In Aidt's Universe

By : Marianne Barlyng

Naja Marie Aidt (b. 1963) made her literary debut in 1991 with Sålænge jeg er ung (As Long as I’m Young), the first volume in a trilogy of poetry collections, which came to include Et vanskeligt møde (A Difficult Encounter, 1992) and Det tredje landskab (The Third Landscape, 1994). In 1996 her poetry collection Huset overfor (The House Opposite) was published, followed by Rejse for en fremmed (Journey for a Stranger) in 1999. Aidt has also written radio dramas, plays, and two books of short stories: Vandmærket (Watermark, 1993) and Tilgang (Access, 1995).

The poetry trilogy sketches a passage from tender youth to a confrontation with the adult world, which becomes almost a sickness in the blood, and onward to a form of redemption. Everyday life is the point of departure in Sålænge jeg er ung. The language is simple and straightforward, but with a bittersweet tone, an undercurrent of pain, which primarily refers to the fall from childhood. The fundamental experience in these debut poems is that "it is possible / to lose" childhood, innocence, naiveté, simple joys, the other. At the same time the poems wedge their way behind the light to the dark forces: self-destructive, morbid fantasies and nightmares, and particularly behind the self-sacrificing role of the mother, which turns out to be a lie. Side by side with the joys there exists a menacing darkness, the indefinable anguish upon leaving the first blush of youth behind.

In Et vanskeligt møde, this darkness materializes as a melancholy space, furnished with the inventory of mortality, which speaks of departure, pain, and distaste for the ordinary, leaving traces of blood in its tracks. The labyrinthine pattern of loneliness seems mercilessly interwoven with existence. And yet, the "I" finds a "path / that is not white," and invokes angels as well as demons in order to take it: "Do I dare see the soaring images of luminous oaks / with thunder in my eye."

Det tredje landskab opens with and proceeds through a period of crisis, in the wake of departures and farewells. In the tension between the insipid utopia of innocence and the landscapes of despondency a third landscape emerges from the crisis, evident in minimal, symbolic glimpses of peaches, oranges, and flowers. In spite of heavy baggage, the trilogy ends with an arrival at redemption, a reconciliation with fate, and a new beginning. New landmarks from which to start out, landmarks in which pain is not concealed but rather integrated, providing a means for growth.

The poetry collection Huset overfor operates within some of the same parameters, and yet it is quite different. Huset overfor is marked by an economy of construction which could be glimpsed in the pillar-like untitled poems in Det tredje landskab, but which is now strictly and consistently handled. Here it finds expression in the shape of the square, which is elegantly emphasized by the format of the book itself. The poet pares all the way down to the bone in sequences that are both rich in images and meticulously composed.

The poems reconcile joy with loss and pain, based on the perception that they are inextricably tied, and that light can thus be found in the black venom of melancholy: "when I, stripped and exposed, stand still like someone / who has lost, your mouth will put flowers / in mine." The poems convey the promise of a type of joy that is pulled from the grip of pain.

Huset overfor is a redemptive odyssey from winter to spring, from desolation to abundance. The composition is in some ways typical of all of Aidt’s poetry collections. Even though the carpet is ragged and stained with vomit, marked by blood, broken glass, and shattered mirrors, in the end of all her collections, the poetic "I" rises up with renewed force, acquired through poetry.

The nine short stories in Vandmærket also deal with people at all stages of life: people who, for various reasons, are in crisis and are initially excluded from the world in some tragic or melancholy way. What they all have in common is that they have been derailed by their unsuccessful attempts to realize their dreams of love and freedom. For instance, the girl junkie in the opening story "is so hungry and has no conception of ever feeling full;" her dream of flying like an angel is not realized until her death, after she has been brutally raped and murdered. Another example is the woman who dreams of floating weightlessly like a leaf on the water, but her life is literally locked up in an apartment behind heaps of possessions, like armor against the world, with vermin as her only company.

A recurrent theme of Vandmærket is the demonization of love; in several of the stories it even becomes extremely perverted when it is not allowed to develop naturally, as is often the case in Aidt’s work. "Tre dage Prag" (Three Days in Prague), which is the final story in the collection, has to be viewed as one of the few stories that is almost happy. The two people who make love in a hotel room in Prague are described in a typically paradoxical way: "Impossibility can be found in conflicting movements and the unparalleled moment of ice, which thaws and melts." This story offers a counterpart to the insomnia that refuses to allow dreams to emerge, as well as the insatiable hunger. In this way the girl junkie’s angelic journey comes full circle, because in the intimacy that is both impossible and real, a positive angel portrait is drawn: "She is about to melt into the bed, and he glows like a torch at the window. He thinks: So we must be angels..."

The title of the story collection that follows Vandmærket is no accident. The word "tilgang" (access) signals an initial movement away from intractable conditions toward revolt. The characters in Tilgang are all suffering from the constricting bonds of bungled familial and couple relationships. In danger of collapsing, of "falling apart," they armor themselves with silence or pride or by creating the illusion of coherence through a diary-like accounting of daily life’s monotony. Occasionally they do fall apart and slip into a little world of insanity where nothing is recognizable, or into the fog of alcohol, with its inflated visions of dancing freely. This is what happens in the story about the twins; the sister’s right arm literally withers and falls off at the loss of her brother, until both of them die. Some people misread each other and are incapable of communicating their feelings and needs.

The stories in Tilgang are about an endless journey toward a goal that often seems vague and diffuse to the characters; sometimes it isn’t recognized until after it has been reached and become passé. The style mimics the people who, armored and well-trained, attempt to go on and meet their fate, but their secrets or repressed feelings invariably erupt as anxiety in the soul or illness in the body or blood. With her stories, however, Aidt provides hints of a potential new access to the world and to interaction between people, whether in the relationship between two lovers or between generations. The stories also point to the crucial recognition that an individual must fundamentally learn to proceed on his own, and that people shouldn’t stay together at all costs, whether in a couple or in a familial relationship, if the tragic restrictions on free will and the controlling amputation of individuality might have fatal results.

In Aidt’s most recent book, the poetry collection Rejse for en fremmed, a mental map is drawn which is also a charting of female desire. The "I" of the collection is on a restless journey through Europe, yet the goal is to find a way home to the self. But the "I" is not merely homeless, it is also haunted. The "I" is in search of its own time, which in turn is being haunted by traveling in the track of the crazy Johanna (1479-1555), who, as it says in a note, was the true inspiration for the poetry collection. Johanna appears as an echo from the past. For a period of two years Johanna was Queen of Castile until -- ousted by the men in her family: her father, husband, and later her son as well -- she was judged to be unfit to occupy the seat of power which she had inherited from her mother. The judgment was based on a presumed but, as Aidt points out, undocumented mental illness, whereupon the men seized power.

In the opening poem Johanna appears as a dream vision of an enchanted landscape, catapulted out of the heart of the "I." Especially in the middle section of the book the theme of Johanna’s fate serves as a counterpart to the fate of the "I." In these poems there is a double consciousness at work which expresses itself in the osmotic glidings of the "I" back and forth in time, in and out of the perception of Johanna, until there is actually a symbiotic merging -- "I, Johanna" -- and finally a total exchange of roles: "I thought you were the damned, / but now I’m the one." With this collapsing of historical time and the present, Aidt turns the fictional journey into the journey of a modern female "I" through a space that is at once universal and subjective, realistic and symbolic, historical and contemporary. Thrust into the images of Johanna’s story from the past is a highly contemporary story about the loss of love, distance, longing, and sorrow. Johanna is "a vision in a / wild darkness" -- acting as a form of salvation. As a figure that the "I" can identify with, she becomes the light that is sought, which will guide the "I" and provide meaning.

Rejse for en fremmed is about being alive and being vulnerable while still daring to be yourself and intensely experiencing your own body and desire, in spite of the asymmetry of love, which seems to be the greatest existential threat. Something that is new in Aidt’s work is a series of hesitant shifts to Biblical, mythological language, especially in the portrayals of fate and salvation, faith and mercy. Aidt distinguishes between, on the one hand, male abuse of power by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost -- men who here, in God’s name, judge Johanna to be mad -- and on the other hand female faith, the belief in love, the faith that is like an "island" and that is procured in high-vaulted, pure white churches.

The title Rejse for en fremmed signifies that the aim of the "I" is two-fold: It is both a subjective journey and a matter of solidarity, a justification and an act of clearing Johanna, who is placed beyond blame and moralizing: "There exists no gate / for Johanna. Nothing / to step nobly / through." These poems are the gate -- for Johanna as well as for the "I."

The poetry collection is a liberating space, a revolt, and an arrival at new conditions: "Everything spread to all the winds / so we can find it." In this way the philosophical essence is metaphorically presented in a volume of poetry that opens with a storm and closes with calm.

1999

Translated by Tiina Nunnally