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"Facing
the Worst..." / "Vastapäätä pahin..."
76 x 54 cm, a part
of Stages of Womanhood / Naisen vaiheet (2011–).
This
drawing recycles two poems by Samuel Beckett
(1906–1989) and Sebastian Chamfort
(1741–1794).
First is Beckett's version or
translation of Chamfort's aphorism. Beckett's
version is:
Live and clean forget from day
to day / Mop life up as fast as it dribbles away
...and the original reads:
Quand on a été bien
tourmenté, bien fatigué par sa propre sensibilité,
on s’aperçoit qu’il faut vivre au jour le jour,
oublier beaucoup, enfin éponger la vie à mesure
qu’elle s’écoule.
The literal translation of that (by
Chris Love) would be:
When you’ve been truly
tormented, truly exhausted by your own feelings,
you realize that you need to live day to day,
forget much, and finally, mop up life as it drains
away.
The second poem is Beckett's
Facing the worst / until the
head explodes / into laughter
...and the original (which
Beckett himself never translated to English) reads:
en face / le pire / jusqu’à ce /
qu’il fasse pire
In Finnish (by Caj
Westerberg) it goes like this:
Vastapäätä pahin / kunnes pää /
nauruun räjähtää
76 x
54 cm, a part of Stages of Womanhood / Naisen
vaiheet (2011–).
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