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Spring 2023 • Vol. XLV No. 2 • Translation Folio |

Notes on “The Scream”

By Edvard Munch, translated by Eirill Falck

Sketch 2367

I walked along
the road with two
friends — then
{I walked} the sun set
Suddenly bloodred
Skies
 — and I felt
as a gasp of melancholy
 — a sucking pain
under the heart — 
I stopped, leaned
against the fence, tired
as death — over the
blue-black fjord and city
hovered blood ‹in› blazes
My friends walked
on and I stood
lone, quivering
with anxiety — 
and I felt coursing through
nature a gre{a}t
unending shri{e}k
Facsimile of Edvard Munch's "Sketch 2367"
Tegning 2367 (1892)
On drawing paper

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Photo of Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) was a Norwegian artist whose best-known motif, The Scream (Skrik, 1893), ranks among the world’s most recognizable artworks.

Photo licensed under CC BY 4.0 and cropped from original.
Photo of Eirill Falck

Eirill Falck is a Norwegian-born writer and translator. She is a co-founder of MQR: Mixtape, an imprint of Michigan Quarterly Review. Her work has been recognized with an Iowa Arts Fellowship and a Zell Fellowship, and with the John Wagner Prize and the Hopwood Award. She collects screams. If you would like her to listen to your scream, you can leave her a voice-mail message at (424) 226-6734.

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Dead Sea Scroll

Translated by Daniel Kraft

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