alphabet

by Inger Christensen, Inger Christensen

Inger Christensen (1935-2009) was both a virtuoso and a paradox. Her fiction, drama, essays and children’s books won her wide acclaim in Denmark and other European countries, but it is her poetry – spanning a forty-year period – that best reveals her versatility and depth. Her poetry reflects a complex philosophical background, yet her most complex poetic works have enjoyed wide public popularity. Many of her poems have a visionary quality, yet she is a paradoxically down-to-earth visionary, focusing on the simple stuff of everyday life and in it discovering the metaphysical as if by chance.

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.

‘The ecological crisis forms the starting point for a part ecstatic homage to the world and nature, which in spite of everything is still found: partly in the active sense that it exists, partly in the passive sense that it is discovered and understood – by the poet and by us.’ – Erik Skyum-Nielsen

‘Inger Christensen’s use of systems in no way inhibits the evolution of her poetry. On the contrary, it is as if the poetry comes about by virtue of the systems; as if it emerges in the interplay and friction with a random, but fixed order. In alphabet, Inger Christensen has created a system by combining the alphabet with Fibonacci’s numeric sequence, in which each number is equal to the sum of the two preceding numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 etc. alphabet is about the relationship between people and nature and, like it, is itself a form of creation. With the word exist as the pivot, the poems move – from the first wondering confirmation apricot trees exist – out into the world to life and death, the planet and calamity.’ – Christian Egesholm

Genres: Poetry, Danish, Denmark, Classics, Scandinavian Literature, Fiction, Read For School

84 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1981

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

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

How is it possible that Danish poet Inger Christensen (1935-2009) did not win the Nobel Prize in Literature??

People often use the term "world-building" when discussing fantasy novelists, e.g., J. R. R. Tolkien or Ursula K. Le Guin. Alphabet, though a work of verse rather than prose, is a tremendous achievement in world-building. Guided by a fertile blend of mathematical and grammatical principles, Christensen uses this book's slim 67-page length to construct an astonishingly intricate world from scratch, a fecund world that overflows with beauty and biodiversity, but which, mirroring the real world we live in, is menaced by humankind's inexorable drive toward self-annihilation.

As its title suggests, this book is loosely structured around the alphabet: it is divided into 14 sections, each of which takes its creative impetus from a different letter of the alphabet, from A through N. (Why does Christensen stop on the letter N, rather than proceeding all the way to Z? Perhaps because "N" is the first letter of "nuclear holocaust," the feared event that threatens to cut Christensen's poetic outflow short, just as it threatens to cut short the existence of human civilization as we know it.) The structure of the book also owes much to the Fibonacci sequence. Like the numbers in that sequence, each section of Alphabet is precisely as big -- and as conceptually complex -- as the two preceding sections combined. There is a super-additiveness, or synergy, at work here that is really quite marvelous: certain words and phrases pop up over and over, like voices in a fugue, seeming more meaningful each time they are introduced than the time before.

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."

Here are my favorite passages:

On dreamers:

"a dreamer
must dream like the trees, be a dreamer
of fruit to the last"


On the proper role of a poet:

"let
things be; add
words, but let
things be"


On how we all need to be comforted sometimes:

"tell me that the moon is lovely,
that the extinct moa eats green melon"


On creation myths:

"when the birches came to Lakselv
and founded the town they brought
along tufts of grass for a few sheep

so others than the leaves
could listen to the rustling
of the leaves and see how they

transform sunlight almost
as if to clear green water;
since then the sheep have sometimes

taken the birches along to the beach
a riddle for the reindeer at the
shoreline grazing

among half-furred stones, the last
bit of morning mist wrapped around
their greyish bodies, otherwise just

windless ice-turquoise sky
and the flower of an eider duck
on frost-stricken water"

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is weird. At first I though this to be a book of bullshit. Then, I managed to decipher and come to like a bit of this abecedeariousness.
Still, no matter what the lazy say, usage of capital letters is never overrated.
Also, not everything managed to congeal into a semblance of sense, for me. It might (must!) be something I lack, and not the author. Still, so far this gets 3 stars:
+1 star for the innovativeness
+1 star for the brevity
+1 star for the verses I liked
-1 star for the lack of capitalization (not the finance one, the literate version of it *tongue-in-the-cheek-fellow-crazed-ones!*)
+1 star for the brave presentation of this raw work

Q:
doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
killers exist, and doves, and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist, days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death (c)
Q:
dreamers go around openly now with dreams out on their skin (c)

[julieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bellísimo!!! Me quedo con tantas imágenes hermosas, no sé por qué no había leído a esta poeta danesa increíble.

[el · Rating 4 out of 5]

a lovely little read, especially if you’re obsessed with language and the particular mouth-feeling that meticulous attention to syntax brings. would be a nice, slightly more somber companion to mary oliver’s oeuvre.

the garden, in which you vanish, is / worn smooth by slugs; you bathe / jerking like a bird, and when the earth / is eaten and the rhubarb first / dries up, summer gives way and / the town, in which you vanish, is / slow and black.

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;
seclusion […] every
detail exists; memory, memory’s light;
afterglow exists; oaks, elms,
junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;
*
branches exist, wind lifting them exists,
and the lone drawing made by the branches
*
June nights exist, June nights exist,
the sky at long last as if lifted to heavenly
heights, simultaneously sinking, as tenderly as
when dreams can be seen before they are dreamed; a space
as if dizzied, as if filled with whiteness, an hourless
chiming of insects and dew, and no one in
this gossamer summer, no one comprehends that
early fall exists, aftertaste, afterthought;
just these reeling sets of restless ultrasounds
exist, the bat’s ears of jade
turned toward the ticking haze;
never has the tilting of the planet been so pleasant,
never the zinc-white nights so white,

so defenselessly dissolved, gently ionized and
white, never the limit of invisibility so nearly
touched; June, June, your Jacob’s ladders,
your sleeping creatures and their dreams exist,
a drift of galactic seed between
earth so earthly and sky so heavenly,
[...] Earth with
the coastline of consciousness blue, with nests where
fisherbird herons exist, with their grey-blue arching
backs, or where bitterns exist, cryptic
and shy, or night herons, egrets,
with the wingbeat variations of hedge sparrows, cranes
and doves;

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

From someone somewhere sometime ago I heard an emphatic recommendation of this book and so I found a copy. But I set it aside unread and more or less forgot about it. Then yesterday the cat knocked over a stack of books and alphabet landed at my feet. I opened it and began reading and was completely enthralled. I don't understand it all, not even close, but the imagery is astonishing and the levels of meaning - well, I could probably read this every day and find something new.

How can this be a translation? How did Susanna Nied do this? Alliteration, syllabification, Fibonacci sequence, while also retaining the imagery? I think of those Oulipo artists, and the feat of translating something like Perec's A Void - surely this must have been as difficult as that.

This is the first time that I've realized how the images, metaphors, and doomsday fears of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War-era can be read to represent the crisis of climate change and species extinction (the end of the world as we know it). 

I started thinking: this is the sort of book I would want on a desert island (a death-bed; a solitary detention cell; the far side of the moon or an icy planet) to remind me of Earth.

[Paula Abreu Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

" ... disse
para comigo: pensa como
um pássaro construindo o ninho,
pensa como uma nuvem, como
as raízes da bétula anã
pensa como pensa uma folha
na árvore, como pensam a sombra e a luz,
como pensa a resplandecente casca,
como as crisálidas debaixo
da casca pensam, como os líquenes
sobre uma pedra e um pouco de madeira podre
pensam, como pensa a erva-das-feridas,
como a planície nebulosa da floresta
pensa, como os paúis pensam
quando neles se reflecte a ascensão
do arco-íris, pensa como um resto de
limo, como pensam as gotas
de chuva, pensa como um espelho

de tão vital importância; vê
no seu trono de nada
o vértice da tempestade de areia;
vê o quão banalmente repousa
no mais pequeno grão de areia
uma engenhosa vida
fóssil encerrada
depois da viagem; ..."

Páginas 39 e 40

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

'now the sky is a cavern
where withered birds
will rot like fallen fruit
where tractionless clouds
will atomise cities
and eddy them slyly in flight
like water through water
like sand through sand

even slugs with their slime-trails
are porous as mirrors
whose human reflections are lost
just the stalk of a nettle
explains leaflessly
that in our despair we have made
a flowerless earth
sexless as chlorine

see a morningpale star
gleams above like a brain
that is almost used up and burned out
too diffuse to recall
a man's and a woman's
union in their wingless flight
in a sweet-scented meadow
a summerwarm bed'

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Har man bare lidt kendskab til dansk litteratur i det 20. århundrede, er man før eller siden stødt på linjen "abrikostræerne findes, abrikostræerne findes". Sætningen stammer fra Inger Christensens hovedværk fra 1981, digtsamlingen alfabet.

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).

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".

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.

Genial og formfuldendt digtsamling. Hurra for at Inger Christensen fandtes.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Para ler Alfabeto da Inger Christensen tive que alternar entre as traduções inglês e espanhol (a edição espanhola é bilíngue, o que não adiantou lhufas já que não seu nada de dinamarquês).
Num primeiro momento tirei dela uma vibe meio Perec, mas conforme os poemas iam avançando a coisa ficou imensa e só dela. A coisa não é apenas interessante pela forma (sequência Fibonacci), mas como ela transforma essa forma num conteúdo denso e incontornável.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I let loose a gentle, marveling "Oh, shit" as I started this book. As in, "Is she really going to...?" I only read the back cover later, detailing Christensen's use of the Fibonacci sequence as a structure for the book, but you don't need to know the precise mathematical formula going into this. The febrile fugue of natural history that alights on each letter of the first half of the alphabet (until "n"--infinity) is so clearly a spiral. Some books of poems charge forward relentlessly, and do it well; this book bends backward on itself so many times that you are surprised to find yourself where you started, but not really, and very much changed. This is one of the few books I would like to hear read aloud in its entirety, in both its gorgeous translation and its original alliterative Danish.

[Tobias Cramer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeg har ikke noget videre originalt at sige om Alfabet. Digtsamlingen har fået så meget fortjent ros gennem årene. Men jeg er en del af det positive kor. Inger Christensen var simpelthen en bedre digter end dansk litteratur almindeligvis præsterer.

Der er flere spor i Alfabet, og det er det enkleste af dem, der er mest rørende for mig. Den simple opremsning af, hvad der findes: ”Abrikostræernes findes, abrikostræernes findes”. Det fremmaner en enkel verden hvor bekræftelsen af, at noget findes – også indeholder truslen om dets mulige udslettelse – særligt modstillet med atombomben, der også har paddehatteskyet sig ind i digtsamlingen.

Digtene er på samme tid melankolske og begejstrede. De besynger den verden, der er, samtidig med at de frygter for dens måske nærtstående undergang.

[isabell ☮︎︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

alfabet føles ikke som en bog, men som noget der allerede eksisterede før mig. den er urgammel og dybt barnlig på samme tid – ikke uskyldig, men forladt. et barn, der har lært at være sit eget hjem. et værelse, et indre rum, som bliver en kirke, ens himmel. en tryghed, der hele tiden bærer sin egen sorg i sig.

Inger Christensens poesi bevæger sig som en lov – den gentager, tæller, vokser. abrikostræerne findes. atombomberne findes. begge dele er sande på samme tid. skabelse og udslettelse deler åndedræt.

at læse alfabet føles som om man opholder sig i sne. alt er stille. alt bliver tydligt. ikke fordi verden bliver mere ren, men fordi den bliver hvid – og hos Inger Christensen er hvidhed aldrig uskyld. det er udslettelse. det er lys uden nåde. det er det, der står tilbage, når gud ikke længere svarer, men maskineriet fortsætter.

“hvem som helst sidder som gidsel et sted i bevidsthedens jungle og bygger på en kirke af sne”

det er tro uden illusion. kirken er ikke et løfte om frelse, men et rum man kan opholde sig i, mens man ved, at alt hvad der er født, må dø.

og alligevel: abrikostræerne findes.

[Moa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Älskade denna!! Blev så inspirerad! Tack Alma

[Alessandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

alphabet by Inger Christensen

alphabet is a hymn to the microscopic and macro: the enormous and the unfathomably insignificant; a lulling, effervescent refrain that hisses with the misty sounds of creation and continuation. Life is a process; a continuous series of cycles to which Christensen pays homage in this haunting Fibonaccian progression.

The poem starts out simply enough:
“apricot trees exist, apricots tree exist”
This is Christensen’s way of beginning the alphabetical sequence that is one of two primary formal constraints that characterize the poem.
As she moves forward in the alphabetical sequence. the second formal constraint which Christensen is respecting becomes apparent. The lines of the poem follow Fibonacci’s sequence, a mathematical sequence beginning 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…, in which each number is the sum of the two previous numbers. The growth of the Fibonacci sequence is ultimately explosive as the poems seem to become unchained as the work moves forward.

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.
She fluctuates between the universal and the intensely personal, weaving in bits of personal narrative in poems that talk about the nuclear tragedies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki while interspersing intensely personal images such as “your hand like a baby bird tucked into mine.” Christensen’s poetry feels like a perpetual zooming in and out of the universe, focusing on the minute and then expanding to the universal in one beat. She names all the parts of the universe with seemingly equal weight, chaining a thrilling list of images together with the common thread of the word “exists.” Indeed, she seems to be naming the essence of all beings: that they exist.

Christensen’s images grow like the natural phenomena in her poem. She mentions trees from the very outset; the garden that blossoms up from her stanzas soon includes elder trees, cicadas, eider ducks, apple blossoms, and many more examples of life that flourish in the lines. Initially, her poem follows the alphabetical sequence but eventually breaks from this as she moves into a discussion of destruction and death, as images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki come in and the theme of “bombs” becomes increasingly prevalent. Although there is a sentiment of chaos and destruction that breathes through her lines, as she explores the vicious cycles of violence and killing that ravage the planet’s surface and the human world.

“there’s no more
to say; we kill
more than we think
more than we know
more than we feel;
theres no more
to say; we hate;
there is no more”

Although one of the most morbid sections of the poem, this is a wonderful example of the powerful repetition that Christensen uses so effectively throughout the poem.
There is a constant echoing, but not clumsy or overbearing; just enough to convincingly bind the fragmented sections of the poem.

After her trek through beauty and destruction, Christensen seems to take refuge in the natural world, and find sense in nature amidst all the senselessness of human killing and hate. After exploring the horrors and atrocities of human conflict, Christensen decidedly moves into a life in harmony with the natural world.

[Mariano Hortal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Publicado en http://lecturaylocura.com/alfabeto-de...

“Alfabeto” de Inger Christensen. Creación-destrucción como pulsión poética

No suelo prodigarme con la poesía… soy más dado a leer ficción; ergo, no tenía pensado que apareciese este libro por aquí.
Sorpresas de la vida, en efecto, estoy aquí para hablar de él. Por lo tanto, podéis suponer que me ha impactado.
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.
Es una de esas extrañas obras en las que ese concepto tan difuso, “el aliento poético”, está tan presente que impacta por su calidez/calidad literaria. Estructuralmente, puede parecer inicialmente rígida; de la sinopsis editorial sacamos dos concurrencias que utiliza la danesa para componer su obra:
“Es un largo poema cuya forma sigue dos principios de composición. El primero es la secuencia de Fibonacci. Es decir, cada verso es la suma de los dos precedentes: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13… El segundo es el alfabeto. Cada poema, y las palabras que utiliza, sigue el orden de las letras: a, b, c, d, e. Sin embargo, bajo esta forma aparentemente estricta, hay lugar para el azar.”
En efecto, en primer lugar la famosa serie de Fibonacci, cada verso es la suma de los dos precedentes y, desde luego, el alfabeto que le da nombre. Sin embargo, como bien dice, la editorial, no denota rigidez, muy al contrario, es tan variada en la forma de tramar los temas y los estilos que supone un pequeño caos poético que se une a la aparente “rigidez” estructural para conseguir una mezcla ciertamente subyugadora.
Me gustaría transcribir a continuación alguno de los poemas de su muestra poética, avisando por adelantado que se resienten del sentido total de un poema que funciona al completo tan bien, que sacar muestras individuales puede desvirtuaran dicha completitud. Lo bueno de esta obra es que permite diferentes interpretaciones-obsesiones cada vez que lo lees y, aunque hoy saque estos temas, otro día podría sacar otros:

“las glaciaciones existen, las glaciaciones existen,
el hielo del océano Ártico y el hielo del martín pescador;
las cigarras existen; chicoria, cromo

y el iris amarillo-cromo, el azul; el oxígeno
sobre todo; existen también los témpanos del océano Ártico,
el oso polar existe, marcado como una piel
con número de identidad existe, condenado a su vida;

de marzo azules de hielo existe, si existen los arroyos;
si el oxígeno en los arroyos existe, el oxígeno
sobre todo; existe sobre todo donde existe el sonido i
de las cigarras, sobre todo donde existe el cielo
de la chicoria como azul turquesa diluido
en agua, […]”

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.
Esta simbiosis color-sonido tan sensorial es especialmente bella cuando se refiere al canto de los pájaros, donde se mezcla el canto de los pájaros con el susurro de las hojas, y el propio silencio del cielo con la luz resplandecente como una hipérbole que nos trae al tiempo presente, el de la existencia de la bomba atómica, la propia existencia de la bomba trae la destrucción-no-existencia a su alrededor:

“[…] los pájaros
cantan y casi

ahogan el susurro
de las hojas al viento;
las hojas susurran
y casi ahogan
con su silencio el cielo,

el cielo que resplandece,
y la luz que casi
desde entonces se ha parecido
al fuego de la bomba atómica
un poco”

De ahí que vaya más allá en esta comparación, la bomba de hidrógeno es la evolución de dicha destrucción, de esa falta de existencia, en un párrafo que rompe el ritmo anterior y lo emparenta directamente con la muerte, en un instante, un ritmo de versos cortos con encabalgamientos continuos que transmiten una rapidez mortal a un instante en el que se acaba todo:

“la bomba de hidrógeno existe
una plegaria para morir

como se suele morir
un día con un tiempo

corriente, ya sepas
que vas a morir o
no sepas nada, un día

en que quizá como de costumbre
has olvidado que vas a morir,
un día un poco ventoso

quizás de noviembre, […]”

El hombre se torna como agente de dicha destrucción, como creador de su propia aniquilación:

“[…] nosotros
garantizamos

que aniquilamos
todo, destruimos
todo, de manera que
a la primera nada
la decisiva
no se le dará permiso
para escribir poesía
como escribe el viento
en aire o agua; […]”

Afortunadamente, la naturaleza, y todo lo bello que contiene existe para nuestro placer; entre tanta destrucción, “la alegría florece” y “la compasión existe”.

“[…] cuéntame que la luna es hermosa,
que la extinta ave moa como del melón

verde, que la alegría florece, existe,
que los briozoos existen, el banco de caballa existe,
métodos de renuncia, de descenso existen,
reparto físico, como en poemas, de incomparables
bienes terrenales existe, la compasión existe”

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:

“[…] escribo como escribe un otoño
marcado por la muerte
como esperanzas inquietas
como tormentas de luz
atravesando una memoria brumosa

escribo como el invierno
escribo como la nieve
y el hielo y el frío
y la oscuridad y la muerte
escriben”

Vaya poemario el de Inger Christensen, variado como pocos en lo estílistico y en los temas utilizados. Nos acercamos a lo sublime y a una experiencia única, la de leer esta joya. Un comienzo inmejorable el que nos ofrece la editorial que tantas buenas noticias nos da.
Los textos provienen de la traducción de Francisco J. Uriz de “Alfabeto” de Inger Christensen para Sexto Piso.

[X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genius. Inger Christensen and also the translator, Susanna Nied - I can’t even imagine how she pulled it off but somehow she did.




This was first published in Danish in 1981 by Gyldendal, then here under this translation in 2000 by New Directions Publishing of New York, NY (and in the UK first published by the fascinatingly named Bloodaxe Books). My copy is a paperback manufactured in the US with a cover design by Sylvia Frezzolini Severance, from a photo by Jane English. (I’ve been doing this thing where I talk about the publishing details when I post reviews on GR bc I wanted to think more about how the books I read came to be read by me, and who helped them along the way - but there’s something about listing this information that also fits with the “bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries; / bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen” of this poetry.)

[Dana Lima · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alfabeto es uno de los libros de poesía más bello que leí en mi vida. Hacia tiempo que un libro no me emocionaba tanto. La poeta construye, a través del nombramiento de las cosas, la idea de creación y destrucción. Me gusta como transmite el miedo a la desaparición del mundo, el sentido de la vida y la muerte por medio memoria individual y universal.

Se me voló la peluca cuando supe que el libro fue escrito a partir de una regla matemática donde cada verso es la suma de los dos precedentes (0,1,1,2,3,5...) y que además que cada palabra que utiliza sigue el orden del alfabeto. Creo que el libro roza la perfección a la que aspira cualquier poeta: la profundidad existencial, belleza literaria y maestría estructural.

[Selmaogesther · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skriger og græder

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would like to imagine that this is an experimental poem (or sequence of poems) that is not only original, but accessible to those who might fear poetry. Christensen is a poet who engages with rules and forms of her own design to see where they take her. She begins with Fabonicci's mathematical sequence which describes the exponential spiral patterns often see in nature—each successive number is the sum of the two before (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, etc)—to determine the number of lines in each poem (or set of poems). She combines this with an alphabetic theme, allowing each letter from A to N, to guide the flow of her poems. The use of repetition, recurring images, and the haunting call to the existence of natural, environmental and everyday elements (the first entry is "apricot trees exist, apricot trees, exist"). Sometimes the defining letter has a major role, other times less so. The fact that this is a translation no doubt plays a part in this, but in fact, her poems take off an move in unexpected directions including a regular return to an image that features in much of her writing—the atomic bomb. The original Danish publication was in 1981, after all, while the Cold War was still a reality. It's a wonderful work and a fantastic, award winning translation.
A more detailed review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2025/02/21/so...

[Esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

"jeg skriver som et dødsmærket
efterår skriver
som rastløse håb
som lysstorme tværs
gennem tåget erindring"

[Kristoffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeg var lidt skeptisk til at starte med. Jeg er egentlig ikke så stor fan af poesi generelt, og har måske lidt altid tænkt at folk der elsker Inger Christensen, er lidt performative.

Men kan desværre ikke sige andet end “Hold da op, hvor kunne hun skrive”. En utrolig flot digtsamling, men et af de bedste budskaber i verden.
Verden findes, det gør abrikostræet også, så vi må hellere passe på dem.
Jeg tager hatten af for jer Inger-lovers, jeg forstår jer nu.

[Cecilie Flinck · Rating 5 out of 5]

De smukkeste smukkeste digte.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

we are writing poems about the doves and the doves are writing poems about us!!!!

[Iben_ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meget smukke digte og smukke ord, men altså digte bliver aldrig min ting, vil meget hellere læse en lang bog:) men fin ift det ikke lige er mig

[Cait · Rating 4 out of 5]

bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;
bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

opened this and realized with precise clarity that I'd read excerpts from it in my lit+writing major days—perhaps not surprising given that the translator, susanna nied, who surely also deserves accolades for the successful translation of so linguistically and mathematically precise a work as this, worked in the literature department at a neighboring university—and that it still stood in my mind as bright and clear as it had then. beautiful stuff.

life and death and the end of everything, meant to be read on a day when as usual you have / forgotten you must die, / a breezy die 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. or maybe on a day in january when you remember intensely that you must die, as must we all. or perhaps by a child who earnestly / examines a lake in the forest / and finds that the soul might well / have been dreamed by cicadas. after all, we achieve fall and death / in the middle of the most / luxuriant summer.

+

...in the midst of the lit-up
chemical ghetto guns exist
with their old-fashioned, peaceable precision

guns and wailing women, full as
greedy owls exist; the scene of the crime exists;
the scene of the crime, drowsy, normal, abstract

+

...Earth exists with Jullundur, Jabalpur and
the Jungfrau, with Jotunheim, the Jura,
with Jahrun, Jambo, Jogjakarta,
with duststorms, Dutchman's breeches
with water and land masses jolted by tremors
with Judenburg, Johannesburg, Jerusalem's Jerusalem

+

people, livestock, dogs exist, are vanishing;
tomatoes, olives vanishing, the brownish
women who harvest them, withering, vanishing,
while the ground is dusty with sickness...
...
...but before they vanish, before we vanish, one evening we sit at the table with
a little bread, a few fish without cankers, and water
cleverly turned into water, one of
history's thousands of war paths suddenly
crosses the living room...

+

speak now of mildness, now of the mystery
of salt; speak now of mediation, of mankind, of
courage; tell me that the marble of banks
can be eaten; tell me that the moon is lovely,
that the extinct moa eats green melon

I mean, my god. can you read any of that and be unmoved? by the poetry, and the playfulness, and also the sobriety. parts of it brought to mind ada limón's "the end of poetry" in a way that both made me laugh and made me love this collection and that poem alike even more than ever.

[Michael Haase · Rating 2 out of 5]

alphabet (no caps), is a poetry collection renowned for it's application of the "Fibonacci Sequence" to themes of life, death, destruction, and the environment. I called it a "collection", but in actuality it's more like a collage. Much like the Fibonnaci Sequence, Christensen's poems appear like a string of random, disconnected figures or ideas, but whereas the Fibonnaci Sequence follows a rigorous formula, Christensen's poems are only guided by vague and abstract themes. Yes, her poetry resembles the Fibonnaci Sequence, something critics have praised her for time and time again, but this is merely a gimmick which distracts the reader from what should be the substance of the text: the actual writing.

Her writing is fragmented and agrammatical, like most poetry today, drifting about haphazardly like a cloud of random words and symbols or a tangled bundle of threads, and just as you think you're beginning to follow one of those threads she throws a cryptic phrase at you and you're lost again in the tangle.

This book is the kind of text which really stretches the meaning of the word "poetry". There is no rhyme or rhythm, just the silly structural gimmick which Christensen doesn't even follow until the end. Christensen's "alphabet" only goes up to 'n', no wonder though, as she'd need to write more than 10,000 lines of poetry for the letter 'z' alone. But the question is, why even emulate a sequence when you know you wouldn't be able to complete it. To me, this emulation is pointless and unnecessary and Christensen would have done better if she had just focused on the language instead.

Some ways into the book, Christensen, as if language and rhetoric isn't enough to achieve her ends, she also starts to play around with form, giving stanzas a wavy appearance or breaking stanzas apart, even dividing stanzas into columns. One section resembles a series of generic phrases followed by the name of a random location.

"so here I stand by the Barents Sea
out there is the Barents Sea
and it looks like the Barents Sea"

I couldn't help feeling jarred and perplexed reading this book. I get that the text is trying to inspire environmental awareness, but the writing is so artificial and formulaic it draws its readers away from nature and the natural rather than bringing them closer to it.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

alphabet asks how people maintain optimism, and in doing so catalogues beautiful things in the world, as well as moments of hope. It is an elegy or a call to arms? Is it reminding us why we go on, or lamenting what we have lost? To explore these elliptical questions, Christensen invents a strict form for her work. alphabet follows the letters of the alphabet, though ends with N rather than going to Z, and uses the ratio of the Fibonacci sequence ( in which each number is the sum of the two previous numbers) to develop the length of each section. This means that each section of the book increases in complexity: we begin with a one-line poem that reads simply apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist. By section N, we have multiple long poems, that speak to one another and pick up themes from each other.

Though sections can be read in isolation, this book works as a single long poem, each part building from the previous one. It's easy to read, using simple language and precise imagery, and lines are spread across the pages, giving a sense of openness. But there is much to be learned from this poem: each section is worth thinking about, and brings a surprising depth to even the most simple images (the apricot tree of the first poem). My only caveat is that the Bloodaxe edition, translated by Susan Nied, does not include the original Danish text. I am always frustrated when poetry in translation doesn't include the original language, because much can be gained from looking at it, even if you do not know the language. However, I highly recommend this book, speaking, as it does, to every moment.

[Imen Benyoub · Rating 5 out of 5]

now the sky is a cavern
where withered birds
will rot like fallen fruit
where tractionless clouds
will atomise cities
and eddy them slyly in flight
like water through water
like sand through sand

even slugs with their slime-trails
are porous as mirrors
whose human reflections are lost
just the stalk of a nettle
explains leaflessly
that in our despair we have made
a flowerless earth
sexless as chlorine

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 5 out of 5]

la nieve
no es de ninguna manera nieve
cuando nieva
en pleno junio


la nieve no
ha caído de ninguna manera
del cielo
en junio


la nieve ha
surgido por sí misma
y ha florecido
en junio

como los manzanos
los albaricoqueros
los castaños
en junio


perderse
en la verdadera nieve
que es la nieve de junio
con flores y semillas


cuando no vas a morir nunca



Traducción de Francisco J. Uriz