a blog by Peter Leonard
Niels Frank, formerly the head of the Danish Author School, has just compiled all his essays on Modernism into a volume called Alt andet er løgn (Everything Else is a Lie). The title, a reference to a letter from Stéphane Mallarmé to Henri Cazalis, means "Everything Else is a Lie." Frank's project is to try and rescue Danish Modernism (with a capital M) from the shadow of Swedish and other European Modernisms, against which it seems to pale. Johannes V. Jensen and Villy Sørensen are, naturally, the key authors here. He gave a talk at Literaturhaus with Pia Tafdrup and Erik Skyum-Nielsen tonight.
Niels Frank is a fan -- a real big fan -- of the American poet Frank O'Hara, and he read aloud a poem by O'Hara that he had translated. I can now safely say that I know more about "The Day Lady Died" in Danish than I do in English.
Lars Bukhdahl, writing in Weekendavisen, gave the book a generally good review, though he did flay Frank for not offering more of his own analysis and engagement with the texts, in place of merely citing American criticism. In addition, he thought Frank should have made mention of young, living Danish authors, such as Jeppe Brixvold (author of the new novel Forbrydelse og fremgang) and Lone Hørslev, whose connection with the Forfatterskole should have placed them on Frank's radar.
Brixvold himself was in the audience, though his own main point of critique was that Frank's jump between 1950s and '60s High Modernism and contemporary American "language poetry" wasn't a bit of a stretch -- that there seemed to be a chunk missing that would link the two together.