unthought, not thoughtless (on jellema ii)

poetry interpretation... and then i thought: correction: word interpretation.

all those wonderful words, in all those languages and their nuanced meaning. nuances interest me. i love details (even if sometimes it doesn't look like it). and then there are people, writers, who have their favourite words, change them, find new favourites, go back to the old ones. one word that jellema likes a lot - or i assume he does, because he uses it a lot - is the word nadering. it's a very beautiful word and i like it a lot as well. it means something like approach, approximation, but there is something really tender in it too. then again he also likes the word as such and writes about it and he writes about writing, the nature of writing...

Je weet niet werkelijk wat je geschreven
(you don't really know what you have)
hebt. Niet omdat je het vergeten wou
(written. not because you wanted to forget)
schreef je het op, 't vergeten schreef in jou,
(you wrote, the forgetting wrote in you)
en schrijvend is het altijd dat gebleven
(and writing it always stayed like this)

wat blijvend wilde zijn: een kunst van kou.
(what remaining/staying wanted to be: an art of cold(ness))
p246

and i thought i make those notes in order to to accompany myself reading jellema, but then again - not only do i not really know what i have written, because the forgetting inscribes inself into the writing -- but do i really know what i have read? is there forgetting in reading too? and an art of coldness. it is winter. there is a lot of winter in jellema too. winterpoems. winter mentions. winter associations. cold.
everything that remains is a cold art. correction: everything that wanted to remain is a cold art. an art of coldness. warmth only by admitting to the fleeting, or better by this wonderful generous abandon (is abandon a form of forgetting too?)? but this doesn't include the forgetting just yet (it - the forgetting - has already started). more correction: the forgetting that wrote, that inscribed always stayed what it wanted to be, an art of coldness. the coldness, the distance of not knowing, the way - the manner of how far one is really removed from - writing and how far one maybe is even removed from the forgetting. what remains, the coldness?

i am too far away from it (today). no nadering.
the things you don't know. do i know what i am doing?
that there is no replacement:
the impartality of words. words that never replace what misses. they represent something unthought...

also you happen. ook jij gebeurt. i love this. i'm just so in love with how he wrote that after the ongedacht. all those unthought words...

Dat woorden nooit vervangen wat ontbreekt:
(that words never replace what misses:)
en onverdeeld er zijn. Dat. Ongedacht.
(and impartially there. that. unthought.)
Ook jij gebeurt. Ook als een droom zich wreekt.
(also you happen. also when a dream takes revenge.)
Je denkt je vliegt, wordt wakker, en 't is nacht.
(you think you fly, wake up and it is night)
p262


this next poem, there is the cold in it too and some more about the nadering. and i lose it in the translating, in the speaking after. i give up. it's all so beautiful, but it escapes me. mentally fogged. i am cold too and i am not getting close, not today. it is as it is.
the last lines in that following poem about the nadering: circumspecting he doesn't see where the nadering beguns, whether it begun and whether it's not rather being thought where it - the nadering/approximation ends. There. 


Wat wordt geboren? Vrieskou. Weer zijn zonder
(what is being born? icecold. again being without)
gedachten. Helderheid die nooit bereikt
(thoughts. brightness that never is)
is uit verdriet, noch uit de blijdschap om de
(reached out of sadness nor of joy because of the)
vertedering waaraan een wil bezwijkt.

Het willen denken is vergeefs de som der
bestendingen waarin zijn gelijkt
op een bestemming. Die gedachten gevonden.
(..................................the thoughts found )
Weet nu de weg niet. Ben weg. Ben die kijkt:
(los my way just now. am gone. am the one that looks:)

wegen verlengd tot waar lijnen elkaar
weer snijden ver voorbij de horizon.
En die began. Voetstoots. Op goed gevaar.

Wat hem gebeurt. Omziend ziet hij niet waar
die nadering begon, of die begon,
doch eer gedacht werd waar zij eindigt. Daar.
p233


but then again you have all those unthoughts accompanying you, that are impartial and don't replace anything. this moment of the nadering (does it have the unthoughtness inscribed? - is nadering unthoughtful?), there is really so much to think about it, i must not forget it... 

and there it is, somewhere else: ook jij gebeurt.

in't woordbeeld zonder overdrijving
(in the wordimage without exaggeration)
een oorsprong naderen die jou begon.
(to approach an origin that started you.)
p267

tea.

 -- to be continued --