"Epilogos," from It: With an Introduction by Anne Carson Translated from the Danish by Susanna Nied

American Poetry Review, The, Nov/Dec 2006 by Christensen, Inger

A Special APz Supplement

The following feature is an excerpt from it © Inger Christensen. which is forthcoming from New Directions Press.

... If I could start in total silence, slip into the first sentences, hide there as in water, flowing, go on until the first little ripples appeared, almost words, almost sentences, more and more.... -Inger Christensen1

THIS MUST BE WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO HEAR HESIOD IN TH E EIGHTH century BC recite his cosmogonic poems. Like Hesiod, Inger Christensen wants to give an account of what is-of everything that is and how it is and what we are in the midst of it. In the midst of what? That is her question.

It. That's it. That started it. It is. Goes on. Moves. Beyond.

she begins.

Hesiod was an epic poet who lived in Boiotia in (probably) the eighth century BC. His surviving poems include the Theogony and the Works and Days. The Theogony is a cosmogony: an account of the origin, genealogies and violent struggles of all the gods-not only Zeus, Apollo and the usual Olympians but elements and abstractions like Heaven, Moon, Mountains, Death, Sleep, Starvation, The Works and Days is a practical and moral guide to everyday life as an eighth-century Boiotian person. Formally speaking, the Theogony can be read as a hymn, the Works and Days as a piece of wisdom literature, both standard poetic forms at the time. Addressing an audience that does not believe in gods or trust the wisdom of poets, Inger Christensen combines Hesiod's purposes into one pronoun. Her det is at once a hymn of praise to reality and a scathing comment on how we make reality what it is. The dazzled and the didactic interfuse in det. It was 1969 when she published it. Others were attempting such fusions. Think of John Lennon and Yoko Ono ("Give Peace A Chance" and the Bed-in in Amsterdam); James Brown ("Say It Loud (I'm Black and Proud)"); Valerie Solanas ("The Scum Manifesto" and attack on Andy Warhol); Allen Ginsberg chanting the Hare Krishna mantra at Judge Hoffman in a Chicago courtroom. Here is a description from Susanna Nied of how det was received in Europe:

On its publication in 1969, det took Denmark by storm. It won critical praise and became at the same time a huge popular favorite. It was quoted by political protestors and politicians alike; lines from it appeared as graffiti around Copenhagen; some parts were set to rock music and became esoteric hits. When portions were translated into German, det brought Christensen international critical acclaim. Today, over thirty years later, det is considered a seminal work of modern Scandinavian poetry. Some of its lines are so familiar to Danes that they have slipped into conversational use. For example, the journal of Denmark's city planners took its title, Soft City, from a line in det.2

Del means "it" in Danish. Unlike Hesiod's Greek, Danish is a language in which you must specify the personal pronoun of an impersonal verb. If Hesiod wanted to say "it is" he would use the verb esti: "it" is included in the verb. lnger Christensen must say det er. She is immediately involved in knowing what "det" is. We are caught in the words we use. So, for her, a cosmogony must also be a cosmology. These terms are sometimes used interchangeably in English, but they are not the same. Cosmogony, from kosmos ("cosmos") and gignesthai ("to come into being"), refers to the birth of things out of nothing. Cosmology, from kosmos and logos, means the system by which things make sense to us. lnger Christensen divides her det into PROLOGOS, LOGOS and EPILOGOS. Logos (in Greek) can mean "word, sentence, story, explanation, reasoning, grammar, rationality." It can also denote "number, calculation, price." From number derives its reference to "measure," particularly a "measure of verse or music." From measure comes its application to "law" and "proportion," to "arguments" before the law court and hence its sense of "plea." All these meanings stream and bite and crackle through det. Their organization is complex and, as in a great comedy, the effect is a matter of perfectly timed beats.

Inger Christensen discussed the composition of PROLOGOS in a 1970 newspaper article:3

In the beginning I actually acted as if I weren't there, as if it ("I") were just some protoplasm talking, acted as if I were just something that went along while a language, a world, unfolded. That's why I called the first part PROLOCOS: the part, even if it's only fictional, that comes before the word, before consciousness. Background, starting point, vantage point. Prologue, in the theater.

All the stuff of a world emerges in PROLOGOS, from winter-hardy seeds4 to city halls to Someone, it all wanders out into existence, a bit dazed, rubbing its eyes. As in Hesiod's Theogony, this seething multiplicity steps out of nothing without explaining itself. "First came Chaos," declares Hesiod. "It. That's it," says Inger Christensen. What keeps it all from sliding back into nothing is, for both poets, number. Hesiod's epic hexameters propel his poem forward from generation to generation, containing it against decay or meaninglessness; Inger Christensen's mathematics take hold of her data in a similar way. Each line of PROLOGOS has exactly 66 characters in Danish.5 The structure of the whole is in eight sections: