in english ark/hive
Damned Beloved Dashing Clubfoot
2007
Today, in his Alpine Journal, Byron made me rediscover the dash. The dash being at once a mark, a rush, a bolt, and a sprint, a slap, a strike, and an obsolete form of the tight-toothed curse: Damn! The origin of the word may be the nordic “dask, daska” (noun, verb), an ancient word still in use, meaning to strike lightly, with an open hand.
Thank you my lord, for the dash – this speedy glyph – which damns – & double-damns – all that is damned in the first place – like wretched humanity – & creation itself – like the clubfoot in my mind & heart – which anchors fast – & unmakes – the quickened & loving man I desire to be. – Thank you for this dash dashing – & maketh dash’d away – my mediocrity – & thank you for this dash dashing hither – if but for an instant – beside myself, & beyond – but of this earth still – the rarest of companions: a god.
2007.VII.17.
Lord Byron, Alpine Journal, September 28, 1816
2007
I was disposed to be pleased – I am a lover of Nature – and an Admirer of Beauty – I can bear fatigue – & welcome privation – and have seen some of the noblest views in the world. – But in all this – the recollections of bitterness – & more especially of recent & more home desolation – which must accompany me through life – have preyed upon me here – and neither the music of the Shepherd – the crashing of the Avalanche – nor the torrent – the mountain – the Glacier – the Forest – nor the Cloud – have for one moment – lightened the weight upon my heart – nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty & the power and the Glory – around – above – & beneath me. – I am past reproaches – and there is a time for all things – I am past the wish of vengeance – and I know of none like for what I have suffered – but the hour will come – when what I feel must be felt – & the – – but enough.
Quoted in
Peter Cochran
Byron and Shelley: Radical Incompatibles
Romanticism on the Net
43:2006
Ixander at Metasoxl
2003
Novel 2003PÃ¥ svenska ^ In Brief · Excerpt In BriefTo see is an act of will, and when the legendary island Metasoxl is sighted, it must be embodied into the empire. But the island defies conquest, and, like the unknown beings vaguely spotted through the lenses of the telescopes, it becomes ever more withdrawn for each attempt at striking land. Taking its cues from legends about Alexander the Great, Hansi Linderoth’s first novel has been called “a sci-fi novel set in antiquity, of a kind the old Greeks could have written had they been familiar with Borges and Lem”. ExcerptPressBest Books List 2003 — Dagens Nyheter ¤ One of the precious few first novels that actually live up to the classical ideal of a literature written for ‘all and no one’. — Fabian Kastner, Upsala Nya Tidning ¤ What first comes across as a strange pastiche [] grows to a critical parable in which the unconquerable island Metasoxl seems to promise all that worldy power desires but is destined never to attain. — Dan Jönsson, 00tal ¤ Hansi Linderoth’s first novel is inventive and above all stylistically impressive. With a style both curtly matter of fact and movingly poetic, both barren and excessive, he impresses upon the story an archaic mark. — Sabina Ögren, BorÃ¥s Tidning ¤ Among this autumn’s most original writers. [] The text seems to have several entrances and levels, symbolic, intertextual, and mythological. — Petter Bengtsson, SmÃ¥landsposten |
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PublisherBuy It |
First Edition 2003 |
