#schubertiana

[whisperthatruns]

The string quartet 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.

Tomas Tranströmer, from “Schubertiana,” trans. Robin Fulton

[whisperthatruns]

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, passes the equator, flies for six weeks over two continents, makes for precisely this vanishing dot in the landmass. 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 glasses on and stood at his writing desk punctually in the morning. And then the wonderful centipedes of his manuscript were set in motion.

Tomas Tranströmer, from “Schubertiana,” trans. Robin Fulton

[whisperthatruns]

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 this is really worth our confidence. The five strings say we can trust something else. And they keep us company part of the way. 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.

Tomas Tranströmer, from “Schubertiana,” trans. Robin Fulton

[whisperthatruns]

In the evening darkness in a place outside New York, a viewpoint where one single glance will encompass the homes of eight million people. The giant city becomes 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 passersby, a flurry of shoes leave no prints. The climbing fire escapes, elevator doors glide shut, behind police-locked doors a perpetual seethe of voices. Slouched bodies doze in subway cars, the hurtling catacombs. I know too---without statistics---that right now Schubert is being played in a room over there and that for someone the notes are more real than anything else.

Tomas Tranströmer, from “Schubertiana,” trans. Robin Fulton

[whisperthatruns]

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 recognize themselves here, and the many who buy and sell people and believe that everyone can be bought, don't recognize 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.

Tomas Tranströmer, from “Schubertiana,” trans. Robin Fulton

[forislynx]

Så mycket vi måste lita på för att kunna leva vår dagliga dag utan att sjunka genom jorden! ... Som när ljuset slocknar i trappan och handen följer - med förtroende - den blinda ledstången som hittar i mörkret.

Tomas Tranströmer, Sanningsbarriären (ur dikten Schubertiana)

[gravellyrun]

happiness and suffering weigh exactly the same.

Tomas Transtromer from 'Schubertiana'

[writerstalking-blog-blog]

Tomas Tranströmer, 2011 Literature Nobel Prize winner, reads and discusses his poem Schubertiana.