Yareah Magazine

                                                                                                                                                                     Peter Wessel

LA FLOR DE LA PASIÓN

by Peter Wessel

 

“La flor de la pasión

no se riega con agua

sino con amor.”

 La frase may have the look

el aspecto

de lo banal, but then

¿no es lo banal

donde se esconde la belleza,

the beauty of knowledge and wisdom,

del saber y de la sabiduría?

Peter Wessel’s poetical project, Polyfonías, is the first organic and coherent example in European literature of voices of different nationalities living in the same person. The poet’s native Danish cohabits harmoniously with the English, Spanish and French in which he has lived and worked. Poetry constitutes a language of its own (with its own life and meaning), a sort of music in which the words and the syntax, unchecked by the constraints of rational logic, are more attuned to perceptions – insights – of an intuitive kind. This is why the inclusion in poetry of words and turns of phrase characteristic of other cultures (maintaining them intact, even as far as their pronounciation is concerned), or of linguistic code-switching as it was practised in medieval oral poetry, far from representing a menace to poetry, serves to enrich it in a natural and organic fashion. Indeed, the medieval clue is far from accidental: The fifth linguistic strand in this oral poetry is music, but unlike the troubadours he does not use music as a merely decorative element: Mark Solborg and Salvador Vidal perform roles more like that of sidemen in jazz or of the flamenco guitarist in his dialogue with the cantaor during the delivery of a soleá. Polyfonías is not an attempt to produce a new hybrid European language. Far from it: The musical and linguistic mesh that Peter, Mark and Salvador create is the expression of an integrating attitude and shows a great respect for the beauty and diversity of the cultures and languages that constitute the true strength of Europe.

CURA DE HUMILDAD

By Peter Wessel

Be humble, he said,
humilde.
Listen, lyt, escucha.

Écoute.

Écoute les arbres et le ciel,
skovens lys.
Escucha la luz del bosque,
los pasos.
Proving young feet
beneath the dry pine needles.

Lyt til kilden,
la fuente,
doloroso despertar,
source provenant de l’oubli,
bitter, yet redeeming spring.

Vaer ydmyg, se humilde,
déjà que el viento te peine
and take its name in return.

Read about Peter Wessel’s book and CD:

http://www.delsatelite.com  

Leer en español sobre Peter Wessel:

http://www.myspace.com/peterwesselpolyfonias 

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