Bridges of words from the Faroe Islands

"My passport is my breath of life"

BY JOHN MOGENSEN

Jóanes Nielsen
Bridges of Hungry Words
Mentunargrunnur Studentafelagsins. FO

Jóanes Nielsen (born 1953) is a Faroese poet of the 1980s generation. He has written both short stories and novels, but is best known as a poet. He has now published seven collections of poetry, and has been nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize for the fourth time with his latest collection, entitled Brúgvar av svongum orðum (Bridges of Hungry Words).

This collection has a broad scope in terms of both the themes it covers and the style in which it is written. Jóanes Nielsen can write with incredible simplicity, for instance in this small aphoristic poem: "The fly is looking for the extinguished bulb/ A bit like we do". This contains an allegorical reflection of an entire philosophy, a condensed concept of life, an exceptionally brief "fable" indicating fundamental trends in Jóanes Nielsen's often natural/philosophical reflections. Man is a creature engaged in an everlasting search who may have a sense of objective and direction, but who never takes the straight path to anywhere. Permanent questions are asked of life. However, the main thing is not the answers but the very fact of asking the questions.

However, Bridges of Hungry Words also contains long, complex poems couched in original, exquisite imagery. This applies in particular to the poems that are based on the roots of life. Jóanes Nielsen's Faroese background runs true to form. For instance, in the last poem in the collection he talks about mountains "singing like huge opera singers clothed in grass". His approach is a national (but not chauvinistic) tribute to the power of nature and the changing faces of the Faroe Islands. "We build the Faroes on waves/ We drift on the sea of emotions/ Everything started in the sea/ The womb is actually a sea in miniature ..." These lines of conscious pathos are taken from the poem "Hugo er død" (Hugo is Dead), in memory of an absolutely (un)usual Faroese fisherman named Hugo, who personifies both the outer appearance and inner reality of Faroese nature. When Hugo died, "all the light buoys in the North Sea formed a guard of honour/ And it was perfectly reasonable/ That the depth sounders sent the message down into the forests of seaweed" .... and "The fulmars took the message on/ To the coast of Iceland". And yet this is not a romantic, idealised portrait of a mundane hero, although Jóanes Nielsen has previously written a good deal about workers and oppressed individuals. It is a universal portrait of a man who is at ease with the rocks and sea inside him - even though Hugo also knew all about the small temptations and comforts of life: "Fought with his chest full of tobacco smoke/ Was like a nicotine organ/ Blowing harsh psalms from his bellows".

"Life is exactly as it should be"

This collection also contains other portraits. A number of Faroese authors (some of them well known, others not) are brought onto a stage that is both provincial and universal at the same time. This is what Jóanes Nielsen has to say about J.H.O. Djurhus: "The smell of loneliness and cigars/ still drifts down the streets". William Heinesen is called "a North Atlantic sage". Aleksander Kristiansen is one of the more recent Faroese writers mentioned, in a loving, teasing portrait of a poet who ranges from Whitman and Carl Nielsen to gigantic drinking sessions: "But the evening/ I saw Aleksander Kristiansen live for the first time/ He was so drunk/ That the theatre floor was like the Atlantic Ocean/ He was a yacht without an engine in a storm/ And suddenly he capsized". Jóanes Nielsen turns into a lifesaver at the end of the poem: "And yet the act of brushing the dancing dust off an inebriated poet/ Was a great honour for me".

Despite its humorous portrayal of an inebriated poet, this poem, which is reminiscent of Johs. V. Jensen's portrait of Knut Hamsun in the epic poem "Helled Haagen", is also a signal of deep respect for art and the artist. It is no coincidence that the title of the collection is "Bridges of Hungry Words" - words that are full of hunger and love of life, words that build bridges between people and cultures and help to triumph over our differences.

This theme is apparent not least in the poems based on the "ego". In the poem with the profane title of "Fitnesscenter", the ego calls himself a "man fallen from heaven with wings that are far too big"; and in what is perhaps the most moving poem of the entire collection, "Mit pas er åndedrættet" (My Passport is My Breath of Life), the ego reveals that he "comes from the eye of the storm". In these texts there is a clear sense that the artist is revealing his innermost thoughts to us, and trying to dissect his own life. Occasionally the poet feels like a lonely man in "a hostel of flesh and bone", and this awareness of death is also apparent in a number of other poems in the collection. But generally speaking the theme of mortality is balanced by an obvious love of life, with the ego believing in love and brotherhood. The poem "inderst inde" (Deep Down Inside) paints a beautiful picture of human interdependence. Not a banal, programmed form of socialism, but a beautiful utopia: "If our veins were connected/ They would embrace the whole world/ A single, wet ball of wool".

Respect for life is also apparent in the almost religious, metaphysical tone of the poems. God and Jesus are both mentioned in a number of poems; but even though psalms are mentioned, the poems are not orthodox eulogies of Christianity and redemption. On the contrary - their surprising points of view and crooked humour establish a distance that roots transcendent ideas firmly in the here and now. In the very first poem in the collection, "Tilfældig morgen" (Random Morning), the reader senses the essential position of the ego between nature and culture, between the cosmos and the psyche: "The Moon attracts the water and fluids in my body".

Jóanes Nielsen knows more than anyone that he is made of water, earth, air and sunlight. But in these bridges of words he also acknowledges respectfully his inheritance and debt to things in life that are bigger than we are. So it is hardly surprising that he is able to proclaim: "Life is exactly as it should be".