I welcome all sorts of questions.
Please.
I can't really resist this one, but just before the reading,
we met somebody told us a story of something that happened
at this very University recently, not
in this department, having to do with the creative writing
people.
But a professor was criticized by students
for mentioning death in conjunction
with a piece of music.
And we happen to have live music with this.
It seemed a very odd thing, and we've only
come from Phoenix to Tucson.
When you come from Sweden, does it
strike you as an amazing fact of modern life,
this poem to be criticized for actually discussing death
[INAUDIBLE]?
No, I think 15, 20 years ago, it was regarded
as a subject you shouldn't touch,
but that has changed a little in Sweden.
I read death as--
death is almost popular now to talk--
[LAUGHTER]
It's-- for too long a time, it has been a suppressed fact.
I mean, especially in hospitals and among medical people,
they never mention death.
They just hurry past the dying people there.
So this has changed a little bit.
And they are also given certain advice
for how to talk with children about it.
So it has to do with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and all that.
She-- I thought America is always a little before us,
so I thought the talk about death was a little earlier
here, but--
well, it's a large country.
I am a little shocked.
There is too much dead people in the poems I read, perhaps.
Well, that was the juxtaposition that struck me.
Yeah, it happened to be that way, yes.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit about the translation process
you went through?
Yeah, it's a very complicated process for certain poems.
I mean, if we take this long poem I read,
about the TV preacher and all that.
First it is written in Swedish, and then I
send it to Robin Fulton who made the first version, which
was full of mistakes.
And he had real problems with this,
because there are parts of the poem that
simply are very strange to the Anglo-Saxon language.
But we were exchanging letters about this.
It was such a boring process, but at last we
found a version that seemed to be completely readable.
And then I-- today, was sitting with Richard Shelton,
and he discovered some mistakes in the translation.
So I mean, that was the last stage.
And what I will do is probably to go back to Fulton and show
him Dick's--
not all, of course, but most of his corrections,
and see how many he can accept.
And well, so-- it's a typical translation process.
Now it could be still more complicated when
you have very militant professors or something,
that think that they have absolute authority
over the process, and you don't dare object at all.
I have a personal relationship to almost all my translators,
so it's rather easy to cooperate.
It's a fantastic advantage, and--
well, it's not true about all translators naturally, but--
because sometimes you are translated into languages where
you have no connection at all.
But what with the English translators,
I have a relationship with the Dutch
and with the German, which are the--
and Hungarian, that are the languages where
I have been mostly translating.
Yeah.
Do you ever try and write in English?
Not directly, but I once made an English translation
of prose piece that was quite simple,
the language was quite simple, called "Icelandic Hurricane."
That was even published in a magazine called Pequod.
But it's impossible, of course, to do a translation of poetry
if you don't know the hidden dimensions behind the word.
I mean, as a foreigner, I cannot possibly know that.
I can have it explained to me word by word,
this English word has this and this, but it's complicated.
Yeah, somebody?
I discovered how you were reading as a poet,
as an artist in philosophy.
Why?
I said, I discovered that [INAUDIBLE]
was an artist in philosophy.
Yeah, I'm glad to hear that, because I
am very poor philosopher.
I mean, I am--
I have difficulties to be philosophical
in the abstract way.
When I am a philosopher, I have to use my senses
and I have to see things in front of me,
and so on and so on.
And I am sometimes criticized for being too naive
and to have too little of abstractions in me.
So I am glad to be a sort of philosopher, you know?
I've noticed hearing you today and reading
your thoughts of the past, that they have
a certain density about the--
I guess in the language and other things
that I don't expect to translate for you.
I used to translate poetry, it feels like somehow diluted.
It feels that something has dropped out
of the translation, but [INAUDIBLE]..
Has anyone commented on that to you before,
or do you have any explanation for why that might be?
I think it has to do with the translators
are poets themselves.
I mean, Fulton is an experienced poet.
And his ambition is, of course, to do something
that is a poem in English and not a translation,
for instance.
And of course, the poems are a little denser in Swedish,
because Swedish rhythm is difficult to get over
into English.
But I'm glad to hear that they have this quality.
Do you have any favorite poets of your own, contemporary?
Oh, many, many, many.
I mean, it goes up and down.
Certain days you like somebody, and the next day he's out.
But among the 20th century poets,
if we should stick to them, I think--
Who's your favorite death poet?
Oh, now that's still more impossible to say.
I mean, the-- what shall I say?
I am influenced by all these heroes, Eliot, and [INAUDIBLE],,
and Whitman, and, yes, Emily Dickinson.
Would you say Wallace Stevens?
Yes, partly, very much.
Partly I think he is too philosophical or abstract.
I mean, there are certain poems I think are wonderful,
but he's difficult to translate, because something--
the music in his poetry gets lost very much,
and only the philosophy remains when
you translate Wallace Stevens.
That's my impression.