#gunvor hofmo

[ma-pi-ma]

La neve difende la propria solitudine

non vuole finestre illuminate

accanto a sé

solo lei deve risplendere.

Non vuole impronte umane

su di sé

solo cani, gatti, volpi

e cornacchie devono lasciare impronte

essi hanno il suo stesso silenzio

dentro di loro

come la luna e le stelle.

Gunvor Hofmo

[distantbell]

Fra en annen virkelighet, Gunvor Hofmo (1948)

[anniemst]

Like the stone by Olaf Bull something falls through you But it is maybe just your childhood loosening from the battens and plunging through the waterfall of your entire adult life.

- Like the stone, by Gunvor Hofmo (trans. by me)

[dustedmagazine]

Susanna — Meditations on Love (SusannaSonata)

Photo by Ida Fiskaa

Dusted was all in on Susanna in the mid-aughts when, with the one-person Magical Orchestra, the Swedish soprano turned Dolly Parton, Kiss and AC/DC covers into mystical, inhuman hymns. The artist, whose full name is Susanna Karolina Wallumrød, has been productive since then, working with Jenny Hval and her husband David and recording about once a year, primarily on her own label SusannaSonata, but this writer, at least, has missed most of it. I last came into contact with her in 2011, when she set a series of Norwegian poet Gunvor Hofmo’s works to music for the album Jeg Vil Hjem Til Menneskene.

Listening to Meditations on Love, then, is like meeting an old acquaintance by chance, reconnecting with what you once valued in that person and noticing, also, the things that have changed.

Susanna’s voice is a reassuring constant, an effortless, uninflected carrier of melody. She has her diva-ish moments, but mostly lets the notes assemble out of air and fog, coalescing with a purity that seems not quite human. “I was never here, ay-yay-yay-yay,” she breathes in “I Was Never Here,” the tune taking shape like moisture condensing on a chilly car window, a squall of sax, a patter of malleted percussion, a surge of muscular synth coming up behind her. The words—and the music—come as always from a distance, an unbridgeable remove that was what, all those years ago, transformed rock chestnuts like “Love Will Tear Us Apart” into haunted mysteries.

Yet over the intervening years, Susanna has picked up an affinity for rhythm, for jaunty cadences of percussion and propulsive blasts of sound. Her partnership with Dag Erik Knedal a drummer with the jazz ensemble Cortex and experimental percussionist Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen of Pinquins and Ensemble Neon, gives her music a playful, sportive mobility. “Everyone Knows,” for instance, pairs her free flowing vocals with a clip-clopping, vaguely equine beat. Her elongated, tone-shifting “hey-ey-ey-ey,” flows over sharp, edged architectures like honey on a wire sculpture. The music is visceral, even as her singing remains disembodied.

Prickly, tetchy arrangements frame her fluid phrasings, as on “Big Dreams,” where pizzicato strings, arranged and played by Sarah-Hane Summers, flit around her like birds. Jazz sax and clarinet from reedists Harald Lassen and Morten Barrikmo add texture and dissonance. Susanna’s earlier works distilled agitated work into timeless, edgeless serenity, but now her arrangements fuel the music with urgency. “I Took Care of Myself” gallops and careens, powered by a rushing synthesizer riff, a rattle and clatter of drums.

The music is so intricate and surprising and full of life that the cover records start to feel like a parlor trick. Sure it’s fun to hear a Kiss song slowed and gentled to a lullaby, but maybe more important to let Susanna couch her songs in conflict and dissonance, pure still but bristling with complication.

Jennifer Kelly

[makingqueerhistory]

If you're looking for any ideas for people to write about: I recommend looking into the norwegian poet Gunvor Hofmo and her (likely) girlfriend Ruth Maier. Maier was an austrian jewish refuge who came to Norway in the beginning of the second world war and that's how they met. Maier was deported from Norway on the ship Donau and was murdered in the gas chamber. Hofmo's poems published after the war are heartbreaking but truly capture her love for Maier. If you feel like MQH has published enough about europeans I understand. Their story broke my heart a bit and I just wanted to share it.

I had actually never heard these names before, so I very much appreciate you bringing them up! I am absolutely open to writing about them in the future, I have now added them to my list, they sound like they have an important story!

[ekincifter]

Gunvor Hofmo "Silence stretches the passage of time when I'm alone. Giving birth, the day subsides into the midwife arms of the night."

[8-bitdyke]

YARGH

4. i’m a sucker for fårikål it’s just . it’s so good literally just lamb kale laurel leaves and pepper

8. yes sweden 😭 which is insulting bc it’s sweden like cmon guys just bc we’re the same to u it doesn’t mean we r not Eternal Enemies …. also usually confused by americans when they think norway is in sweden but also sometimes by europeans based on the accents bc to others they’re pretty similar

10. personally a big fan of hælvete (hell with a schwung of my dialect) and forpult (fucked kind of) it’s just so multifunctional

11. might be olav h. hauge ? i love his poem mange års røynsle med pil og boge but gunvor hofmo with det er ingen hverdag mer is also very much a favourite !!

[sleepdeprivedreadingao3]

The poet is Gunvor Hofmo (1921-1995). She was a Norwegian poet who wrote several post war poems and is often considered one of Norway's most influential modernist poets. The poem I'm memorizing for class is her poem "There's no everyday anymore" (1946 norwegian title being "Det er ingen hverdag mer") which I interpret as being about loss and having to keep surviving in the aftermath of a tragedy (and traumatic experience) like WW2 was

Okay so, you ever forget you love something until you have to interact with it again or stumble upon it again? I really love poems but I keep forgetting and now that I am ones again working with them because of school, I really want to get back into writing some. I used to do it a couple years ago, but I haven't in... 3 years I think? But yeah, the poem I have to memorize for class right now, it hits hard for me which is why I chose it

Ooooh thats fantastic! Poetry is so fun to me. Like, chosing to express ideas in ways that make sense to you and you only, and that's okay. Everyone else spends the rest of time trying to figure out exactly what you meant.

with narrative prose if the reader doesn't understand its called the fault of the author

but with poetry its the reader who almost universally bears the responsibility of interpretation and thats so interesting

[hei-folkens]

«Det er ingen hverdag mer», Gunvor Hofmo, Jeg vil hjem til menneskene (1946)

[meet-me-in-the-pouring-rain]

They come...

Me, begging for strength

in this light's harshness,

me, begging for strength

in the nakedness of things,

at dusk I fight

against my own life,

that which wants to fall asleep

in the society of mutes,

wants to be wind among the winds

wants to be light above the pear tree

wants to be sweet-sharp silence

in an unknown face...

Oh past, oh tears filled with solitude:

Fall not asleep, lie not in weak dreams!

Stand up and keep vigil among the mute

with raised sword

Fight for my face, sword,

the life they scorn,

fight for my bitter truth

they don't share...

They come with open jars

of air and flat emptiness.

They come and think I am water

to be shaped after them!

- “They Come...” from Blind Nightingales (1951) by Gunvor Hofmo. Translated from Norwegian by me.

[vintagenorway]

Ruth Maier (Nov. 10, 1920 Vienna, Austria - Dec. 1, 1942 Auschwitz)

Ruth had a regular upbringing in Vienna. She loved to write and enjoyed school. But when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in March 1938, her family was forced to move from their apartment to a Jewish ghetto. She was also no longer allowed to attend regular school, but had to attend a separate Jewish school. After the Kristallnacht (The pogrom of November 1938) the family understood that they could no longer stay, and Ruth’s mother, grandmother and sister fled to England.

Ruth traveled to Norway and arrived in 1939. She planned to move to England with her family, and had an English visa. But she had already started high school in Norway and she wanted to complete her education first. Before she was done, her visa expired. In 1940 Germany invaded Norway.

After graduation she volunteered to help out on a farm with other women. During her work there she met poet Gunvor Hofmo. The two became best friends and fell in love. Later, she and Gunvor moved to Trondheim and then to Oslo. In Oslo Ruth modeled for Gustav Vigeland.

On 26. november 1942, when the police came for her, Ruth was living at a girls dormitory. As she was escorted out by two policemen, one of the other girls told her: “We can look after your watch until you come back.” Ruth answered “I’m never coming back”.

All the Norwegian Jews that were arrested that morning where brought down to Oslo harbour. There Gunvor tried to find Ruth. She saw her in the crowd and tried to reach her but was held back by a Gestapo officer and threatened.

Ruth Maier was deported with DS Donau and killed in Auschwitz upon arrival.

Gunvor Hofmo kept Ruth’s diaries and in 2007 they where published. In 2012 Ruth Maiers poems were published.

[theshatterednotes]

Norwegian poet Gunvor Hofmo

[desaparecidos]

The words, shiningly silent I shall find give them to you, hammer some moments together under the frame of eternity so you will never forget me

Gunvor Hofmo

[alvedans]

"Red was the valley of your childhood! / All those later years / are like blood dripping more quietly / from childhood's unhealed wounds."

Gunvor Hofmo, "Childhood" (unofficial translation)

[nymphaelix]

poem by Gunvor Hofmo

Fra en annen virkelighet (1948)

Syk blir en av ropet om virkelighet.

Altfor nær var jeg tingene,

slik at jeg brant meg igjennom

og står på den andre siden av dem,

der lyset ikke er skilt fra mørket,

der ingen grenser er satt,

bare en stillhet som kaster meg ut i universet av ensomhet,

og av uhelbredelig ensomhet.

Se, jeg svaler min hånd i kjølig gress:

Det er vel virkelighet,

det er vel virkelighet nok for dine øyne,

men jeg er på den andre siden

hvor gresstrå er kimende klokker av sorg og bitter forventning.

Jeg holder et menneskes hånd,

ser inn

From another reality (1948)

Ill becomes one from the scream of reality.

Way too close the things I was,

so that I burnt myself in-between

and I stand on the other side of them,

where the light differs no from the darkness,

where no borders are set,

just a silence which throws me out in the universe of solitude,

and of irredeemable solitude.

Look, I cool my hand in a tepid grass:

This is ample reality,

this is ample reality enough for your eyes,

but I’m on the other side

where grass blades are pealing clocks of sorrow and bitter expectancy.

I hold a humans hand,

look into a humans eye,

but I’m on the other side

where man is a fog of solitude and fear.

Oh, if only was I a stone

which could roll through this emptiness of burden,

if only was I a star

which could drink this emptiness of pain,

but I’m a human thrown into the borderlands,

and the silence I hear hisses,

the silence I hear screams,

from deeper worlds than this.

[die-rosastrasse]

you said you were passionate about Norway, do you have any fave artists, movies, folklore etc from there?

Hi! During my studies I try to get to know Norwegian culture better and better, but I know I still have a long way to actually be familiar with this country. What fascinates me the most is the nature and how close people are to it, I think that this place is like my home in the world that I need to come back to. But I do have a few faves from the cultural world! My favorite books are "Hunger" by Knut Hamsun and "Ringmaster's daughter" by Jostein Gaarder. I don't know a lot of music, but two songs I always like to listen to are "Du gråter så store tåra" by Ane Brun and "Intet er nytt under solen" by Åse Kleveland. And I love Knutsen & Ludvigsen, they are just so rad! I'm also just getting more into poems by Gunvor Hofmo, I'll probably include them in my thesis. I like the folklore a lot, we sometimes read fairytales in our classes and I have separate classes for Old Norse texts which are fascinating. And paintings which I just love with all my heart are artworks of Nikolai Astrup!