Selected Poems: 100 Poems Translated from the Norwegian With 8 Poems in the Original Nynorsk

by Tarjei Vesaas, Anthony Barnett (Translator)

100 Poems translated from the Norwegian by Anthony Barnett, with 8 poems in the original Nynorsk.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Tarjei Vesaas was a Norwegian poet and novelist. Written in Nynorsk, his work is characterized by simple, terse, and symbolic prose. His stories often cover simple rural people that undergo a severe psychological drama and who according to critics are described with immense psychological insight. Commonly dealing with themes such as death, guilt, angst, and other deep and intractable human emotions, the Norwegian natural landscape is a prevalent feature in his works. His debut was in 1923 with Children of Humans (Menneskebonn), but he had his breakthrough in 1934 with The Great Cycle (Det store spelet). His mastery of the nynorsk language, landsmål (see Norwegian language), has contributed to its acceptance as a medium of world class literature.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

We like to hear such things —
a lonely wild heart
still reaching down to us
in boundless freedom.
*
Our threads from within
always want to go further,
fumbling for the innermost.

The innermost fire.
The innermost spring.

We will never reach it,
we couldn't handle it,
yet we go on searching,
dreaming about it, awake,
praising those who penetrate
in loneliness along the path,
one by one in darkness
-the dark they're fit to burst
for their lives!

Your hand trembling-
the lonely trembling
near the unknown.
*

To whom do we talk
when we stay quiet?
We need to know
on our known journey.
We need to know
so that it feels beside us
in the dark
as if a good friend were breathing there,
breathing deep into the nights.