Om stillhet, raseri og rytme

In this essay the poet Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen explores the intersection of sound and silence in a text as a particular location for the creation of meaning. With reference to poems of Rolf Jacobsen and Robert Creely, Pedersen asserts the reciprocity of sound and silence as conditions for each other, and for the life-affirming musical component of rhythm. While one property of silence is that it can never be total, whether in a text or in the world at large, another is that it can hold and harbor fury. Silence can thus be ambiguous, as an expression of unreflective and automatic passivity, but also a force within creative verbal expressions of rage and resistance, for instance against the politics of a previous prime minister who went on to lead NATO. Like the African slaves of history, we might understand the power of sound and silence harnessed in rhythm, in the service of survival and the expression of resistance. Pedersen understands both rhythm and silence dialectically, proposing that a particular, perhaps world-changing imperative may be found at the point of their intersection in the words of poetic texts.