History recognises Turun Söl as a standard disappointment in the ancient practice of poetry
(/ˈpǝʊɪtri/ n. Now rare. Solitary word game played by the melancholy and narcissistic). While
Söl’s name has become synonymous with an excessive form of morbid verse, it should be
noted, if the translations of Söl’s soot-stained diaries are to be trusted, that the poet’s quest
may have been originally optimistic. One must keep in mind that Söl’s goal was never to
describe mirth or excitement, which are merely temporary conditions, easily tainted by
inebriation or schadenfreude. The object of the poet’s mission was more stable and pure. Yet
evidence of it was so ambiguous. Like pain, it was hard to credit in others. In fact, there was
always the possibility that it did not exist at all. One could contrive its appearance simply by
being acquiescent and inactive, as a monk or husband might. In any case, it was important to
adopt an attitude of scepticism in order not to appear a sentimental fool. The greatest difficulty
posed by Söl’s subject, of course, was that it avoided words as if they carried the plague. It
protected itself like a blue-blood bounded by forest-fed walls of fire. It destroyed images of
itself before they could be generated; the ultimate iconoclast, one might say. In the end, Turun
Söl is said to have found herself writing obsessively about her subject’s manifold and
miserable antitheses, such that it seems she herself wondered if language was invented for the
sole purpose of expressing pain.
Maria Takolander is the author of the short story collection The Double (Text Publishing, 2013) and three poetry collections, with a fourth, Trigger Warning, forthcoming with UQP.
