Mozart’s Third Brain
I was reading a Spring 2003 issue of the Scandinavian Review and there was an article on the Swedish poet Göran Sonnevi's1 book length poem Mozarts Tredje Hjärna or Mozart's Third Brain (pages 63 - 68). It had been translated by Rika Lesser,2 but apparently the book has yet to make an appearance on bn.com or amazon. The most I could find was an article in from Triquarterly on December 31, 1999.
I find the poem both difficult and delightful. Difficult in that Sonnevi tackles the BIG issues: genocide, lover, death. But there is such a flight of fancy, so much to delight here that it allows me to go along with the ride. If anyone knows where I can get my hands on either the original or the translation, please let me know. Here are three small sections of the 144. What do you think?
XVII
Every word carries
all its despair
all its joy
We carry one another
LX
With V I talked about the young heifers in the meadow
As a child she was a shepherdess, tending cows and sheep
She spoke with expertise about the ages of calves When
I said one of them was a beauty she
replied: They are all beautiful!………………………………………….
At Digerhuvudet on Faro she walked away alone
along the white rubblestone shore, her brown shawl
swept around her head, an old woman, a figure of pain
I also walked away, but in the other direction, in the blinding
light from the stones, the sea, below attacking terns
When I came back to the group I saw her
She showed me her find, a clump of moss
the size of a fingertip, gleaming
silver I showed her mine: a coral shaped
like a clam shell, petrified,
four hundred million years old
All we did not talk about What came after
the dictatorship The conflict of pain What
"the national" is, if other than a fiction
And what in that case this fiction
means I do not know
LXXXIV
Mozart of Pain Madness's Mozart Mozart sticking
out his tongue My dance Straight through all
the brain's walls In that which is generalized
connection Epileptically CalmedI'm thinking about her, who listened to music
to soothe the twitching in her face
Now I see that face Wholly calm
- Sonnevi, born in Lund, Sweden on October 3, 1939, has published fourteen individual books of poems in addition to three collections. He has translated the poetry of Ezra Pound, Paul Celan, Osip Mandelstam and others into Swedish. [back]
- As the author of three books of poetry: Lesser has published five books of poetry in translation: Claes Andersson, Gunnar Ekelöf, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Göran Sonnevi. In 1982 she received the Landon Prize for her rendition of Ekelöf’s Guide to the Underworld. [back]
April 26th, 2006 at 12:35 am
Swedish epic poetry in translation seems curiously difficult to track down. After several years of searching, I’ve only just managed to get hold of a decent copy of Harry Martinson’s space-opera-in-verse, ‘Aniara’.
April 26th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
I don’t know if they bill themselves as a literary magazine but every issue of “The Scandinavian Review” I’ve seen has poets and translations not just from Sweden but from Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland as well.
I have been highly impressed with the translations, since many of the poets are brand new to me (granted knowing no Scandinavian tongues is a draw back … I have nothing to compare them with) but I recommend the magazine as a good starting place regardless.
April 28th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Tess recently wrote to me a note with some more information. It was very helpful and I will share it now with you:
About your search on Goran Sonnevi. The Paris Review online had a mention in the poetry section. I don’t know what it contains. Happy hunting! tess
http://www.parisreview.com/viewissue.php/prmIID/161