Espacio Luke. Marta Macho. Inger Christensen (1935-2009)

Marta Macho

Inger Christensen (1935-2009)

La poeta danesa Inger Christensen (1935-2009) murió el pasado 2 de enero de 2009, viernes.

Esta poeta se inspiró en las reglas de la naturaleza y de las matemáticas, así como en la composición musical. "Las proporciones numéricas están en la naturaleza, como la forma en que un puerro se envuelve en sí mismo desde dentro", dijo al publicar Alfabet (Alfabeto, 1981). Este poemario está basado en el alfabeto –cada una de sus catorce series comienza y está dominada por una letra, de la A [albaricoquero] a la N [noche]– y la sucesión de Fibonacci –cada poema posee tantos versos como el término correspondiente de la sucesión de Fibonacci, de la que la autora elimina los dos primeros elementos–; además, la división de los poemas muestra con claridad algunos términos de esta serie. Es decir, el primer poema de la serie, basado en la letra A, tiene un verso; el segundo, basado en la letra B, posee dos; el tercero, basado en la letra C, consta de tres; el cuarto, basado en la letra D, tiene cinco versos; y así sucesivamente.

Debajo copio los ocho primeros poemas de Alfabet, en la traducción inglesa de Susana Nied:

1-A (1 verso)
apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist

2-B (2 versos)
bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;
bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

3-C (3 versos)
cicadas exist; chicory, chromium,
citrus trees; cicadas exist;
cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum

4-D (5 versos)
doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
killers exist, and doves, and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist, days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death

5-E (8 versos)
early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;
seclusion and angels exist;
widows and elk exist; every
detail exists; memory, memory's light;
afterglow exists; oaks, elms,
junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;
eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar
exist, and the future, the future

6-F (13 versos)
fisherbird herons exist, with their grey-blue arching
backs, with their black-feathered crests and their
bright-feathered tails they exist; in colonies
they exist, in the so-called Old World;
fish, too, exist, and ospreys, ptarmigans,
falcons, sweetgrass, and the fleeces of sheep;
fig trees and the products of fission exist;
errors exist, instrumental, systemic,
random; remote control exists, and birds;
and fruit trees exist, fruittherein the orchard where
apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist
in countries whose warmth will call forth the exact
colour of apricots in the flesh

7-G (21 versos, con la división 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 5 + 5)
given limits exist, streets, oblivion

and grass and gourds and goats and gorse,
eagerness exists, given limits

branches exist, wind lifting them exists,
and the lone drawing made by the branches

of the tree called an oak tree exists,
of the tree called an ash tree, a birch tree,
a cedar tree, the drawing repeated

in the gravel garden path; weeping
exists as well, fireweed and mugwort,
hostages, greylag geese, greylags and their young;

and guns exist, an enigmatic back yard;
overgrown, sere, gemmed just with red currants,
guns exist; in the midst of the lit-up
chemical ghetto guns exist
with their old-fashioned, peaceable precision

guns and wailing women, full as
greedy owls exist; the scene of the crime exists;
the scene of the crime, drowsy, normal, abstract,
bathed in a whitewashed, godforsaken light,
this poisonous, white, crumbling poem

8-H (34 versos, con la división 2 + 3 + 3 + 5 + 5 + 8 + 8)
whisperings exist, whisperings exist
harvest, history, and Halley's

comet exist; hosts exist, hordes
high commanders, hollows, and within the hollows
half-shadows, within the half-shadows occasional

hares, occasional hanging leaves shading the hollow where
bracken exists, and blackberries, blackberries
occasional hares hidden under the leaves

and gardens exist, horticulture, the elder tree's
pale flowers, still as a seething hymn;
the half-moon exists, half-silk, and the whole
heliocentric haze that has dreamed
these devoted brains, their luck, and human skin

human skin and houses exist, with Hades
rehousing the horse and the dog and the shadows
of glory, hope; and the river of vengeance;
hail under stoneskies exists, the hydrangeas'
white, bright-shining, blue or greenish

fogs of sleep, occasionally pink, a few
sterile patches exist, and beneath
the angled Armageddon of the arching heavens, poison,
the poison helicopter's humming harps above the henbane,
shepherd's purse, and flax, henbane, shepherd's purse
and flax; this last, hermetic writing,
written otherwise only by children; and wheat,
wheat in wheatfields exists, the head-spinning

horizontal knowledge of wheatfields, half-lives,
famine, and honey; and deepest in the heart,
otherwise as ever only deepest in the heart,
the roots of the hazel, the hazel that stands
on the hillslope of the heart, tough and hardy,
an accumulated weekday of Angelic orders;
high-speed, hyacinthic in its decay, life,
on earth as it is in heaven
[...]

El poemario se deleita con las maravillas del mundo y de la naturaleza, mientras constata el papel del ser humano con respecto a ella:
bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;
bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen
(el helecho existe; y las moras, las moras;
el bromo existe; y el hidrógeno, el hidrógeno)

Es la naturaleza, enfrentada al venenoso bromo o al hidrógeno, que aparecerá enseguida en el texto relacionado con la palabra “bomba”.

Domina en toda la composición el concepto de existencia. Christensen enumera, confronta, describe y analiza. Las continuas iteraciones, como si de un eco se tratara, ayudan a expresar tanto la belleza de la naturaleza como la devastación producida por la acción del ser humano.

Alfabet en una progresión continua: catorce poemas, el primero con un único verso y el decimocuarto con 610. La letra final, la N, ¿es una alusión a los números naturales?