Danish. In my thirteenth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I suggest (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that narratives are shaped by two forces: a centripetal forces, which keeps the story together, and a centripetal force, which add variety, texture, side plots, and surprises to the text. The worst examples of genre fiction are entirely dominated by the utilitarian logic… Continue reading The literary centrifuge
A black angel, from a manuscript of the Medieval alchemical treatise Aurora Consurgens that I wrote about for Weekendavisen.
Danish. In my twelfth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I trace the origins of the Danish word “volapyk,” meaning nonsense: it comes from a predecessor of Esperanto, Volapük, an attempt to create a perfect global language (the current Danish meaning of the word shows how well that project went). I discuss my own teenagey dabbling in… Continue reading The sense of nonsense
Danish. In my tenth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I discuss the Danish word afklaring, roughly translatable as “closure.” Like it’s English counterpart, afklaring denotes a sense of calm and acceptance in relation to a pain either experienced or (more strongly so in Danish) expected. After unpacking some of the forms and ways of achieving such… Continue reading Closure in times of crisis
Danish. In my eleventh entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I discuss the peculiarly modern feeling—created by “read receipts” on messaging apps such as WhatsApp—of knowing that your words have been read, but not yet responded to. This state of communicative limbo gained a new intensity for me some two years ago, after I had written a… Continue reading To leave on read
Danish. In my ninth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I draw on Peter Adamson’s Don’t Think for Yourself to explore the concept of taqlid from Arabic philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence. Taqlid refers to a thoughtless reliance on the words of others, as opposed to ijtihad, thinking and examining for oneself. Medieval Arabic thinkers recognized that taqlid… Continue reading Thoughtfully thoughtless
Danish. In my eighth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I discuss Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon, a legendary Danish encyclopedia that has passed through my family for generations. During World War I, the encyclopedia was printed with a blank page under the heading “Europe”; readers were sent a map of the continent when its borders were settled at the… Continue reading Labyrinths and lexicons
Danish. In my seventh entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I discuss the surprisingly vitriolic debate about dogears and annotations. As a messy reader myself, I tend to leave my books tattered and bescribbled, and I argued that the fierce resistance I encounter is rooted in the double status of books: they are treated as both auratic… Continue reading A theory of the dogear
Danish. Are Danish museums prepared for the coming climate catastrophe? In this article, I survey the plans that Danish cultural institutions have made to protect their cultural heritage against extreme weather phenomena and social unrest over the coming decades, drawing a parallel between the situation we face today and the story of the Flood as… Continue reading Before the Flood
Danish. In my sixth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I discuss the word “winning” and the strangely central role it played during four years of American politics. The extent to which an exclusive focus on winning is politically counterproductive is underscored by the fact that Trump was replaced by a president, Biden, whose political narrative centered… Continue reading Winners and losers
