18 may 2024

18 may 2024

John Bjarne Grover

Yesterday I searched the web for Pär Lagerkvist's "Aftonlandet" = 'The Evening Land' for finding the translation by W.H.Auden and Leif Sjöberg. I found it under the URL https://annas-archive.org/slow_download/f656db7d542dd48909eab01169dc995f/0/1. The poem on pages 56-57 called 'Skuggor skrider genom mina riken' = 'Shadows glide through my lands' seemed to me an interesting parallel to my own TEQ #681 'Oh bird, who is science!' - the comparison could be an interesting study:

The hebrew to my TEQ #681 is the second half of Exodus 19:18, which by a closer reading (see e.g. Davidson's dictionary) could come out as something resembling

the (mountain) goat in smoke like the smoke of a lamb
trembles the whole mountain tract (to be) turning (or 'exceedingly')

Interestingly, the glosses seem also to have a certain reflex in the mirror poem to #681 - that is TEQ #1039

The confusion of goat and lamb and stepping up and down has a reflex also in a fragment of Xenophanes:

You step down on the calf of a kid
and you lift the foot of a milk-fatted bull

A little later: Having just published the above and having had a meal - I was just in the middle of an orange - when I recalled that I had forgotten to include an observation which could be of some interest and I hurried to look it up, the orange being only half eaten: I had leafed in Trapp's 'Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität' in search of an interesting etymology for the signature 'Chomba^s' and come across the form 'ein halber Goldsolidus' ('solidus' was a roman coin) which looked interesting and which I should include here. As I leafed in the second half of volume 2 ('πρσπέλασις-ω') in search of it, suddenly I became aware of something sticking to my lefthand palm holding the book - it turned out to be a most probably ex nihilo sticker (I dont understand how it otherwise could have landed there) of the same ex nihilo type as I had found in april 2022. In fact this 'Götterfrucht' was quite well attached to my skin - here is the label in the poet's swedish colours:

And here are the two stickers from 2022 - the 'Filosofo' sticker continued to be curled up and that is how it still is:

It may be a part of the story that I could not find this 'Goldsolidus' again - but I guess it has to be there somewhere.

See also Der Dornenstrauch I:77.

19 may 2024: Absolutely interesting data which must be added: Today I went out and bought some food which I put in a textile handbag which I stuffed in my rucksack. On my return home I unpacked the food and threw the textile bag on the bed - where it landed and I suddenly saw exactly the same sort of 'Götterfrucht' label as I had found on my hand yesterday. Now it was stuck to the red textile - but a little outside the edge. It was quite well attached - and the surprising element was that the sticky underside contained traces of the textile even where it had been outside it. I dont think the label could have been on the food I bought and I believe it occurred 'ex nihilo' when it landed on the bed. I put it on the same microscope glass as the one from yesterday. Here are the three relevant observations - on the bag and the front and back sides:

21 may 2024: A new 'Götterfrucht' today - this time on the righthand index finger:

29 may 2024: And then today in the shop I found an entire box with 'Götterfrucht' oranges - so the mystery seems solved. Seems to be an established brand of fruits. Probably? Last week they seem to have been called 'Senorita oranges'. But where are they on the web now?

W.H.Auden (translator of Lagerkvist) died in Vienna (in Walfischgasse 5) on 29 september 1973, at the age of 66,6 years. (A blog page told that this was Altenburger Hotel - but now I cannot find the page again). His death was only 12 days after I had exited from the norwegian protestant church on 17 september 1973. Ingeborg Bachmann likewise died some days later. From this wikipedia article on W.H.Auden one could guess that there could have been efforts to associate him with the idea of 'dirty beast in the revelation'. I would doubt that he was homo, any more than Rilke was - who likewise did not share house with his wife.

19 may 2024: Auden spent much of his time in Kirkchstetten (where he also is buried) in Austria and Ischia in Italy. Are the 'Wikipedia' articles produced (more less instantly when you look up a theme) by 'expert systems' as a field of AI? After my MA degree in 1992 I was guided by Geir Kirkebøen to Henrik Sinding-Larsen for a project at the research center for culture and technology. Kirkebøen was then working with a (postdoctoral?) project on 'expert systems' - computers generating expertise knowledge - and later became professor of psychology at the unversity of Oslo - he seems to have died from brain cancer on 12 april 2022 at the age of 64 (born in 1957). In light of the age 66,6 of Auden at his death, it is not impossible that the article about Auden on Wikipedia (if a case of AI?) could have been influenced by the name of 'Kirkebøen' = 'Kirchstetten' and 'Geir' = 'Ischia' - and hence the idea in the article that Auden should have been 'gay' or 'gayer'. (Cp. his 1931 poem 'Uncle Henry' with the name of his later comrade 'Chester Simon Kallmann', born 1921). It is of course possible that AI functions along such parametres - this page tells that Kirkebøen discovered his brain cancer ten years before his death in a violent 'epileptic attack' after some gymnastic training = 'trenings-økt' - cp. 'trening-søkt' for the 'AI' and 'e-pi-leptic' for his name. Hence it is not impossible that the apparently strange bias in the article on Auden - if it is based on AI principles - could be compared with the phenomena discussed in my article on the situation in Palestine.

In fact I found the two ex nihilo stickers - the 'Filosofo' and the 'Royal Land' stickers - on 23 and 25 april 2022 - search for 'Apply your goodhearted understanding of/on the thriving farming life' - that was 11-13 days after the death of Kirkebøen.

See also this poem of mine which has been on the web since 2004.

I read Auden when I studied literature in 1982. He is mentioned several times in The Endmorgan Quartet, first time in 'Hammerfest'. It may be that the third mention (6.2.98) contains a 'så dem' = 'saw them'.

(May I allow myself a tiny little whisper about this? In Norway it is not normal to acknowledge such things as this 'Götterfrucht' or 'Filosofo' and 'Royal Land' ex nihilo stickers as valuable research - rather one would expect that it could trigger nervous anxiety responses - 'this is crazy' and 'we must hurry up and find an expert on this better than Mr.Grover' - as a variant of superstitions a la '666' - and it is not impossible that my 'career' has been under such a 'spell' - which serves to suppress the phenomenon for getting the anxiety quickly down or under 'expert' control rather than understanding what it is. It is not even possible to touch it with a tiny little whisper such as this one before things start going wrong way. Is this even the story of the Soviet Union? - oops, there it started going wrong way again).

21 may 2024: Auden died in Walfischgasse 5 in Vienna on 29 september 1973. If his death were planned for a 66,6 in advance, one could speculate that his name could be found 12 years 2 months and 3 weeks earlier in the cartoons of The New Yorker (for whom he, by the way, had done some work). That is 8 july 1961. There are 14 cartoons for that issue. I found this cartoon which seems to spell his name backwards 'nedua hguh natsyw': 'Nedover' is norwegian for 'downwards' (cp. my name onset-truncated 'on yar nerover'), hence his name backwards could tell 'not good, good, not so weird' or something like that. He had given a reading for the 'Austrian Society for Literature' that evening when he later died. According to Auden's letter of 13 december 1968 to his friend Stella Musulin, a 'Jean Boras' had driven his car when he died from a Lastwagen. Stella was Henrik Wergeland's muse or 'Beatrice'. 'Stella' was also the name of my uncle Per's dog, or it was a family dog of the Eidsvigs - like in the first stanza of this poem Auden sent to Musulin in 1965. My own family background included a family trip to Borås (where they had an animal park) in Sweden in the second half of or late 1960's. It was the only family trip abroad except for London in 1972.

Sources:

Grover, John: The Endmorgan Quartet. Wien 2013.

Lagerkvist, Pär: 'Evening Land' - translated from the swedish original 'Aftonland' by W. H. Auden and Leif Sjöberg. With an Introduction by Leif Sjöberg. Wayne State University Press Detroit, 1975.