Category: Danish

Danish. Translation revels in difference. Translating the same literary work into the same language over and over again is the only way to recreate that work’s compact complexity, but it also benefits translation itself. Translation, as an art form, works in the medium of choices, so the availability of multiple choices reveals its range and richness. A corollary of this argument is that pre-modern works—which are free from copyright restrictions—are crucial to the art translation, since they can serve as a space of experimentation and expansion.

“Fortidens frihed” (“The freedom of the past”), Babelfisken (June 2022). Link.

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 of climate change.

“Palæolitisk politik” (“Paleolithic politics”), Weekendavisen (13 April 2022). Link.

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 unifying force: for Dante, language becomes an image of the underlying power of attraction that, in the form of God’s love, binds the universe together.

“Altings A” (“The A of All”), Weekendavisen (11 March 2022). Link.

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 Lassen, I also argue that the sagas do not give us access to an ancient and “untainted” Nordic identity, as they were created in a world-literary dialogue that spanned centuries and continents.

“Slægtsballade” (“Family trouble”), Weekendavisen (21 January 2022). Link.

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 itself is kept new through experimentation, so that we do not come to take it for granted as a neutral medium.

“Vi skal oversætte vildere” (“We must translate more wildly”), Weekendavisen (26 November 2021). Link.

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 guise. Biblical quotes are appropriated and adapted to the strange flow of the text, culminating in a turbo-charged alchemic remix of the Song of Songs.

“Alkymi på syre” (“Alchemy on acid”), Weekendavisen (5 November 2021). Link.

In another, perhaps better world, Ian Fleming would have been a food writer. Like few other authors, he knows how to describe the joys of gourmandise. But Fleming does not just dwell on the pleasure of eating. He insists on naming specific brands of salmon, champagne, and shampoo, or whatever else his character comes us across, in a clear attempt to shape the taste of his readers in more senses than one. The Bond books are Bildungsromane for a post-war consumerist society, where the upper middle class needed to be told what products to buy and what salmon to savor.

“Til bords med Bond” (“Chez Bond”), Weekendavisen (24 September 2021). Link.