Nobel snubs Dylan for lit laurel as the Swedes pick — surprise! — a Swede.
Seldom has being right tasted so much like ashes: Did anyone really think Bob Dylan had a chance to win the Nobel Prize in literature -- with a Swedish poet in the running? Visit the Miami Book Fair International website to see the gaudy author list (Roseanne Cash! Jeffrey Eugenides! Nicole Kraus! Michael Ondaajte! Hundreds more! Literally!).…
https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/601377b13e0c1b6e560f48ef0dced1257c0e8e6ca75f3b408f788ccede8f2b19?s=32
Open Page
Thanks, for this, Sarah, and for your fine comments on transl(iter)ation, Chauncey. Here’s another poem of Transtromer’s that still retains much power in the English. Below that a link to him reading:

“Schubertiana”

by Tomas Transtromer. (Translation by Kalle Raisanen)

I.

In the evening-dark of a place outside New York, a look-out point

where one glance can encompass eight million people’s homes.

The giant city over there is a long, ﬂickering snow-drift, a spiral

galaxy on its side.

Inside the galaxy, coﬀee cups are slid over the counter, store-fronts

beg with passers-by, a crowd of shoes that leave no traces.

The climbing ﬁre-escapes, the elevator doors gliding shut, behind

locked doors a constant swell of voices.

Sunken bodies half-sleep in the subway cars, the rushing catacombs.

I know, also — statistics aside — that right now Schubert is

being played in some room over there and that to someone

those sounds are more important than all those other things.

II.

The human brain’s endless expanse crumpled into the size of a

ﬁst.

In April, the swallow returns to its last-year’s-nest under the roof

of that very barn in that very parish.

She ﬂies from the Transvaal, passes the equator, ﬂies for six weeks

over two continents, steers toward this dissappearing point in

the land-mass.

And the man who captures the signals of a whole life in some

fairly ordinary chords by ﬁve strings

the man who makes a river run through the eye of a needle

is a fat young man from Vienna, called “Little Mushroom” by his

friends, who slept with his glasses on

and got punctually behind his writing desk each morning.

At which the wonderful centipedes of music were set in motion.

1“Schubertiana” Tomas Transtromer. (Trans. ¨ Kalle Rais ¨ anen ¨ )

III.

The ﬁve strings play. I walk home through tepid forests with the

ground springing under me

crawl up like an unborn, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future,

suddenly feel that the plants have thoughts.

IV.

So much we have to trust, simply to live through our daily day

without sinking through the earth!

Trust the snow clinging to the mountain slope over the village.

Trust the promises of silence and smiles of understanding,

trust that the accident telegram isn’t for us and that the sudden

axe-blow from within won’t come.

Trust the wheel-axles that carry us on the highway in the middle

of the three-hundred-times magniﬁed bee swarm of steel.

But none of that is really worth our conﬁdence.

The ﬁve strings say we can trust something else.

Trust what? Something else, and they follow us part of the way

there.

As when the lights turn oﬀ in the stair-well and the hand follows

— with conﬁdence — the blind handrail that ﬁnds its way in

the dark.

V.

We crowd in front of the piano and play four-handed in F-minor,

two coachmen on the same carriage, it looks slightly ridiculous.

Our hands seem to move clanging weights back and forth, as if

we were touching the counter-weights

in attempt at disturbing the terrible balance of the great scales:

joy and suﬀering weigh exactly the same.

Annie said, “This music is so heroic,” and it’s true.

But those who glance enviously at the men of action, those who

secretely despise themselves for not being murderers

they don’t recognise themselves here.

And those many who buy and sell people and think that everyone

can be bought, they don’t recognise themselves here.

Not their music. The long melody that remains itself through all

changes, sometimes glittering and weak, sometimes rough and

strong, snail-trails and steel wire.

The insistant humming that follows us right now

up the

depths.