fostergræs / foetal grass

I'm getting close to completing the Duolingo Swedish course, and I guess I might move on to Spanish but I've also had the passing thought of trying another Nordic language, Norwegian or Danish. 

Anyway it was this passing thought that brought me to a poem by the Danish poet Olga Ravn (b. 1986), found on the excellent Lyrikline site (where you can hear her reading it): https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/dk-olga-ravn-7771 . I'm interleaving Martin Aitken's English translation. 

DK – Olga Ravn  / Denmark - translation by Martin Aitken

Åbent: hvilken kirurg, der tipper vores skål, et spejl som forsvar mod Medusa,

hvem skal nu nære sig ved hendes bryster, din smukke, din grimme mund,

  To be determined: what surgeon tips our bowl, a mirror to protect against Medusa,

  who shall now be nourished at her breasts, your beautiful, your ugly mouth,

som jeg nærer den slange, der er mine gule, mine bløde sweatshirts, min creme,

den kolde creme, jeg smører ud over ansigtet, det samme trættende ansvar ved at elske.

  as I nourish the serpent of my yellow, my soft sweatshirts, my lotion

  the cold lotion I smear across my face, the same tiring responsibility of love.

Mit ansigt er fyldt med pornofilm, forbrugsgoder, blå blomster der forsvinder i mælk,

mit fædreland, fostergræs, mit modersmål, min tunge er tung af kød,

jeg bærer mine forældres mærke som en kønssygdom fra den elskede.

  My face is filled with porn, consumer goods, blue flowers that vanish in milk,

  my fatherland, foetal grass, my mother tongue, my tongue is heavy with flesh,

  I carry the mark of my parents like a venereal disease from a lover.

Hvidklædt hvidklædt, hjertets fitness, en lille grøn sten i det grimme sand ved stranden bag huset,

den velkendte strand, dit ansigt, lukket i søvn, det hedder ikke noget.

  Clad in white, clad in white, the fitness of the heart, a small green stone in the ugly sand

  of the beach behind the house, the familiar beach, your face, closed in sleep, it has no name.

Medusa, jeg ser hendes ansigt i de lakrøde søer, langt væk, belyst af solens første stråler,

af skov og krat og barnets sengetæppe, mønsteret på det ligner en stor hånd,

  Medusa, I see her face in the lacquer-red lakes, distant, lit by the first rays of sun,

  by forest and scrub and the blanket of the child, its pattern resembles a large hand,

tidligt på dagen ligger disen over kysten, senere sender havets store krop sit lys op ad gaderne,

vi har holdt vores vi løst i hænderne, nervøse, vi har gjort hvide indkøb,

  early in the day the mist lies over the shore, later the great body of the sea sends its light up the streets,

  we have held our we loosely in our hands, nervous, we have purchased white groceries,

vi har kølet kinderne mod muren, overophedede turister i kærtegnet, hvide sten,

et enkelt insekt kravler henover, et enkelt klistret bær,

  we have cooled our cheeks against the wall, overheated tourists in the caress, white stones,

  a single insect crawls across, a single sticky berry,

jeg vågner i sommerens klare mund, mine øjne er dækket af dine slimhinder,

morgenen er gammel.

  I wake up in the clear mouth of summer, my eyes are covered by your mucous membranes,

  the morning is old.

Martin Aitken has also translated Olga Ravn's novel De Ansatte (2018) as The Employees (2021).

Reviewed in The Guardian by Justine Jordan: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/may/12/the-employees-a-workplace-novel-of-the-22nd-century-by-olga-ravn-review-am-i-human

A sampler of The Employees: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e3944e85771557f6f2a42f6/t/5f55e7e8020c314b1fe716a4/1599465450160/Extract+from+The+Employees+1-23.pdf

Here's a couple of extracts from it:

STATEMENT 004

It’s not hard to clean them. The big one, I think, sends

out a kind of a hum, or is it just something I imagine?

Maybe that’s not what you mean? I’m not sure, but isn’t

it female? The cords are long, spun from blue and silver

fibres. They keep her up with a strap made out of 

calfcoloured leather with prominent white stitching. What

colour is a calf, actually? I’ve never seen one. From her

abdomen runs this long, pink, cord-like thing. What do

you call it? Like the fibrous shoot of a plant. It takes

longer to clean than the others. I normally use a little

brush. One day she’d laid an egg. If I’m allowed to say

something here, I don’t think you should have her hung

up all the time. The egg had cracked when it dropped.

The egg mass was on the floor underneath her and the

thready end of the shoot was stuck in the egg mass. I

ended up removing it. I’ve not told anyone before now.

Maybe that was a mistake. The next day there was a

hum. Louder than that, like an electric rumble. And the

day after that she was quiet. She hasn’t made a sound

since then. Is there some kind of sadness there? I always

use both hands. I couldn’t say if the others have heard

anything or not. Mostly I go there when everyone’s

asleep. It’s no problem keeping the place clean. I’ve

made it into my own little world. I talk to her while she

rests. It might not look like much. There’s only two

rooms. You’d probably say it was a small world, but not if

you have to clean it.

STATEMENT 015

I’m very happy with my add-on. I think you should let

more of us have one. It’s me and it’s not me at the same

time. I’ve had to change completely in order to assimilate 

this new part that you say is also me. Which is flesh

and yet not flesh. When I woke up after the operation I

felt scared, but that soon wore off. Now I’m performing

better than anyone. I’m a very useful tool to the crew. It

gives me a certain position. The only thing I haven’t been

able to get used to yet are the dreams. I dream that

there’s nothing where the add-on is. That the add-on has

detached itself, or perhaps was never a part of me. That

it possesses a deep-seated antipathy towards me. That it

hovers in the air above me and then starts to attack.

When I wake up from one of these dreams, the add-on

aches a bit, and it feels as though I’ve got two: one where

it’s supposed to be, and, floating just above it, another

one that can’t be seen with the naked eye, but which

comes into being in the darkness where I sleep, arising

out of my sleep.

Just a couple of weeks back, The Paris Review published another long piece by Olga Ravn, A Memorial for Those Accused of Witchcraft, translation by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/03/16/a-memorial-for-those-accused-of-witchcraft/

Extract:

Johanne Tommesis, burned, August 24, 1612

Kirstine Lauridsdatter, burned, September 11, 1612

Mette Banghors, burned, December 7, 1612

Volborg Bødkers, escaped and convicted in absentia, June 7, 1613

Annike Christoffersdatter, burned, June 14, 1613

Anne Olufs, burned, June 26, 1613

Karen Eriks, suicide in prison, August 30, 1613

Maren Muremester, burned, 1613

Maren of Ringsbjerg, burned, 1613

Maren Bysvende, suicide in her well after receiving a summons to appear in court, 1613

Kirsten Væverkvinde, burned, 1613

Birgitte Rokkemager, burned, September 18, 1615

Else Holtug, burned, November 6, 1615

Mette Navns, burned, 1615

Johanne Muremester, burned, 1615

Magdalene, Søren Skrædder’s wife, burned, 1615

WHERE: Køge, Denmark

MARCH 3, 2021

All morning, Køge has been shrouded in fog. I took the train here. I’ve walked down Nørregade. All the stores are closed because of the pandemic. Still, a few people are out. It’s about ten o’clock. I haven’t been here since December, the day before everything shut down for the second time. For years now, I’ve been reading and thinking about those accused of witchcraft in Køge. Not with any objective in mind—it’s been a kind of hunger. I want to understand what time is, what four hundred years of time is.

On the side of the house on the corner of Nørregade and the town square is a commemorative plaque: here happened the køge holy terror, 1608–1615. It isn’t a memorial for the burned but for those who burned them. The plaque was put up in 1911 when Køge Museum opened in the building across the street. It was supposed to be a kind of promotion for the museum. The women who were accused of witchcraft and murdered (or committed suicide) aren’t mentioned.

The first time I visited here was August 2019, and everything was on the verge of withering. I was three months pregnant and I came to visit these women’s graves. It was only as I was standing in the town square, the wind rolling against my face and my hair swept up—I could hear the cries of seagulls—that I realized there were no graves because the women had been burned. What did they do with the ashes? The site of the fires is now occupied by Norske Løve, a former hotel; now I think that normal people live there—anyway, there’s a buzzer by the door. 

Since that day, I’ve visited Køge regularly. I go there to approach the ones who are not mentioned by the plaque. I pass by the river that runs through the town like a live wire, crossed by a number of small bridges. I’ve read about so many women in the archives who’ve drowned themselves and their children here. I walk down towards the roundabout, past Blegdammen and to the corner of Kongsberg Allé. Here lies the narrow green corridor, traversed by the stream, where those accused of witchcraft are said to have gathered.

MARCH 6, 1613

There lived in Køge a godforsaken witch by the name of Mette Banghors.

This woman, at the behest of Satan and her companions, went out to the stream located immediately outside of town and conjured the devil with the intention of leading him to the house of Hans Bartskiær.

Then she aimed to conjure him in the likeness of a rat.

Then Satan answered that he wouldn’t rise because, he said, “I have horns and you have none.”

Then the impious witch went and placed a pot on her head, conjured him anew, and said: “Now I have three horns; now, come on up already.”

Then he rose from the stream in the likeness of a rat, and she brought him to the home of the aforementioned man.

This was all confessed by Satan’s prisoner, after which she was burned along with many other witches who were revealed and burned.

A slightly rewritten source from the footnotes of Køge huskors (The Køge Holy Terror) by Johan Brunsmand, with an introduction and notes by Anders Bæksted (Ejnar Munksgaard, 1953).