Abstract
The poetic voice in the Danish poet Inger Christensen's book of poems alphabet from 1981 is a prophetic voice. Since the prophets of the Old Testament, the prophetic voice has been characterized by a 'retroprospective' temporal structure: it jumps forward to a future disaster and backward again from the fictional future to the present political situation. In Inger Christensen's words, the prophetic voice talks about a world bathed in the whitewashed, godforsaken light of impending disaster. This article suggests that an analysis of the prophetic voice in alphabet opens up a possibility to address the relationship between poetry and nuclear war and, in more general terms, between art and disaster.
| Translated title of the contribution | A Whitewashed Godforsaken Light: Inger Christensen's alfabet and the Disaster |
|---|---|
| Original language | Danish |
| Journal | European Journal of Scandinavian Studies |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Pages (from-to) | 137–156 |
| ISSN | 2191-9399 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2016 |
Keywords
- Faculty of Humanities