Claes Andersson

Claes Andersson in 2007

[Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Claes_Andersson#/media/File:Claes_Andersson_(vanst)_Finland.jpg . Photo by Johannes Jansson.






How could I forget about Claes Andersson? But so it is. I haven't read his poems for ten or fifteen years, and yesterday the forgotten book (translations by Lennart and Sonia Bruce) comes off my bookshelf, falls open, and I begin reading, and I remember how strongly and passionately I love this poetry that I had nevertheless forgotten all about. Wasn't there, though, a perceptible if undiagnosed emptiness in the years between? Or am I misremembering it all, and the truth is I love Andersson's poems much more today than I ever did before? Has love opened up in me that I express it so, or is there something histrionic about all this, has love in fact narrowed -- whereas, back then, I inhabited a whole world of love, I didn't need to make such a noise about it?




A couple of poems translated by Rika Lesser


http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/1983/03/poems-11/


Here's part of one of them:


(summary)

Have sat at meetings, ticked off items on the agenda, recommended,
                         turned down
Approved the minutes (change "should" in §123 to "ought")
Gone to movies, museums, bars, libraries, homes, deserts, caves
Shoveled snow, played with the children, screamed at the children
                         been bitten by dogs 
Traveled in Europe, the States, Africa, met people
Bought and sold junk and cars, waited for buses, trains, have biked
Given speeches, lectures, been dumbstruck, signed petitions, demonstrated
Read (tons of) books, papers, brochures, hares' and crows' tracks
                         in the snow
Stared at TV, drunk beer, wine, schnapps, kefir, tasted sperm
Awakened in my own bed, in another's, up to now have always awakened
Dozed off over books, steering wheels, bottles, women, in buses,
                         closets, on guard duty
Put on pounds, lost them, exercised, lifted weights, brides over
                         thresholds, odds and ends
Been disappointed, happy, angry, indifferent, enraged, in love,
                         indifferent, empty
Been to funerals, weddings, soccer games, visiting, to crayfish
                         dinners, outhouses
Witnessed deliveries, death throes, christenings, autopsies, orgies
Written plays, traced hearts in the snow, poems, demand notes,
                         prescriptions, crib sheets
Shot rifles, pistols, water guns, mortars, slingshots, blowpipes
Had the mumps, the shakes, anxiety, depression, paranoia, inflamed urethra
Fought with conservatives, radicals, myself, Finns, windmills, my wife
Rented rooms, laundry rooms, apartments, tuxedos, cars, bought
                         houses, potted plants
Been plagued by guilt, small children, nightmares, red-headed lovers
Have asked the meaning of it all
Brooded, deliberated, pondered, constructed, conceived, stopped
                         thinking
Found the questions irrelevant and answered with the answer of
                         the senses

More poems translated by Rika Lesser:


http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/1997/03/i-am-a-happy-person/




(positive thinking)

Brussels is famous for its sunny weather and
      its waste disposal.
My potency and my teeth have never
      been better.
Every moment I have free I listen to Wagner and
      read Proust without stopping.
It is not tragic to be smothered and consumed
      by small animals.
As far as I'm concerned, the panic attacks are
      a stage that has passed.
Politics is about respect for those who think
      differently and about being honorable.
I never feel like smacking my wife.
Autumn is my time of year, a time of clarification, of self-control.
What I enjoy most is the solitude of an early morning
      in the churchyard.
I am a happy person.

*

The problem with our war was that they could
      not defend themselves.
Nonetheless, we carried out the war entirely
      according to plan.
We did it for our credibility and so that
      we could restock the depots.
Man is not a commodity in short supply.
Land mines were not a problem for us who
      conducted operations from the air.
 War is always a tragedy but even a tragedy
      can be beautiful.
The pictures you saw were slightly out of focus.
Any sharp boundary between the military and civilians
      is hard to draw.

*

I was inside when the department store collapsed.
I was aboard the passenger ferry when it vanished
      in the deep.
I lay on the operating table when rockets hit the hospital
      in the city under siege.
I was riding the subway when nerve gas seeped into
      the cars.
I had hidden myself in the cellar when soldiers set fire
      to our house.
I saw the tidal wave that would drown us as it approached.
I was one of the children put to death because a friend
      needed my heart.
 I remained in the sand after the desert storm.
 What you are I was, what I am you will become.

*

Our childhood photographs lie where we left them,
      in an attic in a cellar.
With their features half dissolved, those closest to us,
      our demons, oxidized to silver nitrite.
In the attic in the cellar, in the dark ice-cold goddamn
      cellar in the attic.
Brothers, cousins, sisters, moms, dads... oxidized,
      disarmed, destroyed.
Of mother's wondelful shining kitchen only the hearth remains.
The cat drowned in the well along with the rag doll,
      the kids' bicycles, the rats.
Maybe someone ought to remain, withstand the oxidization when
      the others flee, drown, dissolve.
Why do cars and houses with people in them explode every day
      everywhere.
One fine summer day the children found a dead soldier
      in the cellar in the attic.

More poems, translated by Rika Lesser:


http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2002/09/selling-to-the-lowest-bidder/




More poems, translated by David Hackston:


http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2009/05/the-personal-and-the-political/




Claes Andersson on reading and writing poetry:
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2002/09/on-the-uselessness-of-poetry/
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2007/03/subterranean-pre-verbal/


Claes Andersson on Pentti Saarikoski's alcoholism:
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2001/06/a-drinking-life/


Andersson is a Finland-Swedish author (i.e. a Finn who speaks and writes in Swedish).


Förtvivlan är ett alltför stort
ord, men jag vet inte.... Ty sorgen är
obotlig, den går aldrig över
Därav dess styrka, dess bördighet för det
som ännu inte förstörts inne i oss
Den som inte har sorgen har intet
Den som inte har sorgen kan ta sig till
med vad som helst! Med vem som helst!
Den som inte har sorgen har aldrig förlorat
någonting, aldrig ägt någonting
Smärtan och försoningen finns inte hos den
som aldrig haft sorgen Och dikten
växer bara ur sorgen, ur den sorg
som beretts ett rum i glädjens hjuls nav
och där klarnat till blick och förståelse. (Ur "Under"- 1984)




Swedish text sourced from:


http://ingridsboktankar.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/ett-par-dikter-av-claes-andersson.html














The Claes Andersson Trio: