SAID within the Frankfurt anthology | EUROtoday

There is not any lyrical obscuritas right here. The Iranian-German poet SAID wants 5 easy verses, two clear sentences and nineteen acquainted phrases to carry collectively 4 traces as if in a focus with the best linguistic simplicity and essentially the most pointed brevity: threshold second, return, acquainted strangeness and stress characterize the poem. Let’s comply with these contours: On the edge, within the area between the surface and the within of the home, the entrance door and the hallway mark transgressive areas. Created to be walked by, they aren’t supposed for an extended keep. Anyone who walks by it finds themselves in the home with out having already arrived. An open entrance door calls into query its personal perform. If it is open anyway (versus within the aisle), you may depart it out immediately. It then seems functionless, like poetry, which in flip factors into the open. And but an open door signifies that there is no such thing as a motive to cover something from inside, neither is there any concern of an exterior menace in opposition to which one must lock the door and gate. It is a welcome signal even earlier than you enter the precise residing area.

The poem stays on this threshold, however – second line – makes it clear that getting into the home is a return. Someone who’s accustomed to the spatial circumstances on this home arrives right here. He clearly is aware of who to seek out there. Or whether or not nobody is anticipated there? The return can in all probability declare to be some of the conventional topoi in literary historical past – from Homer’s “Odyssey” to the Epic of Gilgamesh – in each western and japanese cultures. So in SAID’s miniature, somebody is on the way in which not simply to a home, however residence.

Therefore, reminiscence and expertise overlap on this poem. In the darkish of the hallway, the next applies: If you may’t see, it’s a must to really feel. SAID – third line – skilfully highlights a physique method that’s completely inconspicuous in on a regular basis life as a result of it’s practiced. Have you ever considered methods to activate a lightweight swap? But solely overseas! When you encounter totally different circuits and resistances than at residence. In Germany the swap is all the time on the deal with facet. You are available from the surface and function it together with your proper hand. Life abroad could have all the time remained overseas to you, however the hand has automated this grip to carry mild into the darkness. This automatism means: residence.

SAID, who since coming to Germany in 1965 solely returned to Iran as soon as (in 1979) till his dying in 2001, has this minimal gesture of residence in thoughts. Because now, when crossing the edge, the error of the westernized hand that has been skilled over time exhibits that you’ve got additionally turn into a stranger in your homeland: there is no such thing as a mild. Total obscuritas! In the Iranian home, the sunshine swap is on the opposite facet. What a lucid exaggeration – sure, you may hear the Luciferic within the phrase – from the Iranian-born author, who printed solely in German written in a Westernized hand. And anybody who pays consideration to the solely mild vowels within the second motion will acknowledge the fantastic method by which brightness reigns on this darkish second. If you may’t see, it’s a must to hear.

Because this poem displays on electrical infrastructure on the essential second of switching, it’s also one about voltage. SAID takes up the home metaphor recognized from the mnemonics of rhetoric as a way to play with the uncanny when getting into the home. Anyone who steps into the (not half, however explicitly “complete”) darkness of the hallway could also be accustomed to the overall circumstances. But with the situational ones it isn’t: Does anybody stay there? Is this place occupied now? This will solely turn into clear just a few steps and doorways additional. But within the threshold second there’s stress. Also an inside stress. It’s like {the electrical} circuit of sunshine: the swap is flipped, the management circuit closes, the voltage drops, the lamp lights up. The mild as a second of return dissolves into rest. Seen within the mild, clearly mirrored, the peculiarity of 1’s personal life lies within the passage by and with the double stranger that enables one to reach neither in a single’s homeland nor in a single’s residence. No one apart from SAID may have launched such a novel poem into German-language poetry, which, in its components, combines Iranian with German in such a novel method.