Michael Peverett: <em>I saw a tree</em> (Edith Södergran)

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

I saw a tree (Edith Södergran)

I saw a tree ...

I saw a tree that was bigger than all others
and thickly hung with unreachable cones;

I saw a big church with open doors

and all that came out were pale and strong

and ready to die;

I saw a woman who smiling and in makeup

threw dice for her happiness

and saw that she had lost.

A circle was drawn round these things,

that none infringes.

(Edith Södergran (1892 - 1923). The first poem in her first collection, Dikter (Poems), published in 1916.)

Jag såg ett träd ...

Jag såg ett träd som var större än alla andra

och hängde fullt of oåtkomliga kottar;

jag såg en stor kyrka med öppna dörrar

och alla som kommo ut voro bleka och starka

och färdiga att dö;

jag såg en kvinna som leende och sminkad

kastade tärning om sin lycka

och såg att hon förlorade.

En krets var dragen kring dessa ting

den ingen överträder.

Lines 1-2: Nordic readers would instantly visualize a Norway Spruce (Picea abies -- the prickly old-style Christmas tree we all used to buy before Nordmann Firs came along). It's an impressive tree in its native regions, though often an unhappy-looking one in the UK. Its hanging cones are usually produced in the highest part of the tree. (Pictures below.)

Line 6: sminkad. Smink means make-up, rouge, or (in the theatre) grease-paint.

Line 7: lycka means happiness as well as luck.

Line 9: krets (an ancient Germanic word) is often neutrally synonymous with cirkel ("circle"), but can be suggestive of a religious or magic circle, the boundary of a camp, etc.

Line 10: den is normally an article ("the") or demonstrative adjective ("this", "that"), but here it's being used as a relative pronoun, instead of the usual som (cf. lines 1,4 and 6). (In the SAOB, this is den C.IX.1 -- to save you the 100 pages that I just scrolled through.) Den, det, dem... agrees with the antecedent in gender and number. Södergran also uses this construction in the third poem; again with ingen ("no-one"). I'm guessing it would have struck readers as poetic or archaic, so I tried to represent that in my translation.

Line 10: överträder, literally over-tread, generally means "transgress", "infringe" or "trespass".

Whether you call it a ring or a circle, it's at any rate not a wall. So could it be crossed, even though no-one does? And is the infringement to be imagined as getting in, or as getting out?

The three scenes: at least two of them (1 and 3) contain the idea of out of reach, of not attaining. Two (1 and 2) contain the idea of bigness.

The ending suggests we outsiders can't, or at any rate don't, share in these scenes. There's a privacy, a sacred quality.

The scenes don't feel quite naturalistic. The tree "bigger than all others" sounds like a mythic world-tree. The church scene suggests soldiers being prepared for a war. (Likely enough, in a poem of this date.) But the bigness of the church, coming after the bigness of the tree, also suggests a symbolic scene, a dream about the fabric of life. Likewise the gay woman's gamble seems not so much a literal dice-throw or a stereotypical "falling" as an existential catastrophe, maybe an image of permanent and inevitable loss.

For David McDuff (in his Introduction to Edith Södergran's Complete Poems, p. 21) this image of a woman is Södergran herself, returning bruised from Davos to Finland; the uncrossed circle represents her ineluctable fate (she was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1908). A thought that provokes another, that the big church where one is prepared for death could also image one of the sanatoria where Södergran spent so much of her short life.

Norway Spruce (Picea Abies)

[Image source: https://treesplanet.blogspot.com/2016/05/picea-abies-norway-spruce.html . A remarkable thing about the shape of these trees is that scrolling up or down creates the impression of zooming out or in. Try it!]

Cones of Norway Spruce (Picea abies)

[Image source: https://treesplanet.blogspot.com/2016/05/picea-abies-norway-spruce.html .]

You can read the whole of Dikter (1916) in David McDuff's excellent translation: http://englishings.com/nvinprint/sodergran-poems-1916.html .

But translating afresh is good for my Swedish and it makes me read the poems with attention, so let's carry on for a few more poems:

The day cools ...

The day cools towards evening ...

Drink the warmth in my hand,

my hand has the same blood as the spring.

Take my hand, take my white arm,

take my thin shoulders' longing ...

It would be wonderful to feel,

for just one night, a night such as this one,

your heavy head against my breast.

You threw your love's red rose

into my white lap --

I hold it fast in my hot hands,

your love's red rose that soon withers ...

Oh you sovereign with chilly eyes,

I receive the crown you reach to me,

it bends my head down to my heart ...

III

I saw my master for the first time today,

trembling, I knew him at once.

Now I already feel his heavy hand on my light arm ...

Where is my girl's ringing laughter,

my woman's freedom with head borne high?

Now I already feel his fast grip on my shaking body,

Now I hear reality's hard clang

against my fragile fragile dreams.

You sought a flower

and found a fruit.

You sought a spring

and found a sea.

You sought a woman

and found a soul --

you are disappointed.

Dagen svalnar . . .

Dagen svalnar mot kvällen ...

Drick värmen us min hand,

min hand har amma blod som våren.

Tag min hand, tag min vita arm,

tag min smala axlars längtan ...

Det vore underligt att känna,

en enda natt, en natt som denna,

ditt tunga huvud mot mitt bröst.

Du kastade din kärleks röda ros

i mitt vita sköte --

jag håller fast i mina heta händer

din kärleks röda ros som vissnar snart ...

O du härskare med kalla ögon,

jag tar emot den krona du räcker mig,

som böjer ned mitt huvud mot mitt hjärta ...

III

Jag såg min herre för första gången i dag,

darrande kände jag genast igen honom.

Nu känner jag ren hans tunga hand på min lätta arm ...

Var är mitt klingande jungfruskratt,

min kvinnofrihet med högburet huvud?

Nu känner jag ren hans fasta grepp om min skälvande kropp,

nu hör jag verklighetens hårda klang

mot mina sköra sköra drömmar.

Du sökte en blomma

och fann en frukt.

Du sökte en källa

och fann ett hav.

Do sökte en kvinna

och fann en själ --

du är besviken.

Though such an early composition, "Dagen svalnar ...." has become one of Södergran's best-known poems.

Line 10, sköte. The imagery is more openly sexual than in English. Sköte means lap but also means pudenda.

Lines 18, 21, ren. A form of redan ("already"), common in Finland-Swedish.

The old house

The way new eyes look upon old times,

like strangers who have no heart ...

I long to go to my old graves,

my mournful bulk weeps bitter tears

that no-one sees.

I go on living in the old days' softness

among strangers building new towns

on blue hills up to the sky's rim,

I gently talk with the captive trees

and sometimes comfort them.

How slowly time the essence wastes,

how noiseless the tread of Fate's hard heel.

I must await the mild death

that brings its freedom to my soul!

Det gamla huset

Hur nya ögon se på gamla tider

likt främlingar som intet hjärta ha ...

Jag längtar bort till min gamla gravar,

min sorgsna storhet gråter bittra tårar

dem ingen ser.

Jag lever kvar i gamla dagars ljuvhet

bland främlingar som bygga nya städer

på blåa kullar upp till himlens rand,

jag talar sakta med de fångna träden

och tröstar dem ibland.

Hur långsamt tiden tingens väsen tär,

och ljudlöst trampar ödets hårda häl.

Jag måste vänta på den milda döden

som bringar frihet åt min själ!

Line 5, see note on poem 1 ("I saw a tree ..."), line 10.

Södergran's free verse divided readers, but there are a number of popular poems in Dikter that, like this one and "Nocturne" and "Autumn Days", edge towards a more traditional rhymed and strophic form.

Nocturne

Airy silver moonlight eve,

the night's blue billowing,

numberless the glittering waves

on each other following.

Shadows falling across the path,

Shoreline bushes weeping softly,

blackish giants guarding shoreline silver.

Silence deep in summer's midst,

sleep and dream, --

the moon glides over the sea,

white and warm.

Nocturne

Silverskira månskenskväll,

nattens blåa bölja,

glittervågor utan tal

på varandra följa.

Skuggor falla över vägen,

strandens buskar gråta sakta,

svarta jättar strandens silver vakta.

Tystnad djup i sommarens mitt,

sömn och dröm, --

månen glider över havet

vit och öm.

All the verbs apart from glider (glides) are infinitives. I've translated them as present participles.

A wish

Of all our sun-filled world

I only wish a garden sofa

where a cat suns itself ...

There I would sit

with a letter at my bosom,

just one little letter.

That's how my dream looks ...

En önskan

Av hela vår soliga värld

önskar jag blott en trädgårdssoffa

där en katt solar sig ...

Där skulle jag sitta

med ett brev i barmen,

ett enda litet brev.

Så ser min dröm ut ...

Above, "En önskan" read by Kerstin Andersson.

Edith Södergran was a cat lover. Many of the surviving photos from Raivola show her cat Totti in her arms. Raivola, though only 60km from St Petersburg, was then (just) in Finland. In 1900 only about 10% of the population were Finns (Wikipedia). It became part of Russia after the Winter War (1940) and is now called Roshchino, a name referring to the nearby roshcha, the extraordinary stand of Siberian Larch sown in 1738 (known as Lintula to Russians and Raivola to Finns). There's an Edith Södergran monument in Roshchino, and a few metres away a statue of Totti the cat who, it's said, pined away at his mistress' grave.

Statue of Totti at Roshchino (Raivola), by Nina Terno

[Image source: https://vsuete.com/stories-behind-cats-monuments/ .]

Autumn days

Autumn days are transparent

and painted onto the wood's golden ground ...

Autumn days smile at the whole world.

It's so lovely to fall asleep without a wish,

sated with flowers and tired of greenery,

with the vine's red crown at the bed-head ...

The day of autumn yearns no more,

its fingers are relentlessly chill,

in its dreams it sees everywhere,

how white flakes incessantly fall ...

Höstens dagar

Höstens dagar äro genomskinliga

och målade på skogens gyllne grund ...

Höstens dagar le åt hela världen.

Det är så skönt att somna utan önskan,

mätt på blommorna och trött på grönskan,

med vinets röda krans vid huvudgärden ...

Höstens dag har ingen längtan mer,

dess fingrar äro obevekligt kalla,

i sina drömmar överallt den ser,

hur vita flingor oupphörligt falla ...

My translation doesn't even hint at some of the rhymes, notably lines 4-5.

Line 5, mätt. A much more commonplace word in Swedish than "sated" in English. You would ask a small child, "Är du mätt?" -- "Have you had enough to eat?" It's perfectly polite, when declining a second or third helping, to exclaim "Jag är så mätt!" -- it implies contented satisfaction, without the suggestion of disgust that lurks in the English word "sated".