Mönchsauge

"Poems know no question mark," is boldly asserted in this cycle, which has its beginnings on a December night. Cees Nooteboom is at that time on Schiermonnikoog, the island of the gray monks. And so 33 poems of austere form and great lightness emerge, images, mirages, dream images of a reality: Phaidros and Socrates on the dune path, six angels at wind force ten, a marten sitting pensively in the rock face. With Socrates, the poems finally return to a question mark, to the great question of human existence: whence and whither? In the new book of poems by the great Dutch author Cees Nooteboom, words and images confront each other. Especially for this edition, Matthias Weischer presents drawings and watercolors that respond to the poems, play with them, mirror them: The poet and the painter compose a total work of art.