torunlian

Joseph Brodsky, nobelprisvinner i 1991, skriver om Eugenio Montale, nobelprisvinner i 1975, i At Behaga en Skugga

Poesi är i grund och botten artikulation av en perception, en översättning av denna perception till det språkliga arvet – språket är, när allt kommer omkring, det bästa redskap som står till buds. Men hur mycket detta redskap än bidrar till att förgrena och fördjupa perceptionerna – varvid det ibland avslöjar mer än som ursprungligen avsetts, något som i lyckliga fall sammanfaller med perceptionerna – vet varje mer eller mindre erfaren diktare hur mycket som har utelämnats eller har blivit lidande på grund av det.

Clodagh Brook diskuterer Eugenio Montales arbeid i Montale and Writing: Creation or Expression

The first issue to be discussed is whether there is a duality within the inner experience before public expression takes place. Those who argue that all experience is linguistic would naturally reject any such duality. Hester writes that Wittgenstein posits language as a vehicle for thought in the Philosophical Investigations, rather than seeing thought as internal, and sees thinking not as a mental activity, but as an activity of operating with signs. Many theorists believe that no object exists without a word for it existing. If a duality is posited this would imply that the inner experience includes linguistic and non-linguistic elements …

… Whether or not these non-verbal elements actually exist, the belief, which is commonly held, that they do exist may well contribute to the sensation that some experience which is beyond language and alien to language does exist. And this sensation in turn is one of the contributing factors to the idea that something inexpressible, lying beyond language, exists. If one believes that there are elements in the mind that are in an alternative non-linguistic form, then the ‘translation’ of those elements into a linguistic form is likely to cause a radical change in their constituency — tantamount to a betrayal of their original existence …

… Montale does not agree that the outward public expression is just the pure communication or translation of some already perfect inner act. He believes that the act of writing itself is creative:

Is the lyric “a state of mind expressed”? Yes and no, as the lyric has a starting point, a state of mind, but it also has a point of arrival which is often unforeseeable and which is never, or hardly ever, the exact translation of that state of mind.

And furthermore in “Tutti in pentola” (1963) he writes:

The true poet never knows where he has to arrive at: if that was not the case every distinction between industry and art would collapse.

Eugenio Montale med kvinne og rose

Joseph Brodsky fødtes inn i en jødisk familie i Leningrad. I 1963 ble han arrestert for sosial parasitisme. Del av et utskrift fra rettsaken ble smuglet til «Vesten».

Judge: And what is your profession, in general?

Brodsky: I am a poet and a literary translator.

Judge: Who recognizes you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?

Brodsky: No one. Who enrolled me in the ranks of humankind?

Judge: Did you study this?

Brodsky: What this?

Judge: How to become a poet. You did not even try to finish high school where they prepare, where they teach?

Brodsky: I didn’t think you could get this from school.

Judge: How then?

Brodsky: I think that it … comes from God, yes God.

(Brodsky) suggested that the Western literary tradition was in part responsible for the world having overcome the catastrophes of the twentieth century, such as Nazism, Communism and the World Wars. During his term as the Poet Laureate, Brodsky promoted the idea of bringing the Anglo-American poetic heritage to a wider American audience by distributing free poetry anthologies to the public through a government-sponsored program. This proposal was met with limited enthusiasm in Washington.

Wikipedia

Hmm…

«The Constitution doesn’t mention rain.»
— Joseph Brodsky