A Bridge Over the Breach.
Translated by
ELLIOT VALE.
•
Translator’s introduction:
The thread that ties these poems together is the theme of disconnection.
- The ‘loner’ of Karlfeldt’s poem is suspended between generations, cut off from both future and past, with no progeny, property, or parentage to define him. As he declares: ‘I am no man’s son, I have no home, / no home or son shall I ever own’, a condition as liberating as it is lonely.
- The close of day represents the end of life in Ekelund’s poem, the speaker gaining a disassociated perspective on life by facing imminent death with quiet, stoic stillness.
- Ferlin, an actor for many years, extends the artifice of the theatre to the performativity of everyday life. On our ‘divided paths’, we meet only to assume ‘roles’, far from each other no matter how close we feel.
- With almost mythic grandeur, Lundkvist frames the confrontation between man and death in a personal reckoning between father and son, hoping to build ‘a bridge over the breach’ between them.
- Ekelöf meditates on the limitations of our knowledge as ‘blind beings’ in ‘hidden worlds’, ‘captive’ to an endless cosmological hierarchy: ‘we understand as little as our superior / his superior’. As though perceiving that a ‘steamship passes by’ only when its ‘backwash comes to us on the beach’, humankind is distanced from the world’s deep logic of cause and effect.
- Sonnevi similarly struggles to understand the ‘scientific / revolution […] before the effects // are found everywhere’ that suggest we are uncomprehendingly ‘part of a vaster whirl of fortune’. More intimately, a mother’s voice distanced on the phone holds both the ‘girlishness’ of youth and the ‘harshness’ of age. Irreconcilably, ‘Our actions happen in de- / spair, frail, full of grace’, suggesting the most difficult science to understand is love, which alone can overcome all disconnection. — EV
1. Erik Axel Karlfeldt
A Loner
Who are you and where do you come from?
— That I won’t, I cannot say.
I am no man’s son, I have no home,
no home or son shall I ever own.
I am a stranger weighed down.
What is your belief and your religion?
— I only know that I never knew,
I was never one to argue the faith,
and yet I felt I’d lost something.
God have I sought, first and last.
How was your life? — It was storm and stress
and struggle at every turn;
there was scorned longing and vain passion
and little glints out of the mole’s dugout.
I am so happy that I got to live.
•
En Löskerkarl
Vem är du och var kommer du från?
— Det vill jag och kan jag ej säga.
Har intent hem, är ingen mans son,
ej hem eller son skall jag äga.
Jag är en främling fjärranväga.
Vad är din tro och din religion?
— Jag vet blott att intet jag visste,
och var jag ej av den trätta tron,
så trodde jag dock ej miste!
Gud har jag sökt, den förste och den siste.
Hur var ditt liv? — Det var storm och nöd
och kamp i enda veva;
det var gäckad längtan och fåfäng glöd
och små glimtar ur molens reva.
Jag är så glad att jag fått leva.
2. Vilhelm Ekelund
Peace
Already the difficult day
now leans toward its fall;
a dusky sky – beyond it
the heavens are clear and cold.
My soul was consoling, was quiet,
my heart, stifle your cry!
How soon everything becomes quiet,
how soon is it all passed by.
•
Ro
Den svåra dagen redan
nu lutar mot sitt fall;
en dunkel sky – där nedan
är himlen klar og kall.
Min själ, var tröst, var stilla,
mitt hjärta, kväf ditt skri!
Hur snart blir allting stilla,
hur snart är allt förbi.
3. Nils Ferlin
In life’s confusion
In life’s confusion
we walk divided paths.
We meet and we play
our parts.
We hide our thoughts,
we hide our wounds
and our heart that beats
and pounds –
We hitch our signs
each morning to our gate
and chat about weather
and wind –
In life’s confusion
closely we go –
but so far from each other
even so.
•
I livets villervalla
I livets villervalla
vi gå på skilda håll.
Vi mötas och vi spela
vår roll.
Vi dölja våra tankar,
vi dölja våra sår
och vårt hjärta som banka
och slår –
Vi haka våra skyltar
var morgon på vår grind
och pratar om väder
och vind –
I livets villervalla
så nära vi gå –
men så fjärran från varandra
ändå.
4. Artur Lundkvist
From ‘The Song of the Father’
I see you, father, alone and aged in the woods:
thoughtful tree-feller, birch-bark fluttering off,
hands sticky with resin and beard full of needles,
with a mossy back and the crashing flight of the woodgrouse
through your ears’ constant waterfall swoosh
when the threshing of tall pine-trees polishes the metal of space.
Everything to remember, everything to forget in these woods,
the ever deeper, ever more endless woods of age
where all echoes hide; more and more a man of nature,
more and more lost, and suddenly stopped
by some memory, like a seesaw in front of your feet,
a sting of longing through the film of time,
and the pain is gone; the forest whispers with the now of age.
The snow like white churches and the trees like women,
tear-dropping, lamenting! A woodcutter in the woods,
a simple instrument for the domination of fire: you are sent out
into the cold fields, most deep into the snow’s oblivion,
beyond the dinner bells, the call of cattle and clamour of towns.
Already you’re ready to meet him, resting
by the burdensome bundle of branches, with axe held firmly
in a tree, as the fire of the sun flows through the hoarfrost:
invisibly white against the snow, the skeletal figure of death.
You don’t know that he meets nobody: he enters
through an unknown door and settles down inside you.
He waits there, leaning over an everyday table.
He straightens up more and more, fills you,
becomes you and owns you and takes you away, and what
you were just now is now nowhere: devoured.
You give him water to the very last: is the thirst
your own or his? he who repels night’s sleep
and makes the darkness bloom with slow torments,
tosses back food scornfully, angrily shakes you,
sucks your bones clean from all flesh, until you tremble
at every draught like dry leaves on a stick.
The dying understand the dying, they seek shelter together
in helpless friendliness; logs that shall be devoured,
clumps of snow that melt under the shoe, that old dog
who just sleeps in the inglenook, with a worn-out coat of fur
the fleas have already left, blinking and blind,
with a smell of death: death that waits inside him.
Did your soul cry out in these forests, heard by no-one?
Did you squeeze the handle of the axe in anguish for that waiting?
Did you see among bleeding chippings a dreaded message?
Or did you just feel like rushing back,
drawn back by your dwindling origins?
And no paths led anywhere
and there was no direction –
If I could have pressed through the forest of your loneliness,
could I have found you with my cry? Could I
have saved you from the snow’s oblivion and placed you
in warm earth, for a reconciliation between generations,
a bridge over the breach between father and son?
•
Från ‘Sången om fadern’
Jag ser dig, fader, ensam och åldrad i skogarna:
tänkande trädfällare, fladdrande av näver,
med kådklibbande händer och barrigt skägg,
med mossig rygg och tjädarnas brakande flykt
genom dina örons ständiga sus av vattenfall
när höga furor vajande polerar rymdens metall.
Allt att minnas, allt att glömma i dessa skogar,
ålderdomens allt djupare, allt ändlösare skogar
där alla ekon gömmer sig: naturmänniska mer och mer,
förlorad mer och mer, och plötsligt hejdad
av något minne, likt ett gungfly framför fötterna,
ett styng av längtan genom tidens skiljohinna,
och smärtan är förbi: skogen susar av ålderdomens nu.
Snön som vita kyrkor och träden som kvinnor,
tårdroppande, klagande! Vedhuggare i skogarna,
ett enkelt redskap åt eldens välde: utsänd är du
i köldens marker, djupast in i snöns glömska,
bortom måltidsklockor, boskapsrop och byars larm.
Beredd är du redan att möta honom, vilande
vid grenknippets börda, med yxan biten fast
i trä, när solelden rinner genom rimfrost:
dödens skelettgestalt, osynligt vit mot snön.
Du vet inte att honom möter ingen: han träder
in genom okänd dörr och slår sig ner inom dig.
Han väntar där, lutad över vardagens bord.
Han rätar upp sig mer och mer, uppfyller dig,
blir du och äger dig och för dig bort, och det
som nyss var du finns ingenstans nu: förtärt.
Du ger honom vatten in i det sista: är törsten
din egen eller hans? han som avvisar nattens sömn
och får mörkret att blomma av långsamma plågor,
kastar tillbaka maten hånfullt, skakar dig vredgat,
suger bene rena från allt kött, tills du skälver
för varje vinddrag som torra löv på en gren.
Det döende förstår det döende, tyr sig samman
i hjälplös vänlighet: vedträna som ska förtäras,
snöklumpen som smälter under skon, den gamla hunden
som bara sover i spiselvrån, med utnött skinn
som lopporna redan lämnat, blinkande och blind,
med en lukt av död: död som väntar inom honom.
Ropade din själ i dessa skogar, hörd av ingen?
Kramde du yxans skaft i ångest för det väntande?
Såg du bland blödande flisor ett fruktat budskap?
Eller kände du dig blott strömma tillbaka,
dragen tillbaka av dina sjunkande källor?
Och inga stigar ledde någonstans
och ingen riktning fanns –
Kunde jag väl ha genomträngt din ensamhets skog,
kunde jag ha funnit dig med mitt rop? Kunde jag
ha räddat dig ur snöns glömska och satt dig
i varm jord, till en försoning mellan släktled,
en bro över klyftan mellan fader och son?
5. Gunnar Ekelöf
‘Each person is a world’
Each person is a world, inhabited
by blind beings in vague rebellion
against the self, the king who governs them.
In each soul are a thousand hidden worlds
and these blind beings, and these underworlds
are real and living, although immature,
as truly as I’m real. And we kings
and princes of the thousands possible within us,
we are ourselves subjects, ourselves captive
in some larger being, whose self and nature
we understand as little as our superior
his superior. Of their death and love
our own emotions have obtained a tone.
As when a massive steamship passes by
far out, beneath the horizon, where it lies
so evening-bright. – And we don’t know about it
before a backwash comes to us on the beach,
first one, and then another and many more
which beat and roar till all this has become
just like before. – Yet everything is different.
So we are gripped by shadows of a strange fear
when something tells us that people have travelled,
that some of the possible have been set free.
•
‘En värld är varje människa’
En värld är varje människa, befolkad
av blinda varelser i dunkelt uppror
mot jaget konungen som häskar över dem.
I varje själ är tusen världar dolda
och dessa blinda, dessa undre världar
är verkliga och levande, fast ofullgångna,
så sant som jag är verklig. Och vi kongunar
och furstar av de tusen möjliga inom oss
är själva undersåtar, fångna själva
i någon större varelse, vars jag och väsen
vi lika litet fattar som vår overman
sin overman. Av deras död och kärlek
har våra egna känslor fått en färgton.
Som när en väldig ångare passerar
långt ute, under horisonten, där den ligger
så aftonblank. – Och vi vet inte om den
förrän en svallvåg når till oss på stranden,
först en, så ännu en och manga flera
som slår och brusar till dess allt har blivit
som förut. – Allt är ändå annorlunda.
Så grips vi skuggor av en sällsam oro
när något säger oss att folk har färdats,
att några av de möjliga befriats.
6. Göran Sonnevi
From ‘Klangernas Bok’ (1998)
How can I understand that scientific
revolution going on, in its final
flowering, all around, plunging into its
abyss, internal, external, before the effects
are found everywhere, acting, murdering,
making new lives, unforeseen, as though we were
part of a vaster whirl of fortune But
fortune does not come in volumes, even
as probability It is at every moment
new I look into the eyes of the abyss What is
cannot exist What was does not exist
Every eye is an eye of a needle; never-ending fineness
Who can say that she is coming through?
No-one So the eye of the needle looks for us with its point
•
From ‘Klangernas Bok’ (1998)
Hur ska jag förstå den vetenskapliga
revolution som pågår, i sin yttersta
blomning, runtom, störtande i sin
avgrund, inre, yttre, för effekterna
finns överallt, agerande, mördande,
skapande nytt liv, oförutsett, som vore vi
del av en väldigare slumps virvel Men
slumpen kommer inte i storlekar, ens
som sannolikhet Den är i varje ögonblick
ny Jag ser in i avgrundens ögon Det som är
kan inte finnas Det som var finns inte
Varje öga ett nålsöga; oändlig finhet
Vem kan säga att hon kommer igenom?
Ingen Så söker oss nålsögat Med sin udd
I hear my mother’s voice, over and over
again, on the telephone, less and less,
more and more girlish, with
that little shard of harshness
and I know what it is There
is no way out of this,
no escape, nor any
treachery It is in this that I shall
be, with my whole being
We do not choose our treacheries
Neither do we choose our
love We are chosen For
what? Our actions happen in de-
spair, frail, full of grace
•
Jag hör min mors röst, om och om
igen, i telefonen, allt mindre,
allt ungflicksaktigare, med
den lilla skärvan av strävhet
och jag vet vad det är Det
finns ur detta ingen utgång,
ingen flykt, heller inget
svek Det är i detta jag ska
vara, med hela min varelse
Vi väljer inte våra svek
Vi väljer inte heller vår
kärlek Vi är utvalda Till
vad? Handlingarna sker i för-
tvivlan, skör, full av grace
♦
ERIK AXEL KARLFELDT (1864–1931) was born in Karlbo in the rural province of Dalekarlia. After librarianship positions at the Royal Library and the Agricultural Academy, he joined the Nobel Institute, becoming a permanent secretary in 1912. His poetry collections include Vildmarks- och kärleksvisor (1895), Flora och Pomona (1906), and Hösthorn (1927). Arcadia Borealis, a selection of his poems in English translation by Charles Wharton Stork, appeared in 1938.
VILHELM EKELUND (1880–1949) was a poet, essayist, and aphorist. His poetry collections include Vårbris (1900), Melodier i skymning (1902), and Dithyramber i aftonglans (1906). His later turn to prose produced such collections of essays as Böcker och vandringar (1910) and Nordiskt och klassiskt (1914), on literature and history respectively.
NILS FERLIN (1898–1961) was born in Karlstad, Värmland. He made his acting debut in the Oscar Wilde play Salomé and acted throughout the 1920s with travelling theatre companies. Later, he supported himself by writing, producing such poetry collections as En döddansares visor (1930), Goggles (1938), and Från mitt ekorrhjul (1957). Some of his poems were written for music and have become popular songs.
ARTUR LUNDKVIST (1906–1991) was born in rural Skåne and much of his poetry recalls the natural landscapes of his early life. He moved to Stockholm at the age of twenty to pursue his ambitions to become a writer. His poetry first appeared in the anthology Fem Unga (1929), a collection famed for introducing literary modernism to Sweden. He became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1968. He published numerous poetry collections, including Korsväg (1942), Fotspår i vattnet (1949), and Liv som gräs (1954). He also wrote about his extensive travels and produced countless literary articles and translations.
GUNNAR EKELÖF (1907–1968) was born in Stockholm. He is considered the first major surrealist poet in Sweden. His many poetry collections include sent på jorden (1932), Non Serviam (1945), and Om Hösten (1951). Robert Bly has produced a book of his poems in English translation, Late Arrival on Earth: Selected Poems (1967).
GORAN SÖNNEVI (1939–) was born in Lund and now lives in Järfälla. He is one of Sweden’s most respected living poets and translators. His poetry collections include Outfört (1961), Små klanger; en röst (1981), and Klangernas bok (1998). He won the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize in 2005 and the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize the following year. There are two collections of his poetry translated into English by Rika Lesser: A Child Is Not a Knife (1993) and Mozart’s Third Brain (2009).
ELLIOT VALE (1993–) is a poet and translator from Oxfordshire. He has a BA in English from the University of York and is currently finishing an MSt in English 650–1550 at the University of Oxford. He has written essays on metrically imitative modern English translations of Beowulf, the concept of translational ‘bias’ in the Old English poem Exodus and the Old English Hexateuch, and Genesis B as a work of ‘intralingual’ translation. He has translated poetry from Old English, Danish, and Swedish.
