Lucienne Stassaert

Afscheidsliedje

Language: dutch

Translations: spanish (Canción de despedida), english (Song of Farewell)

Afscheidsliedje

Er is een liedje
dat de tijd
doet keren

weet je nog hoe
nu dan hoe
nu dan hoe

wat een stem
geluk zou noemen
onverdraaglijk

helder klinkt
in het begin
en aan het begin

van het einde?
irgendwo
irgendwo

loopt de melodie
daarna
verloren

weet je nog hoe
nu dan hoe
nu dan hoe

ze tintelde
en pinkelde
tot je een belletje

hoorde rinkelen:
de liefde is op
de maat is vol -

Er blijft een stem
in een muziekdoos
achter

ze zegt niet hoe
zegt niet hoe lang
ze klem zit

en om het kistdeksel
te openen
weet je nog hoe

nu dan hoe
nu dan hoe
zal je een steen

moeten oplichten:
ik ben het, vader,
laat mij binnen

het geeft niet hoe
het geeft niet hoe

Lucienne Stassaert

photo © Régine Ganzevoort

* 10.01.1936, Antwerp, Belgium
lives in: Antwerp, Belgium

As a young woman, Lucienne Stassaert (1936) was a promising concert pianist, but quite quickly came to prefer creative to interpretative artistry, exchanging music for literature and painting. She made her debut as a writer in 1964, with the poetic prose book Verhalen van de jonkvrouw met de spade (Tales of the Lady with the Spade). As well as prose, Stassaert also wrote radio plays and stage plays, but above all made a name for herself as a poet. In her work, all kinds of interconnected tensions and oppositions find expression: life and destruction, man and woman, loss and fulfilment, love and death.

Stassaert’s early poetic work is in the tradition of post-experimental poetry of the 1960s and 70s: stylistically striking verses with many symbolically laden images and juxtapositions that often have a concealing or hermetic effect and within which the search for personal identity is central. Her language is evocative, often making use of musical forms, an element which has become much more pronounced in her later works. Her most recent work is less terse and strives to achieve a more open style in which the female voice still resonates.

Over the last few years, Lucienne Stassaert has experienced a tremendous poetic upsurge. In 2004, she compiled the anthology In aanraking (In touch) – a large selection of poems spanning 35 years of writing, introduced by her younger colleague and kindred spirit Bart Vonck. Vonck pointed out that Stassaert lets language ‘laugh loudly and harshly’ in her work - ‘Death is briefly made to look a fool.’

Stassaert seems particularly to gain inspiration from ‘strong’ women and over the past decade, has dedicated herself to translating the works of a number of classical female poets. She has translated selections from the work of Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson, and created modern versions of poems by the 13th century mystic Hadewych, who wrote in Middle Dutch. Other ‘strong’ women from (art) history that have inspired her are the 17th century English writer Aphra Behn, who forms the basis of her novel De lichtvoetige amazone (The light-footed Amazon, 2000), and the French sculptress Camille Claudel, whose life and work form the impetus for Stassaert’s most recent collection of poems In de laai van het vuur (In the Blaze of the Fire, 2007).

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