onsdag den 9. august 2017

Yeats og mine bange anelser



Der findes tekster, som man skal vare sig for. Slå syv kors for sig inden læsning. Omgås med forsigtighed. Ikke læse for ofte. De minder måske lidt om hverdagens overtro.

Hvem frygter ikke at hidkalde manden med leen ved blot at omtale ham? Hvem gør ikke et særligt tegn, når en sort kat krydser vejen? For en sikkerheds skyld, går jeg aldrig under en stige. 

W.B. Yeats Second Coming er i denne forstand et risikabelt digt. Det tager et alvorligt livtag med verdens undergang. 

Men er digtet selv en påkaldelse, en besværgelse eller et forsøg på at afværge? På en uhyggelig kold måde er det ingen af delene. En nøgtern og grusom profeti. Og selvopfyldende....

Selv om digtet er fra 1919, så er der nemlig en del, der beskriver nutiden:

Ting falder fra hinanden; centeret kan ikke holde
Rent anarki slippes løs på verden,
Den blod-omtågede stormflod slippes løs, og overalt
Druknes uskyldighedens ceremoni;
De bedste mangler enhver overbevisning, mens de værste er fulde af lidenskabelig intensitet.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.


Og så dette ildevarslende, apokalyptiske spørgsmål til sidst:

Og hvilket grumt udyr - dets time endelig kommet
Sniger sig mod Bethlehem for at blive født?

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,


Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Men læs det hele, det er grov kost.

Henrik Nordbrandts oversættelse er her:


Og her er originalen:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?







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