Roland Pontinen - Nobel Lecture in Literature (2011): A Programme of Texts by Tomas Tranströmer (Tranströmer) lyrics

A Programme of Texts by Tomas Tranströmer Programme - The Grand Hall, December 7, 2011 Memories Look at Me A June morning, too soon to wake, too late to fall asleep again. I must go out – the greenery is dense with memories, they follow me with their gaze. They can't be seen, they merge completely with the background, true chameleons. They are so close that I can hear them breathe although the birdsong here is deafening. An Artist in the North I Edvard Grieg moved like a free man among men. Ready with a joke, read the papers, travelled here and there. Led the orchestra. The concert-hall with its lamps trembling in triumph like the train-ferry when it puts in. I have brought myself up here to be shut in with silence. My work-cottage is small. The piano a tight fit like the swallow under the eaves. For the most part the beautiful steep slopes say nothing. There is no pa**ageway but sometimes a little hatch opens and a strangely seeping light direct from trolldom. Reduce! And the hammer-blows in the mountain came came came came one spring night into our room disguised as beating of the heart. The year before I die I'll send out four hymns to track down God. But it starts here. A song about what is near. What is near. The battlefield within us where we the Bones of the Dead fight to become living. Funchal The fish-restaurant on the beach, simple, a shack built by ship-wrecked people. Many turn away at the door, but not the gusts from the sea. A shadow stands in his reeking cabin frying two fish according to an old recipe from Atlantis, small explosions of garlic, oil running over the tomato slices. Every bite says that the ocean wishes us well, a humming from the deeps. She and I look into each other. Like climbing up the wild blossoming hillsides without feeling the least tiredness. We're on the side of the animals, we're welcome, we don't get older. But over the years we've experienced so much together, we remember that, also times we were good for nothing (as when we queued up to give blood to the flourishing giant – he'd ordered transfusions), things that would've separated us if they hadn't brought us closer, and things we forgot together – but they have not forgotten us. They've become stones, dark ones and light ones. Stones in a scattered mosaic. And now it happens: the bits fly together, the mosaic is visible. It's waiting for us. It's shining from the wall in our hotel room, a design both violent and tender, perhaps a face, we haven't time to notice everything as we pull off our clothes ... At dusk we go out. The cape's enormous dark blue paw lies sprawled in the sea. We step into the human whirlpool, pushed around in a friendly way, soft controls, everyone chattering in that foreign language. "No man is an island." We become stronger through them, but also through ourselves. Through that within us which the other can't see. Which can meet only itself. The innermost paradox, the garage flower, the ventilator to the good darkness. A drink that bubbles in empty gla**es. A loudspeaker that sends out silence. A pathway that grows over again behind each step. A book that can be read only in the dark. The Light Streams In Outside the window, the long beast of spring the transparent dragon of sunlight rushes past like an endless suburban train – we never got a glimpse of its head. The shoreline villas shuffle sideways they are proud as crabs. The sun makes the statues blink. The raging sea of fire out in the space is transformed to a caress. The countdown has begun. Vermeer No protected world...Just behind the wall the noise begins, the inn is there with laughter and bickering, rows of teeth, tears, the din of bells and the insane brother-in-law, the d**h-bringer we all must tremble for. The big explosion and the tramp of rescue arriving late the boats preening themselves on the straits, the money creeping down in the wrong man's pocket demands stacked on demands gaping red flowerheads sweating premonitions of war. In from there and right through the wall into the clear studio into the second that's allowed to live for centuries. Pictures that call themselves "The Music Lesson" or "Woman in Blue Reading a Letter" – she's in her eighth month, two hearts kicking inside her. On the wall behind is a wrinkled map of Terra Incognita. Breathe calmly...An unknown blue material is nailed to the chairs. The gold studs flew in with incredible speed and stopped abruptly as if they had never been other than stillness. Ears sing, from depth or height. It's the pressure from the other side of the wall. It makes each fact float and steadies the brush. It hurts to go through walls, it makes you ill but is necessary The world is one. But walls... And the wall is part of yourself – we know or we don't know but it's true for us all except for small children. No walls for them. The clear sky has leant against the wall. It's like a prayer to the emptiness. And the emptiness turns its face to us and whispers "I am not empty, I am open." The Journey In the underground station. A crowding among placards in a staring dead light. The train came and collected faces and portfolios. Darkness next. We sat in the carriages like statues, hauled through the caverns. Restraint, dreams, restraint. In stations under sea-level they sold the news of the dark. People in motion sadly silently under the clock-dials. The train carried outer garments and souls. Glances in all directions on the journey through the mountain. Still no change. But nearer the surface a murmuring of bees began – freedom. We stepped out of the earth. The land beat its wings once and became still under us, widespread and green. Ears of corn blew in over the platforms. Terminus – I followed on, further. How many were with me? Four, five, hardly more. Houses, roads, skies, blue inlets, mountains opened their windows. C Major When he came down to the street after the rendezvous the air was swirling with snow. Winter had come while they lay together. The night shone white. He walked quickly with joy. The whole town was downhill. The smiles pa**ing by – everyone was smiling behind turned-up collars. It was free! And all the question-marks began singing of God's being. So he thought. A music broke out and walked in the swirling snow with long steps. Everything on the way towards the note C. A trembling compa** directed at C. One hour higher than the torments. It was easy! Behind turned-up collars everyone was smiling. Alone I One evening in February I came near to dying here. The car skidded sideways on the ice, out on the wrong side of the road. The approaching cars – their lights – closed in. My name, my girls, my job broke free and were left silently behind further and further away. I was anonymous like a boy in a playground surrounded by enemies. The approaching traffic had huge lights. They shone on me while I pulled at the wheel in a transparent terror that floated like egg white. The seconds grew – there was space in them – they grew as big as hospital buildings. You could almost pause and breathe out for a while before being crushed. Then something caught: a helping grain of sand or a wonderful gust of wind. The car broke free and scuttled smartly right over the road. A post shot up and cracked – a sharp clang – it flew away in the darkness. Then – stillness. I sat back in my seat-belt and saw someone coming through the whirling snow to see what had become of me. II I have been walking for a long time on the frozen Östergötland fields. I have not seen a single person. In other parts of the world there are people who are born, live and die in a perpetual crowd. To be always visible – to live in a swarm of eyes – a special expression must develop. Face coated with clay. The murmuring rises and falls while they divide up among themselves the sky, the shadows, the sand grains. I must be alone ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the evening. – Without a programme. Everyone is queuing at everyone's door. Many. One. The Sad Gondola I Two old men, father-in-law and son-in-law, Liszt and Wagner, are staying by the Grand Can*l together with the restless woman who married King Midas the man who transforms everything he touches into Wagner. The green chill of the sea forces its way up through the palace floors. Wagner is marked, the well-known Mr Punch profile is wearier than before the face a white flag. The gondola is heavily laden with their lives, two returns and one single. II One of the palace windows flies open and the people inside grimace in the sudden draught. Outside on the water the garbage gondola appears, paddled by two one-oared bandits. Liszt has written down some chords that are so heavy they ought to be sent to the mineralogical institute in Padua for an*lysis. Meteorites! too heavy to rest, they can only sink and sink through the future right down to the years of the brownshirts. The gondola is heavily laden with the crouching stones of the future. III Peep-holes, opening on 1990. March 25. Anxiety over Lithuania. Dreamt that I visited a large hospital. No staff. Everyone a patient. In the same dream a new-born girl who spoke in complete sentences. IV Beside his son-in-law, who is a man of the age, Liszt is a moth- eaten Grand Seigneur. It's a disguise. The deep that tries on and rejects different masks has picked out this one for him. The deep that wants to step in, to visit the humans, without showing its face. V Abbé Liszt is accustomed to carrying his own suitcase through slush and sunshine and when the time comes to die no one will meet him at the station. A warm breeze of highly-gifted brandy carries him off in the middle of some task. He is never free of tasks. Two thousand letters per year! The schoolboy writing out the wrongly-spelt word a hundred times before he can go home. The gondola is heavily laden with life, it is simple and black. VI 1990 again. Dreamt that I drove 200 kilometres for nothing. Then everything grew large. Sparrows big as hens sang deafeningly. Dreamt that I drew piano keys on the kitchen table. I played on them, silently. The neighbours came in to listen. VII The keyboard which has kept silent through the whole of Parsifal (but it has listened) is at last allowed to say something. Sighs... sospiri... When Liszt plays this evening he holds down the sea-pedal so that the green power of the sea rises through the floor and merges with the stonework of the building. Good evening, beautiful deep! The gondola is heavily laden with life, it is simple and black. VIII Dreamt that I was to start school but came late. Everyone in the room was wearing a white mask. Impossible to tell who the teacher was. Slow Music The building is closed. The sun crowds in through the windows and warms up the surfaces of desks that are strong enough to take the load of human fate. We are outside, today, on the long wide slope. Many have dark clothes. You can stand in the sun with your eyes shut and feel yourself being slowly blown forward. I come down to the water too seldom. But here I am now, among large stones with peaceful backs. Stones which slowly migrated backwards up out of the waves. The Blue Wind-Flowers To be spell-bound – nothing's easier. It's one of the oldest tricks of the soil and springtime: the blue wind-flowers. They are in a way unexpected. They shoot up out of the brown rustle of last year in overlooked places where one's gaze never pauses. They glimmer and float, yes, float, and that comes from their colour. That sharp violet-blue now weighs nothing. Here is ecstasy, but low-voiced. "Career" – irrelevant! "Power" and "publicity" – ridiculous! They must have laid on a great reception up in Nineveh, with pompe and "Trompe up!". Raising the rafters. And above all those brows the crowning crystal chandeliers hung like gla** vultures. Instead of such an over-decorated and strident cul-de-sac, the wind-flowers open a secret pa**age to the real celebration, which is quiet as d**h. November in the Former DDR The almighty cyclop's-eye clouded over and the gra** shook itself in the coal dust. Beaten black and blue by the night's dreams we board the train that stops at every station and lays eggs. Almost silent. The clang of the church bells' buckets fetching water. And someone's inexorable cough scolding everything and everyone. A stone idol moves its lips: it's the city. Ruled by iron-hard misunderstandings among kiosk attendants butchers metal-workers naval officers iron-hard misunderstandings, academics! How sore my eyes are! They've been reading by the faint glimmer of the glow-worm lamps. November offers caramels of granite. Unpredictable! Like world history laughing at the wrong place. But we hear the clang of the church bells' buckets fetching water every Wednesday – is it Wednesday? – so much for our Sundays! Schubertiana 1 In the evening darkness in a place outside New York, an outlook point where one single glance will encompa** the homes of eight million people. The giant city over there is a long shimmering drift, a spiral galaxy seen from the side. Within the galaxy coffee-cups are pushed across the counter, the shop-windows beg from pa**ers-by, a flurry of shoes that leave no prints. The climbing fire escapes, the lift doors that glide shut, behind doors with police locks a perpetual seethe of voices. Slouched bodies doze in subway coaches, the hurtling catacombs. I know too – without statistics – that right now Schubert is being played in some room over there and that for someone the notes are more real than all the rest. 2 The endless expanses of the human brain are crumpled to the size of a fist. In April the swallow returns to last year's nest under the guttering of this very barn in this very parish. She flies from Transvaal, pa**es the equator, flies for six weeks over two continents, makes for precisely this vanishing dot in the land-ma**. And the man who catches the signals from a whole life in a few ordinary chords for five strings, who makes a river flow through the eye of a needle, is a stout young gentleman from Vienna known to his friends as 'The Mushroom', who slept with his gla**es on and stood at his writing desk punctually of a morning. And then the wonderful centipedes of his man*script were set in motion. 3 The string quintet is playing. I walk home through warm forests with the ground springy under me, curl up like an embryo, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future, suddenly feel that the plants have thoughts. 4 So much we have to trust, simply to live through our daily day without sinking through the earth! Trust the piled snow clinging to the mountain slope above the village. Trust the promises of silence and the smile of understanding, trust that the accident telegram isn't for us and that the sudden axe-blow from within won't come. Trust the axles that carry us on the highway in the middle of the three hundred times life-size bee-swarm of steel. But none of that is really worth our confidence. The five strings say we can trust something else. And they keep us company part of the way there. As when the time-switch clicks off in the stairwell and the fingers – trustingly – follow the blind handrail that finds its way in the darkness. 5 We squeeze together at the piano and play with four hands in F minor, two coachmen on the same coach, it looks a little ridiculous. The hands seem to be moving resonant weights to and fro, as if we were tampering with the counterweights in an effort to disturb the great scale arm's terrible balance: joy and suffering weighing exactly the same. Annie said, 'This music is so heroic,' and she's right. But those whose eyes enviously follow men of action, who secretly despise themselves for not being murderers, don't recognise themselves here, and the many who buy and sell people and believe that everyone can be bought, don't recognise themselves here. Not their music. The long melody that remains itself in all its transformations, sometimes glittering and pliant, sometimes rugged and strong, snail-track and steel wire. The perpetual humming that follows us – now – up the depths.