Stillness of the World Before Bach: New Selected Poems

by Lars Gustafsson

Lars Gustafsson, one of Sweden’s leading men of letters, is known in the English-speaking world primarily for his novels and short stories, but he is also a distinguished poet with ten discrete volumes published to date in addition to the collective edition of his work for the years 1950-1980. In  The Stillness of the World Before New Selected Poems , readers will recognize in Gustafsson’s verse the playful erudition and imaginative philosophizing that give his fiction its unique appeal. Gustafsson, writes editor Christopher Middleton, “has remained distinctively a poet, insofar as his novels and essays usually combine exploratory and fabulous features with keen observation, a fascination with character in conflict as the subjective (or existential) axis of history, and a delight in story for its own complex or simple sake.” The selections for  The Stillness of the World Before Bach  were made by Christopher Middleton of the University of Texas at Austin in close association with the author, with whom he also collaborated for his own versions of many of the poems. Other translations were contributed by Robin Fulton, Philip Martin Yvonne L. Sandstroem, and Harriett Watts.

Genres: Poetry, Swedish Literature

116 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Lars Gustafsson was a Swedish poet, novelist and scholar. He completed his secondary education at the Västerås gymnasium and continued to Uppsala University; he received his Licentiate degree in 1960 and was awarded his Ph.D. in Theoretical Philosophy in 1978. He lived in Austin, Texas until 2003, and has recently returned to Sweden. From 1983 he served as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught Philosophy and Creative Writing, until May 2006, when he retired. In 1981 Gustafsson converted to Judaism.

Reviews

[Betty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book you can read once but rereading it would be comfortable as an old friend. Each tightly packed poem makes sense (some other's poetry doesn't many any) and there's a lot for wonderment ("the topographical labyrinth" and imagination ("So all mortals glide in the interior / of their own picture, somewhere in the twilight, and for this gliding there is no name." There's a poem 'Didapper', which takes its theme of the diving bird's appearance and disappearance further into the affect of sky above and sea below on the bird's cognition. The book's introduction notes the author's "erudition" in the poems, and he's comfortable with the connection of prehistory to now ("That world glimmers one foot under language; / full fathom five a father lies") Maybe these phrases "...in the light gray, / the indefinite, there we could live" and "...By what right / do we despise a liberty whose nature / consists in gently loosing every bond?" depict his rationalism.

[Juan Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

La poesía de Gustafsson conjuga delicadas y sutiles observaciones sobre la naturaleza con reflexiones sobre la creatividad y actividad humana, para generar una especie de contemplación meditativa sobre nuestro lugar en el esquema general de las cosas.
Me pareció bastante hermoso el rol que juegan los pájaros en muchos de los poemas: un encuentro con una alteridad que de alguna forma es, también, imagen nuestra.
Quizás el único defecto de la obra es una ocasional sobre-intelectualización muy cercana a la pedantería.

The Starred Sky...
The starred sky, the fixed stare of the galaxies.
The universe stubbornly upholding enormous distances
against our just-as-eager strivings to see the world as small,
possible to survey, trafficable for signals and observations.
Quantum logic in physics and chemistry.
The same thing: matter's obstinate refusal to be
anything but probabilities,
shadows that sweep under distant cliffs at sunset,
sudden gusts that run through a single aspen in the groove
and leave it almost still.
And our stubborn eager battle for a substance,
for particles, individualities, things that refuse to
exist in the physical world.
This world of distances and shadows
and random leaps between the spectral lines,
this frighteningly still dance
is what I mean
by the world's stillness before Bach.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

All time is eaten up by thoughts of time
that's past, or something that will happen soon.
Hope, and remembrance for the rest.

This selection brings together some of Gustafsson's most enigmatic, philosophical, and meditative poetry, populating a world of "distances and shadows" with birds, dogs, and a stillness that permeates everything. The poems only get better as the book goes along, and his work after 1975 is especially strong. Standouts include "On All That Glides in the Air," "The Decisive Battle," and, of course, the collection's eponymous poem.