Swedish Poetry 1
The Stillness of the World Before Bach There must
have been a world before the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor Partita, but what kind of world? A Europe of vast empty spaces, unresounding, everywhere unawakened instruments where the Musical Offering, the Well-tempered Clavier never passed across the keys. Isolated churches where the soprano line of the Passion never in helpless love twined round the gentler movements of the flute, broad soft landscapes where nothing breaks the stillness but old woodcutters’ axes, the healthy barking of strong dogs in winter and, like a bell, skates biting into fresh ice; the swallows whirring through summer air, the shell resounding at the child’s ear and nowhere Bach nowhere Bach the world in a skater’s stillness before Bach. Lars Gustafsson, from Världens tystnad före Bach (The Stillness of the World Before Bach), 1983 Translated by Philip Martin and Lars Gustafsson LARS GUSTAFSSON Världens tystnad före Bach (The Stillness of the World Before Bach, 1982) It is the ideals of the Enlightenment that have shaped Lars Gustafsson’s prodigious and highly versatile work as a writer, in which poetry has always occupied an important place. He manages to combine a street-smart attitude with book learning extremely successfully. In Världens tystnad före Bach he plays the game of being wise, but does so with a disarming playfulness and curiosity. The great questions of philosophy are subjected to ingenious shifts of perspective, and both the living and the dead are treated with the same tenderness and understanding. The poems move freely between the sophisticated and the trivial, such that the full extent of the world may be encompassed, making space for both the ugly and the beautiful. Whether humanity is the plaything of the gods or the reverse he leaves unsaid. Tradition is combined with modernity here, and Gustafsson was also among the first poets to write in an informed way about the application of computers to everyday life. A bridge is constructed in his work that connects the natural sciences and humanism. While Gustafsson is the poet of 67 logic, he guarantees no finished answers but employs a fertile, speculative form of inquiry to relate to existence. Selected Collections of Poetry: Ballongfarare (1962) Kärleksförklaring till en sefardisk dam (1970) Världens tystnad före Bach (1982) Elden och döttrarna. Valda och nya dikter (2012) SWEDISH POETRY