Capturing sensory impressions in words

The Call of the Wild

BY ERIK SKYUM-NIELSEN

Kristian Olsen aaju
The Land of Words
Published by Atuagkat, GR

Most people who love art have heard of Cézanne, who was always trying to paint the same mountain. The painter and author Kristian Olsen aaju does the same thing in his book Oqaatsit Nunaat (The Land of Words). Time after time he goes up the mountain to his "natural studio" to get closer to nature by observing it and immersing himself in it.

His observation post becomes "a holy spot" for him, where all the objects, conditions and events occurring in nature capture his senses and mind. Indeed, they quite literally take control of his poetry. Only by giving nature a soul, attributing it with consciousness and willpower, can he respect its force, express what it is like "to be nature", and turn nature into "images with words attached".

This artistic method in Central European Romanticism often led to narcissism or the sacralising of nature. Consequently, modern Nordic poets have generally been careful to avoid projections, and have tried to withdraw man from nature. But Kristian Olsen aaju adopts a third way by retaining a humble, listening and patiently observant attitude to enable his texts truly to capture the things he senses: islands against the light on the horizon; the facial colours of stones; the smell of the flowers; the stream murmuring peacefully under a thin but muddy dusting of snow; the raven croaking as it flies past; and a blue fly that comes to welcome him every single time.

When this meeting with nature succeeds, the result is sometimes a lingering sense of calm - and even of gratitude to the environment. It is as if nature grows larger as man's ego grows smaller:

I'm sitting
on a rug
on a carpet of crowberries
on the sunny side of the hill.
Like a happy message,
I saw thin green
new shoots deriving strength
from the warmth.
Brave flowers,
full of hope.
Actually it was
icy cold last night.
Here I can see
pure-blue flies
that love wearing
their happy costume.

Kristian Olsen aaju says that he has learned his meditative writing process from Lars Aqqaluk Møller, an editor who used to write about the natural world in "Grønlandsposten / Atuagagdliutit". The poet remembers him in the first section of the book, "Oqaatsit qaangiuttumiittut / Words in the Past". The second section then contains seven relatively long, broad-lined poems from his natural studio. And this is where Kristian Olsen aaju sends his greetings to Paul Cézanne. The book ends with "Assiliaaqqat / Small Images in Words", containing brief notes on nature seeking to fix specific moments for all eternity (and even stating the exact time!)

Is it great poetry? In my view the answer is "no". Kristian Olsen aaju's approach leads him too frequently directly into the arms of idyllic description and banal affectation; like in the second section, when he claims that his poetry "can only be understood by diapensia flowers, heather, willow scrub and large stones marked by the shadows". And in the Danish version at least, his linguistic range is so narrow that all talk of the grandeur and magnificence of nature remains nothing more than a hopeful postulate. You can sense the painter behind the words, and you cannot help wondering whether he could say what he wants to say more effectively in colour than in words.

The author was born in 1942 in Arsuk and grew up in Paamiut (Frederikshåb), where his father was a vicar. Kristian Olsen aaju graduated as a teacher at the age of 26, and had a number of different posts in the Greenland school system. His debut as a poet came in 1969 in an anthology entitled Puilasoq pikialaartoq (Running springs); and since his first book, Kinaassutsip tallai (The Ballad about Identity, 1978), he has published several works presenting a dialogue between images and words as well as dealing with the contrasts between modernity and Inuit identity. He is represented in Grønlandsk litteratur. En kommenteret antologi (an anthology of literature from Greenland) by Chr. Berthelsen and Per Langgård (1983), and in Nunarput. Litteratur og samfundsdebat i Grønland 1945-1985 (a book on literature and society in Greenland) by Karen Nørregaard and Kirsten Teglbjærg (1985).