A world as world

On Matter

By : Carsten René Nielsen

In his conversation with Niels Lyngsø, Carsten René Nielsen discusses the collection Stof (Matter), in which poems that wind across the page, and can be read both horizontally and vertically, are mixed with strictly classical sections. Between the different sections of text strange conflicts and connections arise, as in the reading of an encyclopedia.

[...]

"Poetry exists in the complex and dynamic balance between mind and matter on the hand, and between chaos and order on the other. What I have tried to do in Matter is to capture that balance in a strict composition that takes everything with it."

"But why this strictness? Why all this connection?"

"I think it's connected with the encyclopedic element. The things that bite themselves in the tail and refer to some other parts of the book, are a sort of references in a way. The book connects itself internally, it encloses a mass of knots and loops within its own framework. So it becomes a sort of world, or encyclopedia. Which are perhaps the same thing. My ambition was that it should be a world. The first thing was that it's not supposed to be a collection of poems. It's one long poem, which is just divided into several sections, but it it is all very closely connected.  The second thing is that it's not supposed to be a book you read from one end to the other. One can do that with all books, of course, even an encyclopedia, but that is not the way an encyclopedia is supposed to be read: it's supposed to be read by entries, by references, which one follows and pursues and is seduced by. One hops around, walks around. As in a labyrinth: from room to room. And one decides for oneself when one will come out and when one will go in again. At least, that's what I would like a book to be like: it should be a world one can enter and walk around in.
[...]

"So what kind of 'matter' is there in Matter?"

"Well, 'Matter' means two things, to begin with, at any rate. It's 'matter' in the meaning of substance: a physical substance, a chemical one, for example, or the four elements as the four basic materials. That's one meaning. The other is matter in the sense of 'material', clothing, textile. Especially textile, as textile and text are related words, after all. So in that sense 'matter' is also language. In old fashioned literary critical terminology one can also talk about the 'matter' of a short story or a poet, its theme or subject. Those are perhaps the three meanings of 'matter' I wanted to elide: 'matter' as a physical, a woven and a linguistic substance. It's an intentionally ambiguous title.

"You're weaving a tapestry of language?"

"That's what one usually does when one creates language. It's often very illuminating to look at the everyday metaphors we use, and when we talk about language we nearly always use textile metaphors: one can weave, spin or knit a commentary to something. According to recent Danish slang one can even have 'wool in one's mouth', if one's speech is unformed and unfinished. Those are only a few examples of the way we usually think of language as stuff, or textile, rather. And since it's also possible to think of the world as substance, 'matter', that might be an explanation for the fact that the two seem to be connected - in a very complex way. And perhaps that is really what I am trying to say with this book."

This article is an excerpt of "En verden som verden" in Ildfisken 16, 1997.

Translated by David McDuff