Idylls – Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

November 10, 2015 ‘Pfeijffer fuses all his poetical power, desire and mastership in Idyllen’, this year’s jury report states. ‘These poetic outpourings render a mourning poet’s elegy about the downfall of poetry and the world. With a large amount of bravado, that is surprisingly alternated by moving insightful moments, Pfeijffer elaborates on his views on society and the art of writing poetry. This book is filled with merry discoveries, deep and extremely banal thoughts, elaborate allusions to the poetic tradition, sizzling metaphors and a truly eccentric poetical standpoint. This collection sings, creaks, fables, dreams and is permeated by a poet’s unstoppable dream’.
 
Throughout this rumbling and lyrical book, Pfeijffer meditates on larger questions by paying attention to the smallest observations. ‘These Idylls are primarily a farewell to the idyllic, fully aware of finiteness and transiency: “And what I wrote or said, is suavely erased by the waves of the sea. And at the end murmurs the murmuring of the sea”’. 
‘16’ and ‘26’ of Idylls is available here in English translation by Michele Hutchison.