Danish. The second in a series of encyclopedia-like articles for the newspaper Weekendavisen, this short essay discusses the home that hides within our words. The twenty-two signs that make up the earliest known alphabet all began as drawings of objects commonly found in Middle Eastern households three thousand years ago. I discuss the homey story… Continue reading B is for House
Danish. Continuing what seems to be my recurring interest in radical Aristotelian philosophers, this review discusses Claus Bryld’s brilliant treatment of Marsilius of Padua, an unjustly overlooked Medieval political thinker who, Bryld argues persuasively, anticipated the ideas of Thomas Hobbes by some three hundred years, laying the philosophical foundations for the modern secular state. “Manden… Continue reading Another forgotten philosopher
Danish. A short history of how, when, and why books have been read aloud, from Augustine to Amanda Gorman. Might digital media bring about a resurgence of a pre-Gutenberg literary culture where poetry was orally performed, circulated, and discussed? “Hurra for højtlæsning” (“Hurrah for reading aloud”), Weekendavisen (27 January 2021). Link.
Danish. In a review of a new Danish translation of Orosius’s fifth-century masterpiece, History Against the Pagans, I look at the templates we use to make sense of our history, shaping the flow of the past to give it a meaning and direction—templates like the circle, the pendulum, the ladder, and the downward slope. The… Continue reading The upward-curving line
Danish. A review of Harald Voetmann’s brilliant new translation of Juvenal’s first two books of satires, Vreden skriver digtet (Wrath writes the poem). Focusing on Juvenal’s belated position with respect to the Roman Golden Age, the review brings out the ambiguous, internet-troll-like nature of his poetry, which keep the reader guessing as to who is… Continue reading Juvenal the troll
Danish. The review of two books that discuss separate, but intriguingly interconnected topics: Rebecca Wragg Sykes’s acclaimed introduction to the world of Neanderthals, and Ole Høiris’s cultural history of the figure of the “savage.” Both books explore, in each their way, how humans relate to beings that are perceived as almost but not quite humans.… Continue reading Neanderthal love
Danish. A review of two new Danish translations of Sappho, which appeared simultaneously: using Matthew Reynolds’s metaphor of prismatic translation, the review shows how the translations bring out different wavelengths of the ancient fragments. Sappho’s poems appear as, respectively, relics of a lost aristocracy and icons of a living LGBTQ community. “Længselsstemmen fra Lesbos” (“The… Continue reading Prismatic Sappho
Danish. An essay on the literary history of falling, touching on Dante, Lewis Carroll, Lucretius, Milton, and Inger Christensen. Falling is the moment in which we discover ourselves as bodies, masses of meat whose movement through the world we cannot fully control. Falling implies a loss of agency or a surrender to emotions (think of… Continue reading Forms of falling
Danish. Responding to the controversy that surrounded the Dutch translation of Amanda Gorman’s poems, the op-ed argues that many commentators focused on the wrong topic. What matters is not the choice of a white translator, but the systematic neglect of black translators. As translators know more than most, every choice implies a whole host of… Continue reading Gorman, take two
A new Danish translation of Gilgamesh that I published with my father, the Danish poet Morten Søndergaard. The book was nominated for the Weekendavisen Literary Prize and was lauded by one reviewer as “one of those miracles that makes life worth living” (Politiken); another wrote that “this new translation is set to become a classic… Continue reading Gilgamesh in Danish
