Category: Danish

Danish. In 2023, the first Danish novel, Den beklædte sandhed (The Veiled Truth), celebrates its 300th anniversary. Virtually forgotten today, the novel was written by a woman, Anna Margrethe Lasson, who was an ardent defender of women’s place in literary culture. A roman-à-clef with concealment as both its form and its topic, the book fell between two historical stools: it appeared half a century too late to be part of the vogue of baroque courtly novels that Lasson sought to bring to Scandinavia, and half a century too early to be part of the flourishing of Danish novels.

“Kærlighedens nye klæder” (“Beyond the Veil”), Weekendavisen (7 April 2023). Link.

Danish. The recently launched portal of the Electronic Babylonian Literature projected, led by Enrique Jiménez, is a huge advance in the study of cuneiform cultures. The digital framework has allowed philologists to place fragments so small that humans would be unlikely to ever identify them; and while the fragments themselves are typically no more than a few lines, their combined effect—Jiménez’s team have so far processed 21.568 fragments—is revolutionary.

“Nyt fra Babylon” (“News from Babylon”), Weekendavisen (31 March 2023). Link.

Danish. For a review of Anders Søgaard’s poetical and postmodern retelling of the Iliad, I argue that Homer’s epic can be read as a flurry of interconnections. The epic pursues a wealth of different associations to push the plot restlessly on: the movement of weapons, words, people, objects, eyes, memories, and myths are just some of the links that are used in the epic to weave the complex landscape of war into one single presentation, one unstoppable flow of rhythmical cadence.

“Og så videre” (“And so on”), Weekendavisen (forthcoming). Link.

Danish. For a review of a recent Danish translation of Judith Butler’s Bodies that Matter, I give an overview of Butler’s philosophy before focusing on their gender theory. I frame Butler’s philosophy through a line from Frames of War, “I remain, perversely, a Hegelian,” arguing that Butler takes Hegel’s idea of subject formation through mutual recognition and explores the “perverse” consequences of that process, as it plays out in a social sphere of power, persecution, and discursive structures.

“En pervers hegelianer” (“A perverse Hegelian”), Weekendavisen (17 February 2023). Link.

Danish. The American author Ursula Le Guin published a free English translation of the Daodejing, the philosophical foundation ofTaoism, the Daodejing, and that translation was then translated into Danish. In this essay, I first review the strange and beguiling world view that emerges from the Daodejing, and then ask what it might mean to translate this text according to its own principles. I suggest that Le Guin’s version, while elegant, diverges from those principles, as she justifies her poetic choices by setting up strict binaries and hierarchies.

“Hvilken vej til Vejen?” (“Which way to The Way?”), Weekendavisen (10 February 2023). Link.

Danish. What impact will ChatGPT – and the similar programs that are bound to be released in the coming months and years – have on literature? To answer this question, I first explain the technological developments behind the program, focusing on word embeddings, which allow the algorithm to recreate meaning, and transformes, which allow it to recreate context. I then propose a double answer: we will se both literary works produced in creative dialogue between humans and AI, and literary works produced with the explicit intention of seeming as human and un-AI as possible.

“Den bedste bugtaler” (“The best ventriloquist”), Weekendavisen (27 January 2023). Link.

Danish. I review the history of Heloïse and Abelard, including the stormy story of their affair, Abelard’s contributions to philosophy, and Heloïse’s influence on that philosophy, as well as her own critique of gender norms as expressed in the letters that the lovers exchanged many years later. I single out Abelard’s sophisticated view of human psychology, as it emerges from his ethical writings; and what we might call the “proto-deconstructive” aspects of Heloïse’s writing, as she turns the established hierarchy between wives and sex workers on its head.

“Århundredets romance skygger for filosofien” (“The romance of the century overshadows the philosophy”), Politiken Historie (forthcoming). Link.

Danish. A selfie taken by a monkey and a comic book drawn by AI clash in a historic copyright case. In deciding whether art created by AI image generators can be awarded copyright, the USPTO is drawing on a surprising legal precedent: the case of Naruto, a crested macaque who took some excellent selfies. As the courts ruled, Naruto is to be seen as his own artistic entity and not merely a tool used by the photographer David Slater, who orchestrated the selfies, meaning that the copyright was void, since Slater was not the author of the picture. But will that conclusion also apply to AI?

“Aber versus robotter” (“Monkeys v. Robots”), Weekendavisen (6 January 2023). Link.