Some Contemporary European Poets

REVIEWS 121 SOME CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN POETS Selected Poems. Benny Andersen. Translated by Alexander Taylor. Princeton University , 1976. Cloth (dual-language), $9.50; paperback (English only), $2.95. Selected Poems. Klaus Rifbjerg. Translated by Alexander Taylor and Nadia Christensen . Curbstone (321 Jackson Street, WiUimantic, Conn. 06226), 36 pp. $3.00. The Conqueror in Constantinople. Miodrag Pavlovich. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel . New Rivers (P.O. Box 578, Cathedral Station, New York, N.Y. 10025), 1976. 32 pp. $1.25 paperback. Benny Andersen, Denmark's most popular contemporary poet, deserves to be better known in the United States. He has pubUshed seven books of poetry in Denmark in addition to short stories, essays, film scripts, and a novel. And he has worked with Alexander Taylor on these translations. The translator has sensibly attempted to render the poems as UteraUy as possible. He has made no changes in meaning without the poet's permission. Even a person ignorant of Danish (Uke this reviewer) can see he has kept important words in important places, at the ends of Unes and the ends of poems. And his hope that the translations can stand as poems is fuUy justified. "Table Prayer," for example, is astonishingly effective . Give me today my bread to butter. Soft and hard shaU meet in my hands and the butter's sunshine overwhelm the bread's darkness. Let me touch what we Uve on, brown bread, yeUow butter, love. Whimsy is Andersen's most notable and most endearing quality. Even his enemy is "dear"; he speaks of him with an emotion close to love. People in a bar find the outside world only a scratch on a vague longplaying record. An old woman with a skuU fracture Ues dying. Her heirs ask about money, and she repUes, "Just think, children,/ my headache has completely disappeared." Andersen has fun with everything, even his own humor. "Smile" takes an ironic look at his own point of view. smiles keep the flies away and the mind clean and light and air are good for the teeth if you arrive too late if you go bankrupt if you're run over just smile tourists stream in to see smiling trafficvictims the chuckling homeless the crackling bereaved. The poem ends: "it's not a bit funny." To which our reaction is, of course, a smile. Yet the inscrutable aspects of life also terrify the poet. In "Your Dress Without You" he sees the dress "coUapsed-twisted-/ as if struck by Ughtning," a symbol of the death of his beloved. He puts his hands in the dress to animate it Uke a puppeteer. [I] stare get my other hand up through the neckline it waves deprecatingly with its fingers which I jerk back in fright. . . . He laughs at himself, at his fears, and we laugh with him, a humane laughter which . draws its strength from the humorous and mysterious conditions of human exis- 122 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW tence. Like many contemporary writers, he is conscious of the Void-yet he refuses to be overwhelmed by it. He examines a hole in the earth and finds it "deeply [note the word play] dependent" on surrounding matter. Then he turns to the human implications of this relationship. From hole you have come to earth you shaU return. The poem might weU end here, but whimsically, heroicaUy, Andersen continues: I warmly pat the hole and keep going on earth. Tiiat warm, domestic pat is a typical Andersen gesture. He accepts the world, holes and all, and his place in it. In spite of imperfections in nature and man, he is basicaUy pleased. Klaus Rifbjerg, another contemporary Dane, should also be pleased with the translation of his work. Once again Alexander Taylor, this time with Nadia Christensen, has given us EngUsh poems that hardly sound Uke translations at aU. Like Benny Andersen, Rifbjerg finds the world a basicaUy pleasant place. He is particularly pleased with his own poems, many of which betray a sUght touch of coyness, even in straightforward translations. Poseur from the start. With an elegant movement I unlace myself from the umbilical cord wound three times around my neck Uke a cashmere scarf. (from "Birth") Grandparents, an air of barleysugar...