Alphabet

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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. 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. Born in the town of Vejle, on the eastern Jutland coast of Denmark, Christensen's father was a tailor, and her mother a cook before her marriage. After graduating from Vejle Gymnasium, she moved to Copenhagen and, later, to Århus, studying at the Teachers’ College there. She received her certificate in 1958. During this same period, Christensen began publishing poems in the journal Hvedekorn, and was guided by the noted Danish poet and critic Poul Borum (1934–1995), whom she married in 1959 and divorced in 1976. [2]

What We're Reading: Inger Christensen's Alphabet". The Cincinnati Review. 2017-12-20 . Retrieved 2021-09-20. 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).The book was reviewed in Publishers Weekly in 2001: "As used here with controlled repetitions, the [Fibonacci] sequence gives the whole an almost medieval sense of restriction[.] Abstracted cold war fears and post-'70s ecological concern and alienation give way to litanies of real world outrages ... which culminate in a post-nuclear holocaust nightmare, with birds and children somehow having survived in caves. The scenario may seem dated, but the threats remain very real, and Christensen's poetic appeal for sanity and humanity remains an abstracted call to action." [9] See also [ edit ] There is a constant echoing, but not clumsy or overbearing; just enough to convincingly bind the fragmented sections of the poem. I did not sit down and say 'now I will write a catastrophic poem' ". The Irish Times . Retrieved 2021-09-20. Azorno (1967), as well as a shorter fiction on the Italian Renaissance painter Mantegna, presented from the viewpoint of various narrators (Mantegna's secretary Marsilio, the Turkish princess Farfalla, and Mantagena's young son), Det malede Værelse (1976, translated into English as The Painted Room by Harvill Press in 2000).

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: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.

The colourful, elliptical narratives of The Painted Room at first conceal more than they reveal: "There is a secrecy that is important in fiction and in poetry too, so that when you read it, you are forced to read between the lines." Christensen is just as secretive about herself. In her enigmatic insistence on the accidental process of writing, she remains aloof from the journalist's quest for a larger-than-life author. Mantegna's remark in The Painted Room about the fate of artists seems apt: "Of us there will be nothing left, but our fellow human beings will speak through our pictures." 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. The complete "Butterfly valley" has been set twice by two Danish composers, Niels Rosing-Schow and Svend Nielsen. Both versions were, separately, recorded by Ars Nova Copenhagen with poetry reading by the poet. 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.)

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Es especialmente reseñable el contraste que logra la danesa mediante las dicotomías existencia-creación/destrucción; en el fragmento anterior se centra especialmente en elementos de la existencia utilizando las repeticiones para obtener el ritmo y jugando con lo sensorial tanto a través de los colores como incluso del sonido.

In alphabet, Christensen creates a framework of psalm-like forms that unfold like expanding universes, crystallising into words both the beauty and the potential for destruction that permeate our world and our times.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". The book's first section is only one line long: "apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist." In each subsequent section Christensen ups the ante, unhurriedly but unrelentingly introducing the increasingly horrifying concepts of death, hunting, killing, history, war, and holocaust into her little constructed world. Lest this seem too doomy and gloomy for you, there is also a thread of hope running through Alphabet, a thread that runs in parallel with the above-described fiber of destruction, an arpeggio whose individual note components are imagination, inspiration, and poetic creativity (or, as Christensen terms it, "the rain of alphabets"). Christensen argues that we, the citizens of the world, must work our hardest to ensure that this faint green thread survives, to ensure that our children collectively inherit a world that is not beyond salvation. We must each be "like a bird that/invisibly wakens/and feeds its/unborn young/at midnight//when no one can/know whether things/as they are/go on." No suelo prodigarme con la poesía… soy más dado a leer ficción; ergo, no tenía pensado que apareciese este libro por aquí. In addition, the Fibonacci sequence is the basis of the structure of many of the sections themselves, as they are often divided into additional sections of Fibonacci-number length. This book speaks to a particular moment in time: published in 1981, it explores the fear of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, and asks how we do anything when we fear our imminent destruction. But this book also feels universal, and entirely apt to this moment in time, demonstrating how writing about the specific and the personal creates work that can become apt for many different people and moments. Of course, alphabet seems to speak for our current turbulent political climate especially, as well as the climate catastrophe, but I think it would have felt just as apt twenty years ago.