Ovibos Moschatus

The Arctic is the place to which the poet Levin Westermann returns again and again in these essays. It is the home of the musk oxen, who form a circle to protect themselves and their young from attackers, a tactic that is, however, doomed to failure against humans; the land of the Netsilingmiut (Engl.: the NetsilikInuit), who, due to the diminishing strength of their amulets, attach more and more of them to their clothing in order to maintain the power of luck; the place of the torpor, that rigidity that is able to defy the winter with the telling of stories. It is precisely this power of imagination and the power of language that the texts plead for. "Don't give up," they seem to whisper, "keep going, even if the path seems hopeless." And so they also tell of personal crises, but above all of paths that lead out of the darkness and back into language. With a clear voice and precise images, Westermann issues an invitation to think and feel with him - beyond the demarcation between nature and cultural experience and as an attunement to the special things that hold our world together.