Terwijl hij haar as uitstrooit, reciteert hij Lovesong. En dat terwijl zijn vrouw niets om dat gedicht gaf. Dat hij dat durft en doet is misschien wel het beste bewijs dat het rouwen een nieuwe fase ingaat. Hij is weduwnaar. Vader van twee zonen. Kenner van het werk van Ted Hughes. Vandaar Lovesong. Van Ted Hughes. Uit de bundle Crow.
Lovesong ontbreekt in Grief is the thing with feathers.
He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains
Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon’s gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop
In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage
In the morning they wore each other’s face
(Hier leest Ted Hughes het zelf.)
Letterlijker dan Lovesong kan Max Porter in Grief is the thing with feathers / Verdriet is het ding met veren bijna niet naar Ted Hughes verwijzen. Terwijl hij de kraai die in zijn novelle een belangrijke rol speelt dus ook niet van een vreemde heeft.
‘The father in the book is preoccupied with Crow to such an extent that it comes alive, and whether that is imaginary or real, the generative outcomes are the same. The Crow is not Hughes’ Crow, he is Dad’s, the Boys’, my own, any reader’s, and the bird itself, with all the literary, mythological, ornithological baggage. He is the literary subject once removed. I considered using something else. At one stage it was Telemachus. But really Crow kept on hopping about in my periphery and the complexities of Hughes and grief were too much to resist.’
(Max Porter in een Q & A op Foyles)
De kraai in Grief is the thing with feathers spreekt een andere taal dan die in Crow – Max Porter laat zijn kraai innovatiever krassen – maar hun temperament komt overeen. Het zijn verwante zielen. Misschien kan dat ook niet anders: beide ontlenen hun bestaansrecht aan verlies.
Porters kraai is van alles:
‘I was friend, excuse, deus ex machina, joke, symptom, figment, spectre, crutch, toy, phantom, gag, analyst and babysitter’,
en vader leert hem door en door kennen:
‘Things Crow is NOT scared of:
Ted.
Biographies of Sylvia.
God.
Wind farms.
Motherless children.
Bald eagles.
Tar Baby.
Scarecrows.
Man.
Death.
Things Crow IS scared of:
Divorce.
Plot.
Business.
Catholics.
Barbed wire.
Pesticides.
Gossip.
Taxidermy.
Keith Sagar.’
Is het zo goed als iedereen zegt dat het is, vroeg ik aan de boekverkoper waar ik Grief is the thing with feathers gisteren kocht. Hij wist het niet. Hij had het nog niet gelezen. Ik inmiddels wel. Het is zo goed.
Maar ik wil alsnog ook de Nederlandse versie lezen. Het Engels is prachtig, maar ik ben heel benieuwd hoe Saskia van der Lingen de kraai laat krassen. Max Porter maakt het haar niet makkelijk:
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