Raïhanyat,
Moroccan Writer
Mohamed Saïd Raïhani’s
Website
"It Is Sad And Ironical To
Be Alone At Home While We Are Six Billion People On This Planet"
AN INTERVIEW WITH DANISH POET
NIELS HAV
Conducted by
Moroccan
Translator Mohamed Saïd Raïhani
Times of religious and
civilizational clashes are also times of rapprochment between peoples and cultures. What mainly
distinguishes modern cultural history is this power to communicate above the
back of all policy makers and clash preachers. In this literary interview, our
guest is a poet, short-story writer and a man with a warm heart coming from the
capital of frost, Danemark: Niels
Hav who will talk openly about his literary career,
his readings, his relationships with the other and the
world as he sees it.
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: When readers crowd around a poet to know much about the content of a poem,
they are advised to read it themselves since reading serves not only
understanding the poem but also producing other parallel texts by means of
construction and deconstruction. Yet, when it comes to excavating the career of
the poet himself, readers will rub their hands, ready to enjoy the honour of listening to the poet who will have no chance of
evasion in introducing himself.
Niels Hav: This is in a humorous way a very sophisticated opening question for an interview.
My respect! I have been in this writing-business for some years now and have
almost forgotten the reason why I started writing. Your question reminds me on
the first reason why: I began writing in order to introduce myself, to find out
what’s going on and tell it with my personal words. And this is still the deep
and restless ambition, to find the exact words, always a mystery of happiness
in the middle of the timetable, they call it inspiration.
So my answer to your question must be: My poems
and stories are the only truthful introduction I can offer.
Like anybody else I was born. I had a father
and a mother, brothers and sisters.
My career as a writer started as a career of a
reader. I was digging my way trough the classic Danish literature to find words
for my feeling of life.
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: Niels Hav
has published three collections of short stories and five collections of poems.
How does Niels Hav
the poet see short story and how does Niels
Hav the short-story writer see poetry?
Niels Hav: For me there is no conflict.
Poetry and prose are different genres, well defined through a long history.
It’s like belonging to two families. In storytelling I belong to the Anton
Chekhov family, in my poetry family there are uncles and elder brothers as Czesław Miłosz, Les Murray in
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: How can Niels Hav
situate his poetic experience within Danish literary product? And what most
characterizes Danish literature particularly and Scandinavian literature
generally from the remaining European literature?
Niels Hav: As you know Scandinavian writing has a tradition back to the saga and
songs written in Old Norse. Compared to the tradition in Arab writing it’s a
short history, I know, but still 8 or 900 years is a long time. Some years ago
a publisher asked me to do an anthology with the most important Danish poems
ever written, a poetry canon. The book contains more than 100 poets and about
350 poems from 800 years of Danish writing. It was a very interesting task to
find out what is important and original.
In contemporary Danish poetry there are at least two schools, one
relating itself to language poetry the American way or French linguistic.
The other
school wants to get more involved with reality. The miserable state of the
world forces us into political reflections. As I put it in a poem
“Once I wrote meticulous poems with a fountain pen
- pure
poetry about purely nothing
- but
now I like shit on my paper
- Tears
and snot.”
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: Your texts show an overwhelming presence of simple vocabulary, simple
imagery, simple rhythm, simple ideas… Is it an inclination towards "Simplicity"
as a horizontal communicative choice or is it a tendency towards "Simplification"
as a vertical communicative background?
Niels Hav: I admire simplicity, what’s the
bottom in me is the bottom in you. We are all walking on the same Earth, we have same archetypical questions to deal with
trough life. In common we have the language, the simple words for the most
important experiences in a human life. In my poems I don’t want to swim away in
the sky, I want to stay close to reality.
“The task is
for us to decipher our common experiences;
the horror and
the misery that surround us, cling
to our clothes
and seep into all of our bodies.
To
notice what’s going on, and if possible
to say things
as they are.”
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: He who studies carefully your poems will no doubt pay attention to the
omnipresence of irony
in your texts. Why irony?
Niels Hav: Who can stand life without humor and irony. I admit;
where the military tanks are driving in and human flesh and blood are dripping
from the trees, that’s not the place for irony. But it
is a sad , ironical fact: we are now 6 billion people
- alone at home here on this planet - and if we want to we can arrange a fairly
good life for all of us. But still we don’t do this,
we put up borders between nations, religions, races. It’s more and more absurd.
Self-irony is needed.
It’s too early to give up. I’m
affiliated with the naïve who mosey on and want the impossible.
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: In times of cultural and civilizational rapprochment
between the peoples, have you invested
this historic gain to read Arabic literature, the literature that has given birth to "The
One Hundred And One night" called also "The Arabian
Nights" and regarded as the first novel in the history of human
literature? Have you read Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel-Prize winner? Or
Tahar Ben jelloun
and Nabil Maalouf,
French Goncourt-Prize winners?
Or Mohamed Choukri read in more than twenty-four
living languages? Or Adonis? Or Mahmud Derwish?...
Niels Hav: We have a fine Norwegian edition of "The One Thousand And One
nights" in our home. This Arab tradition puts up a high standard for all
storytelling. We know of course Naguib Mahfouz, Tahar Ben Jelloun and a few others. The important thing about
cultural exchange is translations, we need more translations. The Arab writers
have an amazing capital of wisdom and beauty to offer to the rest of the world.
My dear friend Salim Abdali is now translating the poetry of Adonis into Danish,
we are looking forward to read this translation and to learn more about modern
Arab poetry.
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: After the first translations of your two poems into Arabic, you have
personally remarked the warm welcome
that has accompanied their release. In three days, your first poem, "In
Defense of Poets", was published on more than twenty Arabic cultural
websites. Even this interview is done to the wish of Arab readers who contacted
us insisting on knowing much more about the newly-translated Danish poet. What
can be the motive behind that, in your opinion?
Niels Hav: I don’t know. I’m glad to hear this, but I can’t answer the question.
I’m surprised how well-informed and interested readers you have.
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: Danish literature is Scandinavian readers' gateway in the south. Is
there any rising trend among Danish Intelligentsia to support the very few
attempts, mainly by Arab community in
Niels Hav: I’m glad to say there are some efforts to support more translations.
But it is small editions. Immigration through the last quarter of a century has
supplied the Scandinavian countries with people from all parts of the world. I
myself live with my family in Norrebro, the part of
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: You know that literary translation is not open to everyone mastering a couple of languages: the
source language and the target language. Translations of this kind are usually
"translations of the vocabulary of the poem". Whereas
translations supervised by creators regarded as "translations of the
power of the text" being performed by a creator who is no foreigner on
the literary field. Have you thought of choosing your future translators from
creators?
Niels Hav: My new collection of poetry “We Are Here” is just published in
This book is translated from
the Danish by P.K. Brask and Patrick
Friesen, both of them good writers. In
As poems and stories are the only articles
I have in my shop, it’s essential for me not to have these objects spoiled in
translation. I’m sure you are right: a skilled poet is always the best to
translate poetry. But let’s never forget; inside many scientists or civil
readers there is a hidden poet, waiting for the right moment to blossom.
Mohamed saïd Raïhani: A free word to conclude this interview?
Niels Hav: Then I want to say: Thank you! It’s a pleasure to exchange words with
you. I hope the future will establish new institutions for cultural exchange
between our two countries. New
generations will look at this confused epoch with a smile. Empires and
political systems last for only a time, invincible is the marrow which every
morning lifts us all out of sleep, each with our own flopping catch of joy and
hope.
Morocco/Copenhagen,
May 1th 2007
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