Everything
recovered/nothing preserved
On 11
July 1897, three Swedes took off from the island Danskön west of Spitsbergen in
their balloon Örnen (‘The Eagle’). They were in search of the North Pole. With
them they had a Swedish flag with which to mark precisely this theoretical
point of the globe. The interest shown in their undertaking was considerable,
also outside their own country.
The names
of the three men were: Salomon August Andrée, Kurt Fraenkel and Nils
Strindberg. A study of the historical material would seem to indicate that
Andrée and Strindberg had serious doubts about just how manoeuvrable and
airtight the balloon, manufactured in France, actually was. They set out even
so. A year earlier, a previous attempt had had to be abandoned, due to the lack
of a favourable wind. The enormous public interest and the financial support of
such eminent figures as Alfred Nobel and the Swedish king, however, turned into
a matter of honour what in advance and by its very nature was doomed to be a
fateful undertaking.
The lack
of manoeuvrability was obvious soon after the start. So much ballast had to be
jettisoned that the balloon rose too high. Within 65 hours, it had become so
top-heavy as the result of freezing rain that they were forced to make a
landing.
On 14
July, they began to trek through a drifting landscape of ice-floes, ending up
on 5 October 1897 on the small island of Vitön (‘White Island’, pronounced: veet-ern) east of Spitsbergen. Shortly after
arriving on the island the members of the expedition perished.
Not until
1930 were their as remains discovered by a Danish group of scientists. Among
the objects left behind was a case with negatives that Nils Strindberg had
taken with a self-designed camera. A number of these could be developed; the
others seemed to be of too inferior quality. In 1979, however, it proved
possible to develop some more of the photos. Because of this, the Andrée
expedition was briefly – and probably for the last time – once
more a
matter of public interest.
Microscopic
analysis of the pieces of polar bear meat found on Vitön, combined with notes
in the discovered journals kept by the members of the expedition, had a number
of years previously revealed the cause of their death. From eating contaminated
bear meat the members of the expedition had become infected with trichinosis, a
gradual but fatal disease caused by a type of worm that rapidly multiplies in
the intestinal canal, from where it perforates the muscular tissue of the
victim.
The
objects found on Vitön in 1930, as well as a reconstruction of the balloon, are
on display at the Andrée museum in Gränna, the birthplace of the balloonist.
We step
into the museum in Gränna
sweating
and on tiptoe because of the heat
Why try
to break open something that
belongs
to a distant past? I know quite well
And yet.
Here’s a hatchet. There’s
A photo
of the ice. Write so as
To drive
in a wedge, make a tiny breath hole
through
which past oxygen may hiss
And spout
to form a present kiss
so that I
feel you’re alive – here
Every museum
has some chink
Framed in
an oval setting: Fraenkel, Strindberg
and
Andrée in Florman’s photo atelier in Stockholm
Expenses
arranged, the balloon now
ready to
ascend from the close of a century
Where a
will seemed to be a way, a dream
high-flown
that froze into a petrified statue
This the
pose of Fraenkel and Andrée too
as if
everything’s past, consigned to history
Not so
Nils Strindberg, no not he
he is
five and twenty and in love, his gaze
is still
quite visible, is fixed on her
on Anna
Charlier, his delicate fiancée
The
stares of his moustached colleagues remain clouded in sepia
Half a
year later it was all over
in 1930
their three corpses were found on Vitön
Salomon
August Andrée, you knew all along
yet
dragged even so the two others along in your fall
To Gränna
to this your own private museum
in the
mid-20th century, on a fine sunny day
You knew
in advance and in the name of
progress,
of the king and Nobel
We will
not return to this country
where
undreamt-of machines have now got to the point
Of
regulating all aspects of life
for ever
like the cogwheels of your watch the time
All arms
were pointing upwards, all faces radiated not
Fear or
Hope, simply belief in the Future
Almost
everything’s still, nothing completely moves
That which
they undertook was from the start quite
senseless
and for that reason maybe preserved
To get to
the very centre of the pole
whose
sole existence is on maps
Only 65
hours and they were heavier than air
were
forced to land upon the frozen water
There stands
Andrée peering for land legs wide
apart
while beneath his feet everything moves
They set
off on their sleds or so at least they thought
in actual
fact though they stood still
Posing
for posterity they had in fact been cut adrift
They set
their course westwards and they
drifted
off to the east
They set
their course eastwards and they
drifted
all the while further to the west
And if
the sun broke through the mist
Fraenkel
reached for his sextant
Sought
the sun’s altitude and
stuck his
hand out: this way
Right to
the end he measured on
fixing
positions, all that mattered
Now was
the meticulous registration
of
impending doom
Figures
and data form the frame of their swansong
Just as
the seeing of your own face can
only ever
be caught in a mirror
I view in
photographs the things they looked at
as the
ice began to form fissures and cracked
Powder
snow whirled itself into skintight veils
dense fog
encased them like some great bell-jar
Their
voices reeled hollow and hoarse all around them
and they
were completely alone on the floe
A seagull
defiantly screeched, where were
they
drifting, what were they feeling
I want to
live through it, all whiteness removed,
want to
look through them on this paper
Here they
vanish yet whiter than me once more out of sight
They
perished on Vitön, Fraenkel
and
Andrée, side by side in their tent
With an
aluminium cup, a primus
some
roubles, dollars, an empty bottle
33 years
later (a reconstruction) they still lie there
snowed-in
and huddled close together
The
primus is ready for use
for a
scalding-hot mug of coffee or tea
But every
gesture’s completely gone
I stare
at a photo of a heap of stones
Nils
Strindberg’s grave, the tent 35 metres away
80 years
or so ago, now hangs behind glass
I think
of his finger and then of the shutter
From the
blackness of 82 Kodak years
they
gradually emerge from the developer
Here
Andrée and Frænkel are pulling their own sleds
behind
them leans and lurks the millpond sea
And are
the murky flecks just flakes of snow
or ingrained
particles from years of winter?
The stare
of the curator shows surprise,
why I
should want to know, that difference
He holds
the negative to the light
that
fades into a positive at once
Miniscule
perforations through which this light
here and
on Vitön fell and falls on 82 long years
On two
men and on a sled
on their
balloon ‘The Eagle’ that
gently
sways in the museum garden
Where
everything was white and bright
every one
of the photos came out
Always
the same one really
two men
just searching for landscape
Here
Fraenkel burrows intently
with his
shoe in the snow
Andrée
with kepi and stick a bit behind
stares
still as leader at the lens
He surely
knew (not Strindberg though
with
steady camera) how limitless
Their
hopeless hike was, one
that
plotted on a map’s a web
A fabric
where a blind spot sits
Many last
ones. This the photographer
Nils
Strindberg, 25 years old, yet
Here
quite unrecognisable
even down
to the moustache
Two ropes
connecting him to the sled
it too
now housed in the Andrée museum
He prods
the snow with obvious caution
in search
of fissures in the ice
The final
time light was to strike him
upright –
he was to be the first one
Blizzarding
out in his own camera
Of
Fraenkel himself we have nothing
but
figures and data, their position on the ice
Was he
devoid of imagination? For sure.
Andrée
writes in detail of his complainings
He was
only a child of his time, the
slave of
wind and weather with data
That were
to offer protection against his thoughts
of home,
against his tears and his pain
Which he
refused even to mention
lacking
any form of valid and convincing proof
He died
stiff on time’s stroke as a figure
The last
one was Andrée: without date
handwriting
quite illegible
Five
lines, made up of sixty-one words
with the
last word unfinished
I turn
back the pages: we are full of hope
plenty
of provisions, sturdy shoes
Somewhat
further towards the end: bad sign
no
polar bears sighted for days
And then
the very last page
that
ultimate and never finished word
Staring
into the surrounding white
Everything
preserved, everything recovered
the sled,
the prickers and the ship’s biscuits
Boat,
tent, their diaries, their shoes
and here
too on a pedestal even the plate camera
Thirty
instants of bitter-filled whiteness
frugally
framed and hung as exhibits
We amble
over floors that are creaking
I add up
the bones of your hand
A
bumblebee inspects the curtains
you want
to know this country’s names
While the
curator’s voice drones on
about
their stranding on Vitön
Everything
recovered – nothing preserved
I place
you by the colourful balloon
in the
summer garden (a birdsong chorus)
Quite
still I say and
take you
take a
polaroid (a birdsong chorus)
Quite
still till I’m ready and
look
how you
show against the balloon (a birdsong chorus)
I look at
your breasts, at your inquisitive
toes in
all that succulent grass (a birdsong chorus)
And I see
behind your dress the scars
the hair
that I know (a birdsong chorus)
Well,
did it come out? Oh yes, just look!
Your
turn!
Listen, the chorus...
Come
towards me through the grass, straight through
the moist
grass still full of summer, come
In the
failing light around Andrée’s balloon