NOTE TO THE POEM "WHEN YOU ARE AWAY"

The wisdom expressed by Tor Jonsson in the poem "Når du er borte" ("When you are away") is not new. I have seen it expressed in an older Norwegian poem. And before that, the statement was done in the novel "The Brothers Karamazow" by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It is one of the "truths" Ivan tells Alexei when they in Book Five meet at the inn called "The Spot" (or whatever the spot is called in the English translation). Ivan says to Alexei (my translation):

For one to have a human being dear, this must be hiding; never before it shows its face, love is gone.

What Ivan misses, of course, is to see human beings not as things. Things are simple.

The cynical view of Ivan is not what Tor Jonsson expresses, I believe. I believe Tor Jonsson formulated what can be stated as follows:

TO SAY GOODBYE

To say goodbye

lets present die.

But what was there

will then appear.