Fantasifoster och fula fiskar. En analys av tomrummet och det osägbara i Agneta Enckells diktsamling åter

• Tatjana Brandt Helsingfors universitet och Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74918

Abstract

Flights of Fancy and Fishy Objects. An Analysis of the Pause and the Unsayable in Agneta Enckell’s åter

The article offers an extended reading of Agneta Enckell’s fourth collection of poems åter from 1994, which is both a high point and a turning point in her production. Here the colloquial language and the feminist themes of Enckell’s earlier works largely give way to a terse and concentrated poetry circling around existential and poetical problems related to the limits of language and personal identity. The article employs Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject to shed light on the continuous effort to articulate experiences – both appalling and sublime – of the unsayable void, which simultaneously transcends and constitutes our language. åter is shown to exhibit a narrative structure: starting with experiences of frightened retreat and tense waiting, it eventually culminates in the underwater encounter with a fish, a crucian carp, functioning as a representative of the abjectal dimension. The encounter results in an affirmation of the abysmal predicament of the symbolic order and injects an almost epiphanic energy into the poetic language. One special stylistic feature in åter highlighted and explored in the article is Enckell’s tendency to use the pause not as a marker of rhythm but as a kind of negative sign: a sign signalling the presence of that which eludes every sign and language.