Danish. For a special issue of Weekendavisen on the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, I wrote three pieces, including an essay on political polarization, where I argue that there is a divide within polarization itself. We know that we belong to one of two warring factions who disagree about almost everything, but we still strive… Continue reading Polarized poetry
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 Theory of the dogear
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
Danish. In my review of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, I connect the book’s argument to my motto as a historian: history makes the present strange. I argue that the book’s main claim—that history can be used to expand our sense of social possibility—is more relevant than ever in the age… Continue reading Paleolithic politics
Danish. Responding to a study of Dante’s Latin writings, I argue that Dante displays two interwoven attitudes towards language, one centripetal, the other centrifugal. The first is focused on the endless variety of language: Dante is a masterful ventriloquist, adapting his voice to every new genre, context, and character. The second is focused on its… Continue reading Weaving vowels
Danish. The op-ed argues that the Danish translation culture has been seized by an exaggerated caution, as translators beautifully balance readability and accuracy but rarely stray from the mainstream or challenge what translations can or should be. Translations can renew and enrich the target language in powerful ways, but only if the genre of translation… Continue reading Weirder translations!
Danish. I discuss a bewildering work of Medieval mystic literature known as Aurora consurgens, “The Rising Dawn,” newly translated into Danish by Aksel Haaning. In his introduction, Haaning describes the work as a “stream of unconsciousness,” a torrential flow of images and metaphors that seeks to recast the spiritual practice of alchemy in a Christian… Continue reading Chymical remix
Danish. In my fourth entry for Weekendavisen’s lexicon, I discuss the strange phenomenon of the Zeitgeist—the inexplicable but undeniable feeling that each period of cultural history is characterized by a certain similarity. The feeling may be illusory and ill-defined, but it is powerful nonetheless, reminding us that we are like birds in flock—part of an… Continue reading The ghost of ages past
Danish. Discussing Annette Lassen’s study of the fornaldarsaga, I note that the Icelandic sagas revolve around the fraught ideal of family allegiance, repeatedly exploring the hatred that can arise between those who are supposed to love one another. The family became an ideological oxymoron, fusing danger and safety, alliance and conflict, sex and murder. Following… Continue reading Death by family
Danish. In my fifth entry for Weekendavisen’s lexicon, I discuss the vexing problem of forgetting: any attempt to forget tends to call the unwanted memory all the more readily to mind. Kant, for example, dismissed his long-standing manservant Lampe, and then wrote a self-defeating memorandum to himself: “Lampe must be forgotten!” Through the examples of… Continue reading Forgetting to forget
