Poetry
Digte
Not translated into English
Olaf Bull · 1909
Opening lines
Med ringbjerges øde graanen
ligger et land under lav —
en bleket brokke af maanen
slængt hen i et jordisk hav.
With the desolate greying of ringed mountains
there lies a land under lichen:
a bleached fragment of the moon
flung down into an earthly sea.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
The collection keeps to metre and rhyme, but carries through them themes that Bokselskap recognises throughout its author's poetry: anxiety, love, death, time that lets nothing last, and the city rather than the countryside. In “Stenen”, a veiled figure, at the edge of a star, lets go of a stone that will fall endlessly and leaves the poet with an unrest that does not die. In “Foraar”, spring returns over the gardens and the factories, while the beloved woman lies beneath the earth.
Context
The collection appeared in 1909. Four of the five poems that Bokselskap holds among the author's best known come from it, including “Stenen”, which Boktips presents as the favourite poem of the novelist Roy Jacobsen. Bokselskap places this poetry at the hinge of the traditional and the modern and sees in Bull the first singer of the big city; Britannica notes the influence of the French symbolists and of Henri Bergson. Jens Thiis proposed him for the Nobel Prize in 1928 and in 1931.
Who it is for
Rhymed verse in Norwegian from the beginning of the century, which neither French nor English has collected in a volume.
Prizes and reception
It has been seen as the foundation on which its author was recognised as the first poet of Norway.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.