33
272 But are there not many sins that follow these natural desires?
Certainly
This is caused by nature’s deep depravity which is a part of all things and which makes the desires of the innocent sinful and impure if we do not diligently
fight against it
273 What are the sinful things that especially awaken sinful desires
These are
1 Excess lavish and lascivious things
2 Foreign things
36
On the white painted wall the image of his suffering.
The cross, strangely shining and beautiful. A smooth tree without branches, above the thunderclouds are hanging low.
His neck is bent low, that neck with young frizzy hair. I can’t
see the face. Red drops are dripping under the bramble.
Free us. Free us. Shatter all shiny weapons. Give the men clean hands.
Many children are not yet born. The thunderclouds hang low, almost black.
This is my body. Four nails through the feet,
pounded in between bare tendons. Blood in purple stripes,
dried against the thin side of the upper body.
I’m thirsting
By the foot of the cross a woman with stiff eyes,
one arm reaching out with the hand open.
Maria. Maria. I know you can’t see him.
I know you feel the nails in your flesh.
In the evening light his naked chest shines yellow.
Behind the split curtain a mumbling
of rusty knives.
51
When the infectious agent has gotten into the lungs, gray white knots the size of hemp seeds are formed in the lung tissue. Also, a sticky yellow fluid is created in the air sacs; this fluid contains rejected cells from the walls of the air sacs and white blood cells. The number of knots increases, and after a while they float together and form bigger knotted masses. The central parts of these masses die out after a while, the texture becomes looser, like cheese, and the last thing that happens is that cavities of different sizes form inside the knots. Often there are also catchments of lime. The cavities have smooth capsule clad walls. During this development, the walls of several veins will typically break. When these are the smaller veins, the patient’s sputum will have light-red stripes or spots.
57
Every morning get up from bed. Walk across the floor to the table, to the mirror.
Six steps forward. This is important. Six steps.
Smell of lye when I grab the soap. The pitcher of water, little bubbles of air against its inside.
Feel my face wet, skin shaking against water, some enter my mouth.
The pitcher has been standing here in the night while I was sleeping, the water is lukewarm.
My hair is straight and dull now. A crackling sound under the comb when I sort it out. Don’t look into the mirror much, don’t see my face too clear.
I know anyway.
Sew me into this morning, hold on.
61
OUR BODY HE SHALL GIVE US
BACK WITH SKIN AND HAIR
AS IF WE WERE ALIVE
THOUGH NOT HERE
65
When I lie completely still: Hard heartbeats
in the closet. Soft holes in the floorboards
in front of the bed. Breaking through. Roses of
blood and cast iron. Dark smell of meat,
sex
Snailing over my nails
Horse’s sweat, blue roads under my belly
Wet mirrors
Marketsong Pale Sun
My ship is filled with hands
The snake is creeping through an eye of steel and Christ is in the garden, wearing maple.
67
The moon has large spots of fungus and mold
Heat heat throw me into the sea Write Thy name
Jesus on my heart under mold and stone mold
and stone
Long dorms with wind-swept children
Metal-wind Smell of animals
The sand scatters under my skin
Judas pierces the living with needles
Blind kittens looking for udders for big
troughs of cascading rain
Fire-tongues
in the mirror Tight shoals of bayonets through my eyes
73
Into the empty room enters a woman of about fifty years, small
and with a slight curve to her back. She is dressed in a long white gown and has a kerchief over her hair.
Bed and chair are moved into the middle of the floor, closet doors are opened, the picture of the crucified taken down and put on the table. A lighter square is left on the yellowed wall.
Windows are firmly closed and the keyhole is stuffed with cotton.
The room is warm, there are still embers in the oven. In the middle of the floor a large tub of cold water is placed and in it a smaller bucket.
In the bucket she pours formalin and boiling water.
The woman stirs with a wooden spoon, and the formalin-steam starts rising
densely from the roaring water.
She hurries out of the room and closes the door tight after her. The room
soon fills with formalin-steam.
After 7-8 hours she comes in with a wet kerchief over her mouth and opens
doors and windows. Outside a sharp wind, it’s cold.
76
COME MAN AND SEE ME
YOU ARE, I WAS ALIVE
ON EARTH I HAVE RESEMBLED YOU
WHAT I AM, YOU SHALL BE
77
They burn clothing behind the outhouse. A red plaid dress, a blue stakk, long yellowed stockings of wool, a gray vadmål-jacket with silver patterns on the edges, shirts, a rose-painted kerchief.
It’s difficult to make them burn.
from Anne
Paal-Helge Haugen
translated from the Norwegian by Julia Johanne Tolo
Read the original in Norwegian
Listen to the poems read in the original Norwegian by Julia Johanne Tolo:
Anne is a long poem, or a bullet-pointed novel, as author Paal-Helge Haugen calls it. He writes in his “Note to Self” (in the final pages of Anne) that the book should be constructed collaboratively by its author and its readers. He goes on to explain that he has termed Anne a bullet-pointed novel because it is made up of poetic sections and sections of found text; Anne is not meant to be either cohesive or complete.
The novel follows Anne as she goes from being a girl to a young woman, while also showing her declining health due to tuberculosis. Haugen creates a frail but tangible mood through his descriptions of this sensitive young woman getting sicker by the day against the backdrop of the countryside and culture on the west coast of Norway around the beginning of the twentieth century.
One of the challenges in translating Anne involves Haugen's use of found text, which he often manipulates by selecting only small sections of larger works and mixes in with his own writing. Moreover, Haugen only lists his sources in a general way in the last pages of Anne, naming some texts without pointing to precise page numbers, which made for some extensive research before attempting to translate these pages.
In the excerpts featured here, page 33 includes excerpts from Erik Pontoppidan’s explanation of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism; 51 is a medical text, giving the reader insight into Anne’s declining health; 61 and 76 I believe are excerpts from hymns. Even for just these few pages, I had a few different approaches in my translation. For the medical text, I did my best to translate as literally as possible. For the hymns, I tried to maintain the rhyme as well as the emotion of the text more so than its literal meaning. For page 33, I did a little of both, attempting to stay close to the original, but also looking up similar texts in English to create language that would give the English reader a similar feeling to that which the Norwegian reader has when reading the text. Most of all, for these found materials, I realized that maintaining a certain level of “strangeness” was a good idea because these are old texts that Haugen draws from, most of which were written in a Norwegian that no longer exists, Riksmål, a language we used during and after our union with Denmark. So, to a Norwegian reader, the found text is quite literally foreign, and I wanted to translate this foreignness into English to the best of my ability.
The novel follows Anne as she goes from being a girl to a young woman, while also showing her declining health due to tuberculosis. Haugen creates a frail but tangible mood through his descriptions of this sensitive young woman getting sicker by the day against the backdrop of the countryside and culture on the west coast of Norway around the beginning of the twentieth century.
One of the challenges in translating Anne involves Haugen's use of found text, which he often manipulates by selecting only small sections of larger works and mixes in with his own writing. Moreover, Haugen only lists his sources in a general way in the last pages of Anne, naming some texts without pointing to precise page numbers, which made for some extensive research before attempting to translate these pages.
In the excerpts featured here, page 33 includes excerpts from Erik Pontoppidan’s explanation of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism; 51 is a medical text, giving the reader insight into Anne’s declining health; 61 and 76 I believe are excerpts from hymns. Even for just these few pages, I had a few different approaches in my translation. For the medical text, I did my best to translate as literally as possible. For the hymns, I tried to maintain the rhyme as well as the emotion of the text more so than its literal meaning. For page 33, I did a little of both, attempting to stay close to the original, but also looking up similar texts in English to create language that would give the English reader a similar feeling to that which the Norwegian reader has when reading the text. Most of all, for these found materials, I realized that maintaining a certain level of “strangeness” was a good idea because these are old texts that Haugen draws from, most of which were written in a Norwegian that no longer exists, Riksmål, a language we used during and after our union with Denmark. So, to a Norwegian reader, the found text is quite literally foreign, and I wanted to translate this foreignness into English to the best of my ability.
Paal-Helge Haugen is a Norwegian lyricist, novelist, dramatist, and children's writer. Haugen was born in Valle, Setesdal. He made his literary debut with Blad frå ein austleg hage in 1965, a translation of Japanese haiku poems. It was followed by På botnen av ein mørk sommar in 1967, an adaptation of Chinese poems and his first collection of original poetry. Studies in film and literature took him to the United States in 1971. From 1973 to 1978 he taught creative writing in Norway. Since then Haugen has worked as a freelance writer. Since 1967, Haugen has published eighteen volumes of poetry, including two volumes of selected poems and one of collected poems.
Julia Johanne Tolo is from Oslo, Norway. She recieved her B.A. in literature from Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, in 2014. Her poems, short stories, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Slice Magazine, 12th Street Journal, Eleven and a Half Journal, and Black and Blue Writing, amongst others. She lives in New York.
