Praksis 1-12

Af : Erik A. Nielsen

I 1996 var Højholt indstillet til den europæiske Aristeion-pris. Nedenstående artikel indgik i indstillingsrapporten.

To put it into plain words, for more than 25 years, the poet Per Højholt has set the standard for Danish lyric poetry and for reflections on the theory of poetry. In recent years he has also shown great authority in the field of prose writing. Only a very small minority of the writers who have made their first appearance during this long period have been able to avoid taking a position on his work. This is primarily due to two qualities in his oeuvre: a uniquely disciplined working through of his texts right down to the last detail without this spoiling the artistic spontaneity and imaginative power, and secondly a fascinating collusion between theory formation and artistic practice, which has helped transform theories of poetry as artistic manifestos into an ambitious genre in Danish literature.

   Per Højholt’s series of books known as the PRAKSIS Series consists of twelve slender volumes under a common title, but each with its own subtitle, published between 1977 and 1996, when the series was concluded with the volume entitled Anekdoter (Anecdotes). With the overall title of PRAKSIS (Practice), Per Højholt has sought to underline the nature of the different volumes as workshop samples, as is also emphasised by the extremely unostentatious appearance of these small books. At the same time, the reader approaching this series will be left in no doubt that we are here confronted with texts of a quite perfect finish that betrays the supremely competent workman, a finish with a character entirely of its own and a highly original re-formulation of the tradition of modernist lyric poetry.

   The twelve little volumes in the series constitute a rounded whole and taken together represent an abundance of modernist writing, a closely integrated composition rather in the manner of a Romantic Gesammtkunstwerk: five short collections of poems containing the most concentrated and imaginatively varied work which Danish poetry has put on view in the course of the last few decades, five volumes of short stories in prose collected in Højholt´s special blind alley genre, and two volumes of essays on the theory of art which are related to Højholt´s two earlier large-scale theories of poetry, Cézannes metode (Cézanne´s Method) (1967) and Intethedens grimmasser (Grimaces of the Void) (1972).

   The most surprising feature of the PRAKSIS series is perhaps the prose genre known as the blind alley, an outrageous and philosophically founded tale in a tradition stretching from Lawrence Sterne to J.L. Borges, written with at least part of the tongue in the cheek and with a splendid sense of fiction as playful deception with profound perspectives. The sheer inventive brilliance in these tall stories and glorious concoctions - all told in a perfectly deadpan manner - must surely be seen as Højholt´s studies for a major novel of labyrinthine fantasy and invention, but the fantastic inventiveness of these condensed prose pieces themselves leave nothing to be desired. After reading each of them, we are left with a sense of having been caught in a thought-provoking trap, which it is impossible to find a way out of by interpretation, but from which you are simply forced to leap. At the same time, however, Højholt´s lyrical expressiveness has been renewed and enriched as a result of the volumes of poems in this series of "practice pieces". His ability hermetically to separate an area of text from everyday experience has in a remarkable way enabled him to refer back to this everyday experience using a strongly poetical and ironically guarded coded language.

   Anyone able to break these astounding poetical codes suddenly finds himself penetrating into Højholt´s very passionate transilluminations of the costs of artistic creation. To Højholt, poetical theory and practice meet in a way that annuls them both and brings them to transilluminate each other. The impersonalisation of writing has been a central theme in Højholt´s theory of poetry and his work with the artistic text. This impersonalisation has without doubt succeeded, but in the paradoxical way that Per Højholt´s personal and unmistakable diction now increasingly shines through everywhere as an artistically re-created voice. The timbre is infused with what might be called quoted tones which whirl past in a varied play of moods and ideas: pretended indignation, petty bourgeois narrowness, sentimentality, emotion, lasciviousness, matter-of-factness, madness and a brilliant sense of humour. A symphony of voices held together in an ironically established and firmly guided artistic grip controlling everything that is permitted to emerge within the confines of the text.

   In a radical renunciation of the tradition of Romantic poetry and sensitivity, Højholt´s texts appear to reject everything idyllic, all metaphorical language and all sensibility. But the ironical distance, the vociferous scepticism in the texts, surprisingly creates room for a quite subdued and often deeply moving voice which makes an appreciation of nature and the feelings of the heart shine out through a superficial layer of energetic modesty. The extremely reluctant nature poet Per Højholt has nevertheless written some of the most precise and concentrated - almost haiku-like - expressions of an appreciation of nature to be found in Danish literature.

   In his thinking, his tone, his ability to give artistic form, Per Højholt is original to a degree rarely experienced. This is why he has been able to establish the norm for so much other poetry in his day.