Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

about the authors & works

Per Højholt Per Højholt (born in Esbjerg, Denmark, 1928) is most well known as an experimental Danish poet who, despite his determination to continually push boundaries, linguistic and otherwise, was widely read and extremely influential in Denmark. By the time of his death in 2004, his bibliography had grown to include, among other things, over twenty poetry collections, numerous short prose works, three essay collections and three novels. He was also active in the fields of radio and television. Højholt received numerous literary awards throughout his career. Auricula is amonstrosityof abook, a labyrinthinecompositionwith no obvious plot whose baroque sentences may fill half a page or more. The novel’s ostensible subject is a group of ambulating ears that, capable solely of self-hearing, are the product of a silence that briefly fell across Europe in 1915. Twenty years in the making, Auricula is often read as Højholt’s masterwork, his poetics put into praxis, an extended meditation on the juxtaposition of the imaginary and the real. Auricula ’s importance, however, does not lie in the place it occupies in the oeuvre of one of Denmark’s most celebrated and unorthodox poets, but rather for the sweeping picture it provides of twentieth century art and culture. Translated from Danish by Kerri Pierce.

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