When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back Read online

  It is the 16th of March 2015, and Carl is dead.

  *

  NOTES

  The Rilke quotation on page vii is from “The Tenth Elegy,” translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell (Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, Vintage International, 2009).

  The quotations by Walt Whitman on pages 15 and 16 are from his poem “Song of Myself” (Leaves of Grass: The Deathbed Edition, Modern Library, 1993).

  “I’m loaded with bullets, no one should come to me with their soft shit,” page 19, is the author’s paraphrase of a line by Ursula Andkjær Olsen in Udgående Fartøj (Outgoing Vessel, Gyldendal, 2015).

  Quotations from Stéphane Mallarmé’s A Tomb for Anatole on pages 21, 26, 28–29, 32, 34–35, 64–65, 107, and 118 are translated from the French by Paul Auster (North Point Press, 1983).

  Quotations from Jacques Roubaud’s Some Thing Black on pages 21, 53, 54, 55, 60, 77, 94, 104, 106, and 107 are translated from the French by Rosmarie Waldrop (Dalkey Archive Press, 1990).

  Quotations by Anne Carson on pages 28, 63–64, and 74 are from Nox (New Directions, 2009).

  The quotation from Plato’s “Phaedo” on page 30 is translated from Ancient Greek by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant (The Last Days of Socrates, Penguin Books, 2003).

  Quotations by Emily Dickinson on pages 33 and 40–41 are from The Gorgeous Nothings (New Directions, 2013).

  The quotation by Jan Kochanowski on page 36 is from Laments, translated from the Polish by Seamus Heaney and Stanislaw Barańczak (Faber & Faber, 1995).

  The quotations on pages 37 and 103 by Inger Christensen are from Butterfly Valley: A Requiem, translated from the Danish by Susanna Nied (New Directions, 2003).

  The C. S. Lewis quotations on pages 42 and 48–49 are from A Grief Observed (HarperCollins, 1994).

  The quotations by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir on page 46 are from her poem, “Feminine Ways.”

  The quotations from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Story of a Mother” on pages 60–61 are translated from the Danish by Jean Hersholt (Hans Christian Andersen Centre, The Complete Andersen, http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheStoryOfAMother_e.html).

  Quotations from Gilgamesh on pages 67–68 and 87 are translated from the Akkadian by Stephen Mitchell (Simon & Schuster, 2004).

  Quotations from Denise Riley’s Time Lived, Without Its Flow are on pages 77–78, 83, 99–100, and 118 (Capsule Editions, 2012).

  The quotation on page 88 is from Walt Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (Leaves of Grass: The Deathbed Edition, Modern Library, 1993).

  Section about Hipponion on pages 102–103 incorporates phrases from the translation from the Ancient Greek (“The Hipponion Text,” Browsings: The Harper’s Blog, December 5, 2010, https://harpers.org/blog/2010/12/the-hipponion-text).

  The poems on pages 112–113 by the author are translated by Susanna Nied and Denise Newman.

  Definitions and encyclopedia entries are excerpted from Oxford English Dictionary, Webster’s New World Dictionary, and Wikipedia, and translated from Ordbog over det danske sprog, Store medisinske leksikon, and Den store danske encyklopædi.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A heartfelt thanks to Line Knutzon, who ensured our survival during the first six weeks.

  Thanks to my Danish editor, Simon Pasternak, who patiently helped me edit this book.

  Thanks to everyone who has helped and supported me, accommodated me, talked to me, and wrote to me before, during, and after writing this book.

  Special thanks to:

  My huge family

  The grieving group

  Mette Moestrup

  Denise Newman

  Susanna Nied

  Mieke Chew

  Pejk Malinovski

  Pia Juul

  Helle Helle

  Jakob van Toornburg

  René Jean Jensen

  Anders Abildgaard

  Harald Voetmann

  Ditte Channo

  Pernille Fischer Christensen

  Kim Fupz Aakeson

  Nicole Carney

  Jason Shure

  Mindy Goldstein

  Sine Plambech

  Maria Vinterberg

  Mia Steensgaard

  Mette Mortensen

  Lulla Forchammer

  Shuki Foighel

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  Funder Acknowledgments

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