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      October 14, 2022Divorce 1Tove Ditlevsen

      Tove Ditlevsen

      DIVORCE 1

      He would
      in case of divorce
      demand half
      of everything
      he said.
      Half a sofa,
      half a television
      half a summer house
      half a pound of butter
      half a child.
      The apartment was his
      he said
      because it was in his name.
      The trouble was
      that he loved her.
      She loved another
      whose wife would
      demand half
      of everything,
      It was in the marriage law.
      It was as clear as
      two and two are four.
      The lawyer said
      that was correct.
      She smashed half
      of everything
      and ripped up the tax bill.
      Then she took off
      for the women’s shelter on Jagtvej
      with half a child.
      The child was teased in school
      because he only had
      one ear.
      But life could still be
      endured
      since it couldn’t be
      any other way.
      Translated from the Danish by Michael Favala Goldman and Cynthia Graae

      from #77 - Fall 2022

      Michael Favala Goldman & Cynthia Graae

      “We each came to translate Tove Ditlevsen from very different points of reference. Michael had recently translated book three of The Copenhagen Trilogy and The Trouble with Happiness. Cynthia had translated The Adults, a book of Ditlevsen’s poetry for a college class three decades ago. Michael loved Ditlevsen’s writing for its blunt honesty, its confidential voice, and its relevance today, especially concerning dependent behavior. Cynthia was attracted to Ditlevsen because of the timelessness of Ditlevsen’s distillation of issues like marriage, motherhood, divorce, aging, and death. We worked together on refining her drafts, using our differing life experience to our advantage, debating and considering every term and phrase. Most of our translations of The Adults have now been published individually in journals. We both hope the entire poetry collection will be the first by Ditlevsen to make it into English.”

      Tove Ditlevsen (1917–1976), one of the most notable Danish literary personalities of the twentieth century, and still widely read in the twenty-first, wrote more than 30 books, including the recently heralded The Copenhagen Trilogy, The Faces, and The Trouble with Happiness.

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