
"Everything that a writer writes could just as easily have been different - but not until it's been written. As a life could have been different, but not until it's been lived."
-- Inger Christensen
11 notes
·
View notes
november 18 — books i still think about
(out of all the books i've read up until now this year)
43 notes
·
View notes
"De stiger op, planetens sommerfugle / I Brajčinodalens middagshede luft..."
(translation by submitter: "They rise up, the planet's butterflies / In the midday heat of the Brajčino Valley...")
Read this in the original Dansk (Danish) here | Read an English translation of one of the sonnets in this sonnet cycle here
Reblog for a larger sample size!
6 notes
·
View notes
Sotto la pelle si difende un cuore.
Inger Christensen
____ Lina Scheynius
67 notes
·
View notes
Inger Christensen was insane for this one
27 notes
·
View notes
NOVO LIVRO
ALFABETO, de Inger Christensen, tradução de Ricardo Marques
Capa a partir de gravura de Basilius Besler
Edição em português
Tradução do inglês e do espanhol
/// Colecção Traditore, #17
https://livrosnaoedicoes.tumblr.com/post/739804281203556352/colecção-traditore-17-alfabeto-autora-inger
Alfabet [Alfabeto], publicado em 1981, é a obra mais conhecida e traduzida de Inger Christensen.
Trata-se de um longo poema sobre a fragilidade da natureza perante as ameaças humanas da guerra e da devastação ecológica. De modo a salientar a perfeição e a simplicidade de tudo o que existe, a autora decidiu estruturar a sua obra de acordo com a sequência de números inteiros de Fibonacci, que está na base de muitas das formas do mundo natural (como a geometria da pinha, do olho do girassol ou do interior de certas conchas). Como tal, Alfabeto apresenta catorze secções, desde a letra A à letra N, sendo que o número de versos de cada uma é sempre a soma do número de versos das duas secções anteriores. Ao longo destes capítulos, cada vez mais extensos, Christensen vai assim nomeando todas as coisas que compõem o mundo.
Este livro, verdadeiramente genesíaco, é a primeira tradução integral para português de uma obra sua.
Inger Christensen (1935-2009)
Poeta dinamarquesa, nascida em Vejle.
O seu trabalho explora as ligações entre o som e o significado e desafia as fronteiras tradicionais entre géneros literários, muitas vezes de forma lúdica.
Christensen aplicou estruturas repetitivas nos seus livros (como em Det [Isto], de 1969), construindo uma obra profundamente influenciada pela Matemática e marcada por uma aguda consciência linguística e ética.
À data da sua morte, era considerada uma das mais importantes poetas experimentais do século XX, tendo sido indicada várias vezes para o Prémio Nobel da Literatura.
A Inger era uma pessoa adorável e uma escritora maravilhosa. Sempre acreditei que lhe fosse atribuído o Prémio Nobel. Quando ela morreu (…) eu disse: ‘deixaram que a Inger morresse’. Eu não me importava de ter esperado. Podia receber o Prémio mais tarde ou talvez nem sequer ganhá-lo. Mas eu queria mesmo era que ele fosse para a Inger. (…) Ela não era nada pretensiosa. Era uma escritora brilhante mas, ao mesmo tempo, uma pessoa tão normal. Era incrível. Talvez ela possa estar a ouvir-nos. Eu não acredito em Deus e não sou supersticiosa. Mas pela Inger estou disposta a ser um pouco supersticiosa.
Herta Müller (Prémio Nobel da Literatura 2009)
/// Pedidos via
[email protected]
/// A partir da próxima semana nas livrarias habituais: https://naoedicoes.tumblr.com/livrarias
5 notes
·
View notes
If I stand
alone in the snow
it is clear
that I am a clock
how else would eternity
find its way around
from Light: If I stand by Inger Christensen (Translated by Susanna Nied)
2 notes
·
View notes
-alphabet, Inger Christensen, translated by Susanna Nied
1 [a] apricot trees - 2 [b] bracken - 3 [c] cicadas - 4 [d] doves - 5 [e] early fall - 6 [f] fisherbird herons - 7 [g] given limits - 8 [h] whisperings - 9 [i] ice ages
2 notes
·
View notes
Poema cósmico.
2 notes
·
View notes
from Alphabet by Inger Christensen
15 notes
·
View notes
Sotto la pelle si difende un cuore.
7 notes
·
View notes
hydrogen bombs exist
a plea to die
as people used to die
one day in ordinary
weather, whether you
know you are dying
or know nothing, maybe
a day when as usual you have
forgotten you must die,
a breezy day in
November maybe, as
you walk into the kitchen
and barely manage to
notice how good
and earthy the potatoes
smell, and barely
manage to put the lid on,
wondering whether you
salted them before you
put the lid on,
and in a flash,
while puffs of steam
leak past the lid, barely
manage to remember your life
as it was and still
is, while the potatoes
boil and life, which you
always have said must go
on, really does go
on, a plea, an
ordinary plea, an
ordinary day, that
life can continue
completely ordinarily
without it ever happening
that any of all
the cruel experiments
that the Teller group
performed on
Eniwetok where
the waves of the
Pacific raged in fury,
or any of all
the experiments that
the Sakharov group
performed on
Novaya Zemlya where
the waves of the Arctic
Ocean raged in fury
without these experiments or those
of the British French
Chinese ever reaching
real real-
isation here where we
still live in a
real real
world as opposed to
the unreality of
Novaya Zemlya
and Eniwetok; here I
walk down to the still
blue of the Sound shining
with evening, toss
a stone into the water,
see how the cirlces
widen, reaching
even the farthest shores
Inger Christensen, from alphabet, tr. Susanna Nied
10 notes
·
View notes