If you find them worth publishing, you have my permission to do so – as a sort of ‘White Book’ concerning my negotiations with myself – and with God. (Dag Hammarskjöld, in a letter to Leif Belfrage)* And so they sat together, the poet without “a single word of Swedish” at hand, and the translator,Continue reading “In Translation”
Tag Archives: language
Unexpected Gifts
Because the Danes roared across the waves in Viking- glory, horn-helmeted King Cnut at the helm, we can now say that we are glad, can label small what we’d otherwise miss, and can cut with a knife the smallest things the eye can see. Come wind and hail, though time may slay, we lay cold and rain beforeContinue reading “Unexpected Gifts”
Speech
If a lion could talk, we could not understand him. – Ludwig Wittgenstein If poets and statisticians ate together, would their talk make sense? What figures and what facts could they summon up then as they spoke? What heart would lie within each number? How might every number lie? The trends we graph are true,Continue reading “Speech”
The Consolations of Writing 