{"id":244,"date":"2012-08-08T00:14:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T22:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/?page_id=244"},"modified":"2012-08-08T00:14:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T22:14:32","slug":"afterword-to-works","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/translations\/afterword-to-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Afterword to Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Afterword to\u00a0Works<\/em>, (Iverksatt<\/em>) by Per Aage Brandt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the final poem here, she writes:<\/p>\n

we are humble witnesses<\/p>\n

to what we observe<\/p>\n

we are responsible for what we report\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is important; we do witness the world (fossil places\u2026), and what we witness we can not escape being responsible for having seen; even though we can not help what we see, the sight itself makes us responsible; that is why there are things we do not want to see \u2013 for if we saw them, we would be the kind of person that allows lets such things to happen while we observe them.\u00a0\u00a0Man\u2019s sight as such is thus a merciless ethical mechanism.<\/p>\n

Even more generally speaking, one may say that consciousness\u00a0per se<\/em>, as in mental \u201dseeing\u201d, can only be consciousness of the world; what one is conscious of one is responsible for precisely because seeing \u201dpermits the things (of which one is conscious) to happen.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It is painful to be fully conscious.\u00a0\u00a0Clarity can be dimmed so the things get blurred, unfocused, unclear; one can\u00a0anaesthetize\u00a0oneself and make onself not responsible.\u00a0\u00a0But even dreams are sharp and clear when it suits them; we can not direct the course of clarity, it arrives on its own time: it strikes us.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s probably why there is a \u2019we\u2019 in clarity.\u00a0\u00a0\u2019I\u2019 is \u2019we,\u2019 when the responsibility of sight or of consciousness strikes me, for it strikes everyone, and is responsible to everyone.\u00a0\u00a0We can not sense, experience, fantasize, think, love, etc., without being \u2019we.\u2019<\/p>\n

It is painful to know or to witness a world wherein man\u2019s passion is to participate in the work of death.\u00a0\u00a0Liv\u2019s clarity is a song about this work and its conditions, and as with all art, it expresses the opposite of power: no one can stop the work of death, but the poet can inscribe it into a work of art, can inscribe the sight into a tone of voice.\u00a0\u00a0Then it becomes clear, and that is the tone\u2019s only possible clarity.\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps clarity\u2019s only possible expression is that of art and poetry.\u00a0\u00a0Here we arrive at clarity, not because we search for it, but because it already haunts us, and we can bear it, and thus \u2019arrive at it,\u2019 only by receiving it like a paradoxical sweetness, \u2019star-bitter\u2019 or poking like an awl, as we endure love: this aesthetic pain which we call \u2019desire.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

translated by Susan Schwartz Senstad and the writer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Afterword to\u00a0Works, (Iverksatt) by Per Aage Brandt.   In the final poem here, she writes: we are humble witnesses to what we observe we are responsible for what we report\u2026   This is important; we do witness the world … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"parent":35,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-244","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"featured_image_src":"","featured_image_src_square":false,"rbea_author_info":{"display_name":"arn104","author_link":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/author\/arn104\/"},"rbea_excerpt_info":"From Afterword to\u00a0Works, (Iverksatt) by Per Aage Brandt.   In the final poem here, she writes: we are humble witnesses to what we observe we are responsible for what we report\u2026   This is important; we do witness the world … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/244\/revisions\/245"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/llu001\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}