Abstract
Samme artikel som artiklen i European Journal of Scandinavian Studies
The poetic voice in the Danish poet Inger Christensen's book of poems alphabet from 1981 is a prophetic voice. Since the Old Testament prophets, the prophetic voice has been characterized by a 'retroprospective' temporal structure: it jumps forward to a future disaster and backward from the fictional future to the present political facts. 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.
The poetic voice in the Danish poet Inger Christensen's book of poems alphabet from 1981 is a prophetic voice. Since the Old Testament prophets, the prophetic voice has been characterized by a 'retroprospective' temporal structure: it jumps forward to a future disaster and backward from the fictional future to the present political facts. 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 | SPRING - tidsskrift for moderne dansk litteratur |
| Issue number | 37 |
| Pages (from-to) | 126-146 |
| ISSN | 0906-9976 |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |