G.J Resink: 'Drempelwereld'

 

Mount Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica

Drempelwereld

 

Er lopen door de tropen van de ziel drie lijnen:

de breuklijn, die elk levensevenwicht verhindert;

de strook, waarlangs de aardse zwaartekracht vermindert

en dan die linie van vulkanische domeinen,

 

waaruit de vloedgolf of het vuur ten dode vlindert

dier onbewuste driften, die ons ondermijnen.

En langs die lijnen beeft en brandt de ziel en zindert

haar droom: in God of in wat schoon is te verdwijnen.

 

Ik blijf tellurisch trouw aan kraters en aan killen,

die eiland en dolfijn doen rijzen en verzinken

en meteoren 's nachts tot zeesterren verstillen

of aan een winterpool Erebus’ top doen blinken.

 

Maar wordt de graviteit in mijn gevoelens lichter

dan duift of vlamt een vers omhoog en word ik dichter.

 

(Erebus is de naam van de antieke onderwereld en van de enige vulkaan op de Zuidpool. Voor de gedachtenassociatie is het van belang te weten, dat de Hindoe-Baliërs het dodenrijk in het Zuiden situeren.)

 

Threshold world

 

Three lines run through the tropics of the human soul:

the fault line, which life-balance stalls in any form;

the band along which gravity’s below the norm

and then lines of volcanoes that like chains unroll,

 

from where tsunamis crush as do hot lava streams,

whose wild, unconscious urges everything subvert.

Along these lines the quaking soul is burnt, its dream

is dashed: in God or loveliness to reconvert.

 

My faith’s telluric – craters, channels formed by tides

that cause island and dolphin to rise up and sink

and night meteorites into sea-stars to subside

or at a winter-pole Erebus’ peak to glint.

 

If ever my emotions’ gravity grows lighter,

then verse will dove or flame aloft – and I’m a writer.

 

(Erebus is the name given to the underworld in Antiquity. It is also the name of the only volcano at the South Pole. It is important for the association of ideas to know that the Hindu Balinese locate the realm of the dead in the South.)

 

Most sonnets in Dutch have 10- or 11-syllable lines or a combination of both. It is difficult to ‘convert’ odd-numbered lines into English, since fewer word classes end on a weak syllable than in Dutch. English sonnets tend to be in lines of 10 syllables, or possibly combined with lines of 11 syllables. A longer line is possible – the alexandrine, with 12 syllables. Resink has chosen a 13-syllable line throughout. The stanza pattern of 4-4-4-2 is less usual in Dutch than the 4-4-3-3 pattern (typical of the Petrarchan sonnet). And the Shakespearean sonnet often does not have the balanced feel of the ABBA ABBA CDE CDE rhyme scheme. It has a drive towards a climax and a final couplet that expands on the first 12 lines: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

Note that an ’I’ figure is first introduced in line 9. Here the shift starts. He has been playing on the language of the outside world being used to describe the inner world up to that point, but now he states his personal position. And the final couplet is Shakespearian. Playing on the idea of lighter and heavier (‘dichter’ can also mean denser in English) he has a neat final flourish to his poem. If you want a poem by Shakespeare to compare with, try Sonnet 116, which concludes: ‘If this be error and upon me proved,/I never writ, nor no man ever loved.’