Oraefi

by Ófeigur Sigurðsson

  Ormur eg var

  Ormur eg er

  & Ormur mun ætíð vera

  með eitraða tönn

  & tambúrín hala

  einn skríð eg

  úr skinni mínu

  & skipti um ham.3

  He crumpled his change into a tattered wallet and pulled out a document he wanted to show us: it certified that the poet was a full member of the Rotary Club. If I were not an Icelander, I would have earned the Nobel Prize, said Worm, if I’d written in French or German, I would already have received the Nobel, I’m so isolated, in such a tiny linguistic region, I am alone, stranded … stranded on a deserted skerry … banished … I’m stranded on a deserted rock, banished from the raging sea of languages! said Worm, loud and aggrieved, and some looked up from their sheeps’ heads in our direction, I got the worst curse of Babel, born an Icelandic poet, no one understands me, no one hears me at all … Slit your throat, then, said The Regular but Worm got sacredly offended and coiled up, So, what are you writing these days? Worm quickly softened at this apparent attention to his work, I’m experimenting, said Worm Serpent, with writing between sleep and waking …And it’s going well, is it? The Regular asked brusquely and with great disrespect, but the poet did not let himself get worked up this time; sipping many small sips of red wine, he said: This is how poets drink in Paris, many small sips quickly …We looked at this approach to red wine with some astonishment …They (sip) were (sip) prepared (sip) to (sip) let (sip) me (sip) have (sip) the Nobel (sip) … the poet muttered between tiny sips before crying out: Can can can can can can’t some gentleman here offer to buy a single book of poetry in exchange for a finger of brandy!? …The Regular waved to the waiter and asked for a bottle of red wine from the Rhone valley, which would work on the poet like the powerful Mistral wind, but Worm Serpent snatched up a book of poetry, A Journey Within Sight, shot the cap off his fountain pen with his thumb and wrote the date on the flyleaf with shaky hands and with best wishes from the author. The ritual took a fantastically long time.

  We were discussing poetry, said The Regular. Dwarves are done with, answered Worm Serpent, therefore I am a poet. And who is it that writes for you while you’re stuck between sleep and waking? The Regular asked, we were just discussing this very topic, the boundary between dreams and existence, it’s not easy to hold a pen in that state but one can remember … I’m crippled, said Worm Serpent, I cannot work, I cannot live on a disability allowance, I cannot live in poetry, I can not … I catch words and pictures, I set them to memory and process them later …There’s a little of the symbolist in you, maybe, said The Regular, symbolists cease to distinguish between dreams and reality, the boundaries fade away, the symbolist ceases to differentiate between these two kinds of reality, sinks into signs and wanders in darkness and doesn’t know where the ideas or memories come from, whether he has had an actual experience or dreamed it, he wanders in the dark, maybe it’s better put another way, a symbolist wanders in amazement, he knows these two worlds work together, but he, the symbolist, fears the darkness … yet first and foremost he desires the darkness and when a person is held by fear mixed with desire, then they must wander …Wander in existence like I do! cried Worm Serpent, je suis un grand symboliste! … Poets desire solitude but cannot be alone, continued The Regular, ignoring the poet’s interruption, they want to form groups, look at the wretched young poets, how poor and afflicted they are … Van Gogh took symbolism a step further, like true artists do, went one step further, leaving the rest behind to be swallowed by forgetfulness, but Van Gogh did not desire darkness, he longed for the light beyond the darkness, the stars in the night sky, he desired life, like the novel about him called Lust for Life I & II which you could procure from Bragi for nothing, I recommend it, Bernharður, take it into Öræfi and read it in the tent out on a glacier in Mávabyggðir, that’d be tremendous! But no doubt you’ve enough to read, toponymy … I cannot think of anything better than to read Lust for Life I & II in a tent on Öræfajökull, said The Regular, here inside this elegant hostelry there are also place names which need recording, too, perhaps you can do a little recording when you come back? I’ll remain in place here and can assist you, I have a workspace over there in the corner during the day, there’s no one more knowledgeable about these historical sites than I … everywhere humankind needs something, she marks it like a dog pissing, I’ve never tolerated the verse that endlessly gets quoted in newspapers, books and radio, the landscape would have little value were it not called something, this is the most intolerable line in Icelandic literary history, this is the ugliest example of how revoltingly narcissistic writers can become, value for whom? Farmers? Toponymers? The general public? …The landscape would have significant value if it were not called anything, that’s how it should be, otherwise it’s so unpleasant, talking about the value of the landscape only from the perspective of poets and politicians, it makes me sick, not even economists are that grotesque, but enough now, anyway … I have a lifethirst, too, said The Regular, moi aussi, said Worm Serpent, we all do, said The Regular, a lifethirst quenched by sleep … It’s perfume, said the poet, Worm Serpent, le parfume …That’s right! The Regular said, the fragrance opens up dimensions and sends us on to dreamland … I completely forgot perfume because nowadays there’s just stench, but if anything is symbolist it is perfume, which is nineteenth century, romantic, decadent, all-in-one dispenser … a bottle … in the arms of a prostitute in Paris … dead but dreaming, as it says in the song, that’s something for a poet like you to memorize! dead but dreaming, on the other hand I’ve heard that a great poet has no memory, that’s one of the characteristics of great poets, the absence of memory, they have annihilated memory so as to multiply their poetic talents, the romantic imagination is one of nature’s loving gifts, Benedikt Gröndal said, isn’t that the opposite of memory? … Benedikt Gröndal was a great poet and scholar of many things and he of all people should know, he was alive in a time of fragrance, today we live in the era of stench dispensers, stench and bottled stench, that’s all that’s available in stores these days, stench, and if realism, Gröndal also says somewhere, manages to clear away the romantic imagination, then everything becomes empty, that’s how he puts it: no poetic fictions, all empty.

  Yes, prostitutes in Paris, said the poet Worm Serpent, melancholic with the residue of recollection and dreams, mon cherie putains, I could write an entire book about prostitutes in Paris, in the language of the night, it would be a deep book because I am deep even though I am short, perhaps precisely because I’m short, the night is short and deep and weaves me a tranquil cocoon … wait I need to write this down, where is my pen? … here, but what? It won’t write … you’re duh-dry … oh, oh, I forgot to close it, I’ve lost my cap, waiter! Ha-have you a pen? … It may not be as understood, said The Regular, that prostitutes are somewhat deep, they’re just as clueless as anyone, prostitutes are symbolists’ tools, their devices and instruments, prostitutes are the guards of an alternate reality, Cerberus & Anubis south in the Mediterranean and Garmur at Gnípahell here on the north side of the Alps, prostitutes are the dogs guarding the underworld, conducting the dead, never easily domesticated, the sleeping poet in the arms of a prostitute has received access to the kingdom of the dead, or rather paid for access, because prostitutes have to make a living somehow, someone gives her enough to live on, preferably only a little, for who wants a fat, overdressed whore? … yes, some do, perhaps … the poet asleep in the arms of a prostitute has received a passport out of true reality, received respite from boredom, oppression, family, work, and taxation, the prostitute is Heimdallur at Bifröst, a doorkeeper to the gods’ home; without a prostitute a man is nothing, without a prostitute a man isn’t a man … probably you can’t say that these days … I’m of course talking about prostitutes in a figurative form, as metaphors, a prostitute is a metawhore, something only the future understands … necessary for distress, necessary for lying at the bottom and finding peace beneath life’s routine
, what William Blake called sublime allegory, being immersed in the heavens, in fact, necessary for maternal care … necessary for poetry … maybe a source of identification, for what is the poet but a whore? … to sleep in a prostitute’s embrace is not something everyone can understand, it’s only a poet who can sleep in a prostitute’s arms, in fact, no one can be a poet without sleeping in a prostitute’s arms, only briefly, oh, how short it lasts! … poets also don’t have the means to dally endlessly in whorehouses, perhaps they did in the 19th century but things have changed, men will swiftly destroy themselves exploring the depths, poets aren’t built to last, they’re destroyed in an instant by internal disasters, each poem is nuées ardentes, it is much healthier to toddle about on the safety of surface or wander just one dimension of quotidian life, that’s rewarding in its own way; the poet and the symbolist have but a short time for creating and for reporting from the depths before the burning ash chokes anything living in their inner city, petrifying them, before anguish freezes the intelligence, before the poet slits his throat and casts himself into a glacial crevasse and becomes immortal … symbolists explore the depths, explore connections with reality, where and how they overlap, how our world is governed by the underworld, true reality is the consciousness of the world, apparitions, the symbolist wants to delve into the subconscious world to understand the images of things, to return to them, to see through things, to perceive them, a symbolist always has a lot to do, as you can tell, if he lies asleep in the arms of a prostitute, in fact, he is never as busy as when he lies asleep in the arms of a metaphorical prostitute, for he is toiling away in the fields of the underworld, he investigates motor power, in the underdepths there’s a kind of ship’s engine for the world, the engine room, it’s the most difficult space you can enter, no one ends his stay there sane, you cannot stay too long there, I mean in the arms of a prostitute, the world’s ship-engine, it would destroy a man in no time, a symbolist must know his goal, that’s essential if he’s to explore the world’s thresholds, the engineer isn’t a man but a daemon, a devil, impervious to the machine, living dead, a symbolist must come back up on deck, dress himself and pay the prostitute, taking his leave and trusting the underworld’s watchdog, even though that’s impossible, trusting the machine of the world to continue without his presence, the symbolist has many things to do, he examines what’s caught in the nets, he processes the data, he is aboard the research vessel Bjarni Sæmundsson, he talks to the captain on the bridge, takes snuff with him, he talks to himself on his way around the ship, he has to monitor everything, everyone is bound fast to his work except him, though he is in a sense responsible for everything, even if no one’s willing to admit it, he’s reality’s supervisor and must learn to trust, it’s not possible to steer the ship with a hard hand as in the past, now we need cooperation, he has to rely on a first mate when he goes downstairs to the engine room, he trusts the first mate not only with his life but his very being, no one should go insecurely down to the depths, symbolists needs bodyguards, although they don’t know they’re bodyguards, so they don’t have to worry while at their job, this was confirmed by David Vincent and Trey Azagthoth and Pete the Foot Coast-Shaker Sandóval in Morbid Angel, when they go on stage someone has to ensure they get the peace to work their work … I dream of finding the privacy to write an article on Icelandic symbolism, which hardly exists, and connect it to Belgian symbolism, there are only three Icelandic Symbolists, all totally different, Benedikt Gröndal the poet, Einar Jónsson the sculptor, and Jóhannes Kjarval the painter, these artists have migrated symbolism across the sea to this country, an imported symbolism, and Benedikt Gröndal is probably not a symbolist, only an aesthete and eccentric … it’s clear no one knows the connection between Einar Jónsson and Jean Delville, maybe I should just concentrate on that, muttered The Regular, make a novel out of it rather than an essay, or a novel in the style of an essay, an essayistic novel … it probably wouldn’t be taken seriously, I’m no historian, but I know a lot about art, if an author is uneducated then he is too school of life to be able to write, but if he’s educated he is too far removed from life to be able to write, writers are either too educated to be able to write or too uneducated to be able to write, too bound up with living to be able to write or too set apart from life to be able to write, said The Regular at Circus, the novel is a world in itself which simultaneously creates and complies with its own laws, all the characters in a novel reflect the character of the author and all their opinions reflect the views of the author, the novel is the author, but the author is inherently Proteus or the weather vane of opinion within their own work, there he is outside the world and outside himself, ever-changing, the writer is like the sea and the sea is cold and deep, my dear Worm, the writer is sea-worthy, the Deep, and lands upon that image of himself … but what business do the sea-worthy have on land? … shouldn’t he hold himself to the limits of poetic fiction, which no breakwater can hold back? … it’s also, however, possible to argue that the novel is not the author himself, even that the novel is not really by the author, for doesn’t Thomas Aquinas say that: My soul is not me, that is, the soul is not the whole human being, he is so much more, the author adopts a role when he writes, he feels close to his essence and he feels good, he is willing to sacrifice everything, family and friends, just to be able to write even if he never publishes, the novel is the author’s role, driven by fantasies and delusions, he shapes himself in fiction, finds his style and finally the style becomes the author’s role, his character, the man himself is lost …

  Th-this is your theory? Worm asked.

  Yes, and I also have another theory about fiction.

  G-good. L-let the volcano erupt.

  Until now, fiction has at all times been bound up with the spirit, no? So much so that the spirit doggy paddles in the upper atmosphere, sweeps the benefits of art up from the earth to the glory of the Divine, from Aristotle’s Ars Poetica up to today not much new has happened in this regard, until now, now I’ve dropped by Circus with my new theory of poetics … it’s not enough to read Aristotle once and always be bragging Aristotle this and Aristotle that, one must always be reading Aristotle to mention his name, have him constantly present, whetting his knife after each use, most people are forever saying Aristotle this and Aristotle the other but have never read Aristotle, just some other author who has read Aristotle and refers to Aristotle, and this author himself has only read an author who has read Aristotle, actually no-one has read Aristotle, everyone is always saying Aristotle …

  A-and what is your theory? Worm Serpent asked, amazed.

  Your theory? asked The Regular.

  No, your theory, you claim to have a theory of poetics, said Worm.

  Ah, my theory!? That poetry is not connected with the spirit, as has always been thought, but is far more tied to the body, I think it might even exclude the spirit, writing is only dependent on the body, said The Regular, drawing breath in the ghostly form of smoke from a Bagatello cigar before continuing, the so-called Muse has long disappeared from the literary field and poetic fiction has been an orphan a long while, one knows that writing doesn’t spring from the spirit because there is no spirit nowadays, no one has realized that poetry and fiction burst out from the body, that they originated in the material, in real life.

  Wh-What to do you mean that poetry and fiction burst out from the body? How does something become spiritual? something spiritual? something spiritual? Worm asked with great effort, no-noble and bursting from the body like you say?

  These days, it’s highly fashionable in healthcare circles to pH-adjust the body; something you might be needing, dear Worm, people claim unhealthy diets make the body too acidic and as a consequence various ailments result, even all ailments, according to some, acid destroys the body’s cells, it’s advisable to consume foods that make your body more alkaline to balance the pH value and nurture a natural digestive environment, it should be around 7, seven is a sacred number in this theory as in other studies
, yet highly measurable and scientific with no belief systems or lofty ideas obstructing one, and that’s why my theory is so strong, because it connects poetics with science again, said The Regular, yeast makes the body acidic, yeast leavens the body, bread, beer and wine and coffee, fatty foods and fast food, all this makes the body acidic, all these pleasurable things, and it’s somehow wrong, contrary to conscience, conscience is intimately connected with the origins of farming … alkaline sustenance is by contrast nuts, beans, vegetables and fruits, melons and asparagus, even lemons, the most sour fruit bases the body, in other words everything that seems boring, the basic is good, the acidic bad …

  Ha-how is this connected to the art of poetry, du-do I have to puh-ph-balance my body? asked Worm Serpent, skeptically.

  There are two types of writing, said The Regular, acidic writing and alkaline writing, if the body is acidic, it prefers acidic writing and an acidic body will generate acidic writing, if the body is alkaline …

  … it’s drawn to alkaline writing, added Worm Serpent, quick on the uptake.

  And alkaline bodies generate alkaline writing, continued The Regular unflagging and systematic in his theory, acidic writing is intoxicated, alkaline writing is sober, acidic writing dives into the deep, alkaline stays on the surface, acidic writing deals with death, alkaline writing focuses on life, acidic writing deals with the suffering of existence, alkaline focuses on the joy of existence, acidic writing is fun, especially when it is highly acidic and relentless, alkaline writing is always boring in a boring way, at least for an acidic man such as myself, acidic writing deals with the inner state, alkaline writing deals with the outer state, acidic writing takes risks, alkaline writing is always safe, acidic writing discovers something new by itself, alkaline writing discovers nothing new by itself, except that alkaline writing which is always never new, you see where I’m going? With this formula you can now select whatever writer you like and place them in either category … Go on, name someone, Worm.