Dancing With Words to Trace the Rhythm of Sense. The Zbigniew Herbert Award 2017 Ceremony

Abstract

I had to keep going however impossible the assignment (‘twalking’ is the appropriate English neologism) because the contact was tenuous and I had only 12 minutes to fi nd meaning. Was it not Ibn al-Arabi who proclaimed movement as the origin of existence? And did Robert Walser not later confi rm this by saying, “perpetual movement generates morality”? But how was I then to convey my appreciation of the honour of having been invited or my affection for the hosts? To mind came an injunction my Afrikaner mentor in writing, the late Jan Rabie, taught me: “The defi nition of love is to keep on moving and making a noise.”