Description
An exquisite, lyrical reimagining of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work of 1922, from a rising star on par with Inger Christensen Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, often noted as the most important philosophical work of the 20th century, had a broad goal: to identify the relationship between language and reality, and to define the limits of science. Following on from Wittgenstein 100 years later, Signe Gjessing updates and reimagines the Tractatus, marrying poetry with philosophy to test the boundaries of reality. Stunning, knowing, and revitalising, and glinting with stars, silk, and ecstasy, this is poetry which exacts the logical consequence of philosophy, while locating beauty and significance in the ‘nonsense’ of the world which Wittgenstein dismissed. Praise for Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus Signe Gjessing is a wild voice in new Danish poetry, always closely connected to the symbolic tradition and cosmos – Naja Marie Aidt Signe Gjessing is Wittgenstein plus rapture. In her reimagining of the Tractatus, poetry is a verb; an action to be found in transgressions and transitions. Like a silken butterfly emerging from its cocoon – Information Gjessing turns Wittgenstein 180 degrees, insisting that all the ‘nonsense’ is what gives our lives meaning: bodies, objects, love. All that we, according to the young Wittgenstein, had to ban from the immaculate philosophy of language? Gjessing’s poems have a completely unique philosophical-poetic rigour, precision and humour – Weekendavisen Gjessing is not a political poet in the traditional sense, and it is easy to be dazzled by the uplifting beauty of her poems. But it is also possible to read a more abstract political dimension into her Tractacus and regard it as a poetic ontology – as a politics on a larger, more cosmic level. This is poetry about how we organise the spaces we enter – viable and impossible, concretely or in the mind – ATLAS SIGNE GJESSING (b. 1992) is a Danish poet. She graduated from the Danish Academy of Creative Writing, Forfatterskolen, in 2014. She has published several collections of poetry and a novella, and is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the prestigious Bodil & Jørgen Munch Christensen Prize for emerging writers. Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus is her first work to appear in English. DENISE NEWMAN is a poet and translator based in San Francisco. She is the author of five poetry collections and the translator of Azorno and The Painted Room by Inger Christensen, and by Naja Marie Aidt, Baboon, winner of the PEN Translation Award, and When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back: Carl’s Book, a semi-finalist for the National Book Award.
