Hvor alt håb om kunst ellers må lades ude
ENGLISH TRANSLATION IN ITALICS:
 |
| Fra Knowledge af Louise Bogan, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20714 |
Joseph Brodsky var medstifter af The American Poetry and Literacy
Project, en non-profit organisation, der har til formål at bringe
poesien ud, hvor den ikke før har været. Som at skrive sin yndlingslinje med
kridt på fortovet, men især at efterlade digte uventede steder, hvor de vil
blive fundet og nydt af andre.
Kunsten som en gave til sine medmennesker i det rum,
som Valdemar Andersen også arbejdede i - det offentlige rum, stedet, hvor alt
håb om at møde kunst ellers må lades ude, som Emil Hannover sagde om Valdemar.
Dette er essensen af bladtegningen og jeg ville gerne
dele et digt, som jeg selv mødte et uventet sted og søgte at genfinde i årevis,
fordi det handler om vores higen efter at sætte ord og forklaringer på livet,
og så dog, når vi møder det egentlige, når vi vitterligt kan forklare alt, da
forsvinder alle behov for ord.
Og det er som det skal være, denne fuldstændige væren
til stede i verden.
Det er af Walt Whitman og viste sig at være Of The
Terrible Doubt of Appearances. Jeg fandt det meget om i en lille
boghandel i Arkansas. Ikke et populært valg på de kanter, Whitman var jo en
"damn yank". Timen efter blev bygningen med den lille boghandel revet op af en tornado.
Passende ramme til disse vidunderlige ord:
Joseph Brodsky co-founded "The American Poetry and Literacy Project", a non-profit organization that aims to bring poetry
to places where it has never been before. Such as writing one's favorite stanza
with chalk on a sidewalk, but especially to leave poems in unexpected places,
where they will be found and enjoyed by others.
Art as a gift for his fellow beings in the public
space, which was also the home of many of the works by Valdemar Andersen - the
place where all hope of meeting art must otherwise be left out, as the Danish art historian, Emil
Hannover, said about Valdemar.
This is the very essence of cartooning and I would like
to share a poem that I met at an unexpected place and searched for high and low
for years to find it again. It is about our quest to put life into words, and
then, however, when we do see it all, when we indeed can explain everything then
words become insignificant.
And that is as it should be, this being utterly present
in the world.
It is by Walt Whitman and turned out to be "Of
The Terrible Doubt of Appearances". I found it much in a small bookstore
in Arkansas. Not a popular choice at that part of the world, in that Whitman
was a "damn yank". An hour after we left the bookstore was torn by a
tornado. An appropriate framework for these wonderful words:
(...)
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants,
men, hills, shining and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms,
may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real
something has yet to be known.
(...)
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that
words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I
am silent, I require nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of
identity beyond the grave,
But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied.
