Inger Christensen

Inger Christensen

Inger Christensen (born January 16, 1935 in Vejle , Denmark , † January 2, 2009 in Copenhagen ) was a Danish writer . She was one of the most important European poets of her generation.

life and work

Inger Christensen trained as an elementary school teacher, studied medicine, chemistry and mathematics at the University of Copenhagen and worked for several years at an art school. Since 1962 she lived in Copenhagen.

After her debut with the volume of poetry Lys (dt. Light ) in 1962, she published one of her main works in 1969, the poetry cycle Det (dt. Das ). This grand poem, several hundred pages long, with allusions to Dante's Divina Commedia plays with structural designs and an order pattern that is given by the number eight. It is also based on the recurrence of certain grammatical terms.

The volume of poetry Alfabet (German Alphabet 1981), her second major work, refers to the so-called Fibonacci sequence , a series of numbers named after the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci , in which each member of the series is calculated from the sum of the two preceding numbers (i.e. : 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 ...). Christensen put the Fibonacci numbers in correspondence with the structure and growth of various plant species.

In addition, she has published other volumes of poetry and a large number of other literary works, including two novels, books for children and young people, plays, radio plays and numerous essays, many of which are also in German translation, for example in 2000 the essay volume The State of Secrets and Poem from Death .

Christensen was a member of the Danish Academy , the European Academy for Poetry and, since 2001, the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Her books were published in German in a translation by Hanns Grössel , mostly as bilingual editions, by Kleinheinrich Verlag in Münster.

Awards

• 1969: Danish Critics' Prize and De Gyldne Laurbær
• 1983: Søren Gyldendal Prize
• 1994: Nordic Prize from the Swedish Academy
• 1994: Austrian State Prize for European Literature
• 1995: Prize of the City of Münster for European Poetry
• 1998: Horst Bienek Prize for Poetry
• 2004: Tomas Tranströmerpriset
• 2006: Siegfried Unseld Prize

Trivia

• The German poet Harald Hartung wrote a poem: Memory of Inger Christensen .

literature

• Moritz Schramm: In the butterfly valley. A portrait by Inger Christensen. In: Clams . Annual journal for literature and graphics. No. 47/48. Viersen 2007, ISSN  0085-3593
• Inger Christensen. (= Poetry album. 285). Märkischer Verlag, Wilhelmshorst 2009, ISBN 978-3-931329-85-3
• Verena Auffermann : Inger Christensen. Order is half of composing, in passions. 99 women authors of world literature. C. Bertelsmann, 2009, pp. 107-113

Web links

• Literature by and about Inger Christensen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Poems by Inger Christensen on lyrikline.org
• Inger Christensen in the Internet Movie Database (English)