by Robert Bly
Please write, and send me some news from the island...and from your dear family...
Robert
Runmarö 11-8-70
Dear Robert,
I am writing to you on a dirty piece of paper—we are short of paper here in the Island because I have been struggling with a very LONG poem (about the Baltic—from all points of view). It is raining today and we are a little upset because Monica, Great Mother, is ill, she should remain in bed, she has a sore throat. She is probably exhausted too—we have had an endless stream of visitors, mostly children with insomnia problems, and sometimes grown up people with emotional problems—the place has been overcrowded—the latest guest is a cat who refuses to leave the house. This summer we have 6 chickens, 2 guinea pigs, 2 rabbits and outside 1 hedgehog and 1 owl who is sitting all the night in a pine at the north-west corner of the house shouting WHZIII...WHZII.
It was good to get your letter. I am of course very positive to the idea of making a pamphlet of “mörkerseende.” But the title in English seems to be “dark vision” and that sounds very commonplace pathetic. Perhaps something like “dark adaptation” would be better. What has happened to the 20 poems? 10 months ago you wrote “your book is being printed now” and a simple arithmetic calculation gives the result that if your printing capacity is 2 poems in one month the book would be almost completed now. But don’t hurry! In the meantime I have got these wonderful magazines. The latest was Kayak—an old dream of mine has been fulfilled! I felt like being represented in Madame Tussaud’s museum. I hope Mr Di Palma (is that the name?) will send his mag when it is brought out.
Do you know that Birger Norman (a nice man and a sometimes good poet) has written an essay about you and Senghor in a Christian cultural magazine called Vår Lösen? I will send it as soon as I can find it—I have only read it in a library. I think the little volume Krig och tystnad has made a strong impression, even influence, on some people here. In a small town where I gave a reading, one schoolboy from the audience suddenly went up and read aloud from your (mistranslated) introduction to the book and asked me about my reaction to your ideas. It was very strange to hear him start: “The great American poet Robert Bly has said that...etc.” It was in Karlskrona, in Blekinge. The therapeutic influence comes mainly from the honest and sensible effort to bring the inner and the outer worlds together—people are hungry for crossways now.
I hope you will not destroy anything in “Teeth-Mother” when you rewrite it. Be careful. The only weakness in the poem is the title. But titles are difficult. Sonnevi has a large manuscript ready but can’t find the title—he has a list of about 200 proposals, mostly of the type “Och nu,” “Här är språket,” “Dag för dag,” “Ordet är vitt” etc., dry constructions—and he is not satisfied, so the book will be delayed or printed with the absolute capitulation title of “Dikter 1963–70.”
I go back to Västerås this afternoon. By train. My old car, my dear Saab, is dead. Not far from Enköping—a town between Stockholm and Västerås—the brakes suddenly did not function. The liquid in the brake system went out in half a second and I was pressing the pedal in vain. My car ran into the car in front of it and crashed. I had my safety belt on and was not hurt. But the front of my Saab was transformed into an accordion. It could not be repaired. The car I hit was possible to repair and the driver was not hurt so after all I had good luck.
The problem is that I have no money to buy another car. Let us not talk about it. Read instead my last (latest) poem about roads. It was written reluctantly—I wanted to concentrate on the Baltic poem instead but the typewriter did not agree. A few words: “grävlingens fotspår” = “the tracks of the hedgehog.” “Strömbrytare” is the button you press in order to get electric light.
I hope to hear from you soon. Love to Carol and the children! From us all
Tomas
P.S. The abdominable pig that has replaced Odin as an emblem for Seventies Press—is it Särimner, the pig that was killed every evening in Valhalla, eaten by the dead Vikings and risen from the dead the next morning?
Västerås 7-9-70
Dear Robert, it is urgent so I am writing with red typewriting this time! I have sent the following 4 translations to the magazine Böckernas Värld (which is Bonniers attempt to reach the train-riding audience, the mag is sold in all shops at the railway stations, small tobacco shops etc.). It is a popular magazine but not too popular—I myself e.g. have been published in it. They pay well. I hope you will get something too, but I can’t promise. Another reason for publishing the translations is that the original poems are so good. Especially I like the Canadian Thistle. As you can see, I have changed some words. “Tumbleweed” does not exist in Swedish (or in Sweden) and—as a matter of fact—the Canada thistle, Cirsium arvense, is no tumbleweed. So I have brought the tumbling to the line with “in front of me” and have invented the word “trasselväxt.” Onomatopoetic. There are some small changes in the other poems too, have a look at them and give the confirmation or proposals (the latter I can bring into the text at the proof-reading stage). I hope your reaction will be fast, because they want to print the poems soon. Sweden is waiting.
Love to you 5
from Tomas
Sept 14 70
Dear Tomas,
I’ve got a new typewriter, so I must write to you on it. It’s wonderful to be able to get new toys, at my advanced age. It’s an Olympia. The Germans really know how to make typewriters. But who can type on them?
I’m delighted you’re printing some of the prose poems, and you always have my permission to print them, in any form, with or without writing me, any poems of mine. But I will make a few notes on these, most of them minor indeed.
“Renaissance Painting”
It’s a lovely translation, swift and clear. For myself, I’ve always been a bit dissatisfied with the last stanza, and in the second edition of Morning Glory, just now being printed, I’ve altered the last stanza. I’ll type the new version here, and you can use whichever version you please.
The rocks have not been forgotten by the sea either. They are the old brains of the sea. They glow for several seconds every morning, as the old man who lives in a hut on the shore drinks his glass of salt water.
I’d like your opinion, too, on which version is best, of this final paragraph.
“The Hunter”
(The old Central Post office in New York used to have inscribed above its Corinthian columns: NEITHER SNOW NOR HEAT, NOR HAIL NOR SLEET CAN KEEP HIM FROM THE SWIFT COMPLETION OF HIS APPOINTED ROUNDS)
I love the translation.
His answer is a sensitive point. I can’t feel the implications of “gärna det,” so I’ll have to talk about the English. His answer “Why not?” is affectionate and faintly rude at the same time. It’s the answer that a parent might give a child, if the child asked if it could take a cupful of water out of the sea. Or suppose there is a woman who loves you, and she is lying on a sofa, and you ask her if you can kiss her—she says, “Why not?” smiling.
At the moment, the Japanese man has a firmer grip of reality than the other person, stunned by the octopus-reality.
The octopuses are found in shelved rock, at low tide.
“Helicopter”
Again I’ve changed the last stanza, but the Swedish sounds excellent, and I think you’ve solved some things in the Swedish I was dissatisfied with in English, so let’s leave yours exactly as it is.
“Canadian Thistle”
It turns out the weed was not a Canadian thistle at all, as you have surmised, but what is called in the Midwest, in a slang term, “a Russian thistle.” They are the Texas and Oklahoma tumbleweed, and in the Thirties, during the Depression, they used to blow all the way from Oklahoma to Minnesota in the fall, maybe traveling a thousand miles over the prairies. So they were very exciting to me as a boy. They look like this:
When mature, they get round and wonder
fully dry and brown, break off at the stem, and roll around to drop their seeds. Very clever of them.
With the “amazing arrows” I was thinking, I think, of arrows like those in Irish fairy tales, or in the story of William Tell, enchanted arrows with powers that humans do not have.
I’m not sure if the “tumlar” should be in the line with “främfor mig” or not...I don’t want the reader to get the impression that the weed is actually moving on his desk. It is stationary, but has so much complication of branches that precisely in standing still, it looks as if it were moving. The image should suggest a lion, much contained energy...
I gave the printer of your book a deadline of October 15th. And I hope he can meet it. He is setting each page by hand, and a Swedish girl in Milwaukee is reading proof on the Swedish—I hope she can read!
We are now in Inverness, which is more like Runmarö than any place we have ever been. I go to the sea every day, and drink my morning glass of salt water.
Love to you all!
Robert
Our address: Inverness, California 94937
23 Oct, ’70
Dear Tomas,
Just a note to establish friendship again! We’ve come out to California for the winter—a lovely foggy little town north of San Francisco—and so all is turmoil, but settling down. Our address is Box 452, Inverness, California 94937.
The crazy printer in Milwaukee says he will have your book done by Nov 15th. After it’s out a few months, then we’re going to get you over here! Either in the spring, or next fall! Maybe you’ll stubbornly refuse to come either time, but I’ll start thinking of some readings anyway. In a couple of them, I hope I can be with you—you read the poems in Swedish, and I’ll read them in English—or the other way around! Swedish with a heavy Sioux accent.
Do write me some more about the implications of the word “Mörkerseende.” Does this touch on the ability some people have to see in the dark? Cats can do it, they say. How about a man with a searchlight? “Getting Used to the Dark”?
What an interesting story that was to me of the boy in Karlskrona! I should live so long! I can imagine it was startling to you to have him refer to me as if I were some mythical figure from the Arab Middle Ages, said to have visited Tibet and discovered Victoria Falls.
Do send me a copy of Birger Norman’s article if you can get one. Senghor...egad. Don’t insult the PIG. You know what happened to Odysseus’ crew on the island of Circe. I like the light-switch poem. All the same, you’re a stone-fetishist!
Your admirer,
Robert
Västerås 27 Oct. -70
Dear Robert,
I just got the proof of your prose piece plus a request from the editor not to change anything, even if I’m not entirely satisfied. The magazine is being done by the grace of the publishers (Åhlén & Åkerlund) of the Bonnier Concern’s weekly magazine, and changes in the proof would hardly be allowed. I might leave “tumlandet” [tumbling] alone this time, though I’ll change it the next time the poem is published, in a book for instance (I’m thinking about bringing out a collection of my translations sometime).
All well with us. The only one who’s been feeling bad is me. I’ve been sick for 14 days and have been forced to stop smoking. For a week I also had to stop talking. (The vocal cords did not produce tones. Hs&%?TCHZZX was the sound.) After penicillin etc. I’ve now gotten my voice back, or more accurately a new voice, much stronger, like an opera singer’s.
The literary establishment in Sweden is in the process of falling apart. BLM won’t be published once a month anymore, but only four times a year. The controversy rages in the papers. The magazine has lost its readership since it was taken over after a military coup by a group of extreme leftists who paint honorable old novelists as “Fascists” and wax enthusiastic all but exclusively over books about Albania. (Albania and North Korea are in.) Lars Gustafsson is however still editor-in-chief at BLM, but his role has begun to resemble that of Vittorio Emanuele in Mussolini’s Italy.
The cultural life of Sweden is and remains a scene for fools. Help me out of this! Release at least 20 of my poor poems from the cage of the Swedish language! You wrote that October 15 was the deadline. But surely a tornado has lifted the roof off the press and scattered the papers.
You never write anything about how the magazine The Sixties is doing. I long for a new issue the way a prisoner of war longs for a package from the Red Cross.
We love you all
Tomas
I am still working with my l o n g (talkative) poem about the Baltic. In the meantime this small piece in the old style.
Sketch In October
The tugboat is freckly with rust. What’s it doing here, so far inland?
It is a thick lamp, gone out in the cold.
But the trees have wild colors: signals to the other shore
As if somebody wants to be rescued.
On the way home, I notice inky mushrooms poking up through grass.
They are fingers of someone asking for help,
someone who has wept for himself a long time down there in the dark.
We belong to earth.
(translated by RB)
DICTIONARY:
Bogserbåt = tow-boat
Bläcksvamp = horsetail-mushroom
Västerås 1 nov-70
Dear Robert
Heavy snow today, cold, I am really longing for California! I did not know that you were staying so long in Inverness so I recently sent a letter to Madison—it will probably arrive some day. I was happy to hear that the delay is only one month. The delay for the 20 poems I mean. Do you really think the small volume can bring me over there? And who is going to pay the ticket? Shall I try to apply to the Västerås’ cultural funds? Anyhow, if there is a genuine interest from some audiences to hear us read ourselves in broken languages I will welcome it as a wonderful opportunity to rejoin the Bly family and to hear your new stories, especially in rural surroundings. And to see the hectic law-and-order-life in some big places too. In early spring it is possible—in May I am ordered to go to military service again, a so-called refresher training! In the autumn I am ready to cross the ocean too. Perhaps autumn will be best, I don’t know, we must meditate...As for “Mörkerseende,” it is a technical term for the ability to see in darkness. An Englishman told me that the word should be “dark vision”—that sounds very pathetic to me. “Dark adaptation” sounds more like the Swedish. The “mörkerseende” develops when you get used to the dark, after half an hour outside the lamps it is beginning to function at its best. Don’t smoke when driving in the dark, nicotine impairs your mörkerseende etc.—I phoned Birger Norman and asked him to send his article to Inverness, he will do that. He is a poet and journalist, about 50, self-educated, a mild but sharp critic of the political establishment in Sweden, he has written a wonderful TV-play about personnel policy in a big Enterprise, a very funny play, and a documentary book about one of our few revolutionary episodes—the Ådal riots in 1931, when military were firing at workers for the last time in Sweden. He comes from this part of Sweden, now an area of diminishing population.—Did you vote for Hubert Humphrey?—What happened to Raymond DiPalma and his magazine? (I was almost saying “Raymond DiPalma and his orchestra”—sounds like somebody in a TV show.) Full stop.
In a hurry but affectionate
Tomas
8 Nov, ’70
Dear Tomas,
I’ll ask some esteemed loonies in the literary world which time of the year they think most propitious for your descent—April or early October—and then I’ll set to work arranging some readings, and parties. If I’m lucky, I’ll figure a way to get travel expenses—your air fare—from some overfed, understaffed Scandinavian Cultural Foundation. But I do think maybe applying for Västerås funds might be useful too. If you get two travel grants, one could be used for travel inside the United States, which is costly
too, especially the medical expenses incurred every time you step out of the railway station at night—bandages, arm splints, etc. We’ll have a good time—if you had travel expenses, you could even get out to California and see the soft underbelly of the United States.
I just came back from three days in the poet-hothouse at the State Univ of Buffalo. They get wonderfully excited there, and read everything they can find. After a reading one night there, a young man came up to me and asked me, “Are you going to do any more translations from Swedish?” with his eyes shining. It was very beautiful. I said Yes, yes, yes, and he thanked me, and rushed out into the night (trying to see the stars through the Buffalo smog, probably).
I think mörkerseende is simply night vision. Cats have good night vision, horses do not.
I have a question for you—what are the two best articles written about you in Swedish? Can you send me a copy of each? I think I’ll try to get them translated and printed here—several people have offered to do it.
[closing lost] Robert
12 Nov, ’70
Dear Tomas,
Almost every day now I’ll send you a new poem translated from Night Vision. Here is the first. As you see, I don’t understand “sisu.” (You sent me some notes on the poem, but I stupidly left them in Minnesota.) I’m not sure either about SARA. (What it means, or why it is capitalized.)
Meanwhile I have a few questions about other poems. Please be patient (be kind to your web-footed friends):
In “The Bookcase,” I’m not sure why the mercury pellet is described as rising. Doesn’t one usually see a mercury pellet sliding along a table horizontally? I have difficulty imagining it climbing. I’m not sure I understand if you mean there to be a connection between that and the inability to turn the head. And for the first of those two phrasings, which sentence do you think is closer to the muscle-feeling of the Swedish:
