Evighedsmaskinen

by Inger Christensen

Inger Christensens første roman fra 1964 er et eksperimenterende stykke prosa. En samfundssatirisk version af Kristuslegenden, omskrevet til en genkendelig, moderne verden.

217 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Inger Christensen was born in Vejle, Denmark, in 1935. Initially she studied medicine, but then trained as a teacher and worked at the College of Art in Holbæk from 1963–64. Although she has also written a novel, stories, essays, radio plays, a drama and an opera libretto, Christensen is primarily known for her linguistically skilled and powerful poetry.

Christensen first became known to a wider audience with the volumes "Lys" (1962; Light) and "Græs" (1963; Grass), which are much influenced by the modernistic imagery of the 60s, and in which she is concerned with the location of the lyric "I" in relation to natural and culturally created reality. The flat, regular landscape of Denmark, its plants and animals, the beach, the sea, the snow-filled winters have determined the topography of many of her poems. Christensen has also been known internationally since the appearance of the long poem "Det" (1969; "it" 2006), a form of creative report on the merger of language and the world, which centres around the single word "it" and covers more than two hundred pages. The book clearly reveals the influence on Christensen's poetic work of such a range of authors as Lars Gustafsson, Noam Chomsky, Viggo Brøndal, R.D. Laing and Søren Kierkegaard. The analogy between the development of poetic language and the growth of life is, as in "Det", also the basic motif of the volume of poetry "Alfabet" (1981; Alphabet). In addition to the alphabet itself – which gives the book its title and provides a logical arrangement for its fourteen sections –, the structure is generated by the so-called Fibonacci series, in which every number consists of the sum of the preceding two. The composition reflects the theme exactly: while "Det" points to the story of creation and its "In the beginning was the Word", here the alphabet is a pointer to the "A and O" of the apocalypse.

The story of her life and work offers access to a poetry that is difficult and enigmatic, but simultaneously simple and elementary. Inger Christensen is one of the most reflecting, form-conscious poets of the present day, and her history of ideas also provides information on the paradox of lyric art; making legible through poetic means what must necessary remain illegible, and in this way wrestling a specific order from the universal labyrinth. Here the transitions between the poet and the essayist Christensen are fluid: just as lyrical figures and motifs give her essays a density of their own, figures of thought and configurations of ideas return as an organic component of the poems.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stjerner til bogen generelt, 4-5 stjerner til de sidste 10 sider

[Mette]

Side 48: "Han tænker allerede på at begynde forfra, gå ganske langsomt til værks, tanke for tanke, og aldrig blive utålmodig med hjernens langsommelighed, begynde med en ganske stille tanke og vogte sig meget for en alt for tidlig dristighed, blive i det ydmyge, i det som endnu kan huskes, repeteres og indprentes, så den ene dag ikke hæver sig op og forsvinder hen over de andre, men lægger sig pænt til rette som noget let genkendeligt"

Side 53: "På udmarken har det unyttige en stærk tendens til flertalstyranni"

Side 106: "Betjenten var nemlig Storfader Eberhardts bror og som sådan vant til med stor præcision at se bort fra det væsentlige"

Side 200: "Folk går med skum om munden på deres masker som følelser der endelig koger over og i al fredsommelighed lader hele den sentimentale ansvarsforskydning fordampe"