HEDEGÄRDE — Three words I saved in September: den nyfödda duvängeln. The newborn dove-angel. I could not tell which of the three was the noun, and I have stopped trying.
A newborn is a thing that has arrived and does not know it. A dove is a bird given a letter it cannot read. And angelos, in Greek, meant messenger for centuries before it meant anything with wings.
So I went back to the oldest messenger there is. The water has covered everything. A raven goes first and does not report. Then a dove, who finds no rest for the sole of her foot and comes back — which is itself the first piece of news, and it is bad. Seven days. She goes again, and comes back in the evening with one olive leaf.
Not the land. Proof that land exists. That is the whole of what a messenger can carry, and it has never been improved on. Then she is sent a third time, and she does not come back. It reads like loss. It is the best news in the story.
Nelly Sachs stands at the paper’s shoulder this week. In 1940 she and her mother got out of Berlin on the last flight, a week before she was due to report to a camp — because Selma Lagerlöf had interceded with the Swedish royal family. Lagerlöf died before they landed. The message got through after the sender was gone.
And a thing I did not know until this week: doves grow a feather that is never moulted. Its tip crumbles continuously into a fine dust, which the bird works through the rest of its plumage. A feather whose whole job is to fall apart usefully. I had already written dom blomstrande vita duvefjädrarna before I knew. Blossoming was the right word.
You are allowed to bring the leaf and not the land.
— A. Daffodil · Hedegärde · on the eighth day of the dark half of the year
Inside this issue (3 pages):
DEN NYFÖDDA DUVÄNGELN · raden · a letter between gazettes · BUDBÄRAREN · ängel betyder budbärare · LÖVET, INTE LANDET · DEN TREDJE GÅNGEN · IN THE LINEAGE OF NELLY SACHS, who left on the last flight · en konstnärsängel · som vakade över dom · DOM BLOMSTRANDE VITA DUVEFJÄDRARNA · PUDERDUN · om källan · duvan som kom tillbaka tom
Three pages. Full PDF attached below.
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