The Way of Benny

Af : Per Højholt

The Danish poet Benny Andersen is enjoying great success with his latest collection of poems. His colleague Per Højholt has been invited to introduce it.

A few years ago, three authors were invited by the The Danish State Art Foundation to read from their works in the Ålborg Museum of Art. They were Benny Andersen, Jørgen Gustava Brandt and myself. We foregathered at my home, partly because that was the most convenient place, and partly for the sake of the cosy surroundings. While we were sitting in the living room, where there was a piano, Benny sat down and did a splendid and lengthy blues improvisation in which he referred to all those present, including children, dogs and cats. It was done with supreme skill, and his host kept glancing at the tape-recorder, but not daring to switch it on. When Benny finished, there was a pause, long and pregnant, but then it came: Benny had left himself out, and there was nothing for it but to turn that omission into a virtue: Why have I forgotten myself? I'm always forgetting myself. And so he went on, producing an elegy so screamingly funny and so apt that it hurt at the same time. At least, I have never forgotten it.

Presence felt
Benny Andersen is not easily overlooked. His presence is felt. But who is he, really? There are plenty of people who think they know, but he himself knows better. Admittedly, many of his poems contain an "I", who takes the floor on behalf of the reader. But Benny Andersen has invented that "I", and he is not identical to it. The complex question is: In what way is Benny Andersen someone else? This game of hide and seek with identity, his own identity, is Benny Andersen´s most essential motif, his deepest concern. The riddle is obvious, the solution impossible: Who am I?
    Anyone who suddenly has himself brought to mind will relapse into thought. And when a poet becomes lost in thought, he is not so intent on achieving a result as certain other people; all what fascinates him is really the mode of the thought rather than its result, if indeed a result is even conceivable.
    It might otherwise be felt that with Benny Andersen´s age and maturity, he ought to have found himself long ago. In the deepest sense of the expression, he has not. But he has discovered a mode, a manner, of dealing with fact, so that it is both entertaining and amusing and at the same time intensely serious. And with the passing years Benny´s manner has become clearer and clearer, more and more elaborated, so that the depths now really resound beneath him. And they are seen in full flower in Denne kommen og gåen (1993) (All this Coming and Going).

The lot of the humorist
Benny is a nice chap, actually. He doesn´t mind the world existing, not in the least. Nor does he mind being in it, provided he is not there alone, and provision has been made for that, for there is a constant coming and going. But this same Benny has sharp eyes; he can hardly help it, but he does see clearly and distinctly, because he doesn´t merely see with his eyes, which in one sense are innocent; he also sees with language, which is never innocent, used as it is, vehicle as it is.
    Benny Andersen hardly ever means what he says, but what he savs never leaves the reader in any doubt as to what he means. This subtlety is not merely kindliness or delicacy - it´s a fate, one might say, the lot of the humorist. It is tempting to think of Søren Kierkegaard´s clown trying to convince people that the tent in which they are sitting laughing, is on fire. People are killing themselves, with laughter. And smoke. It is in this sense that I talk of fate.
    Not that it is wrong to think of Benny as a humorist. That is what he is almost by nature. But at the same time that is to a very great extent what he is obliged to be, and he certainly makes use of it. And people love him for it. Why? Because he is nice and subtle, an amusing chap? No, the truth is harsher than that: Laughter is a means to achieving understanding. Only someone who understands can manage to laugh. This results in the profound and warm relationship with the reader on which anyone making use of humour is dependent. He is entirely in the hands of his readers, reliant on their laughter and understanding. But at the same time those readers share the poet´s secret.
    This is seen time and time again in Denne kommen og gåen. Several of the poems start hesitantly, as though in doubt as to whether the subject is worth the candle. Then, suddenly it ignites, a pun, a witticism, perhaps, and off we go, in deep waters, and wonderingly and pensively the poet then unveils his themes by allowing his language to blossom and bear meaning, a far weightier load than we had been able to foresee.
    With Benny Andersen nothing is straightforward; he is always at the very least ambiguous, wearing a wry, sceptical smile that can shake even a firmly-entrenched prejudice and occasionally deliver a deathblow to some established truth. Laughter can be deadly, but so can a giggle; that is something often forgotten in more learned gatherings, but Benny, who was once a cafe pianist, never forgets that; he is on the side of his audience. And when that public is one individual reader, then the giggle is the means employed. An involuntary giggle from a reader is reward enough for the writer; no more is needed.
    These are the exacting conditions under which the poet allows his identity to unfold. Such are the terms. The harsh truth is that in order for a poem to succeed as a poem addressing an audience, he must invest it with his personality. A witticism not do the trick; it might make the reader feel comfortable, but more is needed, and that extra element is called "quality", and for anyone working with humour that again means "morals". People, the readers, must realise and understand - they must not be seduced.

Humour and literality
There are many elements of central importance in that kind of literature which we like to call modernism; two of them are regularly overlooked: humour and literality. Humour is often linked to the most obvious form of everyday language: the spoken word. In Denne kommen og gåen this can already be heard in the title - it is as you would say it. Linguistic experimentation in Benny Andersen´s work is most commonly linked to this. He is not complicated, he does not flaunt smart linguistic innovations, his forms are for the most part derived from trivial tropes which are turned upside down until they become absurd. In this way, the experiment takes on the natural aspect that it has to acquire when humour is brought into play. It must be possible without too much trouble to make the reader understand. And misunderstand.
    Now Benny Andersen does not use this method just for fun - it also serves a purpose. By means of a sceptical and humorous examination of language, he is also examining the society in which that language is language. Language will, of course, always embody a description of society. If this description is present in conscious form, as in poetry, any critique of the language will ultimately become a critique of society. And by no means the least important feature of Denne kommen & gåen is the fact that it, too, contains some splendid examples of this in its more polemical texts. The kind man is still at work, but he has a knife up his sleeve.
    In this late phase of his work, Benny Andersen achieves his critique by means of the literality referred to above. A word is taken at its face value, some cliche is taken seriously - for fun, of course - and then a complete reversal of both language and concepts is brought about, and danger lurks just round the corner; indeed in this new collection danger is sometimes there for everyone to see, though still on the premises of the text. Mr. Andersen himself cannot be taken at face value, his ambiguity ensures that he can always go a step further in his text, sceptical and smiling.
    While reading his work for an audience Benny Andersen is serious, not because laughter does not come easily to him, but because by being serious he makes the understanding a matter between the text and the reader/listener, where it really belongs. The poet himself withdraws, gives way to his own words. Benny Andersen is not the funny man who entertains people with his amusing ideas, he is a serious poet who knows his place and his duty. To him it is highly desirable that the world should be a tolerable place, though if you remove the pain and suffering from it, then it is probably not worth the trouble. But pain and suffering, too, must take shape before they can be grasped.
    This demands someone of stature, and that someone can comfortably be called Benny Andersen. A new element in his work is an awareness of tradition: an ever-increasing predilection for previous occasions is obvious in many passages might be expected that the attitude displayed by Benny Andersen would largely exclude tradition, but this is far from being the case. The mere linguistic critique and the examination of everyday language relates of course to former occasions.

The tool of reality
I had this verified in an amusing manner when Benny Andersen came on a subsequent visit. We went off to call on a neighbour, driving along a narrow woodland road surfaced with some sort of cobblestones, and without thinking I commented that this road was in fact a side road to the ancient Military Road. I ought never to have said that. Benny immediately opened the window and leaned out over the road. "Well, then, someone must surely have dropped something or other at the time," he said. "Some clumsy fool must have dropped a piece of silver or whatever!" The past was suddenly present and with us, taken at its face value. Benny looked for traces of it which of course simply had to be there.
    Later I thought that if it had been Benny Andersen himself who had walked along this road in the distant past, then this nice chap would probably have been kind enough to deposit some silver piece or other for us to find even today. A fork? No, an entire set of cutlery - a knife, fork and spoon so that we had the necessary tools with which to deal with what we so stubbornly call reality.

Per Højholt is a poet and a critic

Denne artikel blev første gang bragt i Danish Literary Magazine nr. 6, 1994

Oversat af W. Glyn Jones