Saturday 24 January 2015

New edition, January 2015

A short introduction to the philosophy of Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff.

Slightly altered version with updated footnotes now available at:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/8lfr8o9jez1eym3/THE_SUPERNATURAL_WORLD_by_Erwin_Neutzsky-Wulff_2015_ed.pdf

and

http://gratisupload.dk/vis/718951/

Feel free to download and distribute!

Monday 19 September 2011

Translator's notes

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

/// d i s c l a i m e r ///
Both the author and the publisher have kindly allowed me to release this version on the web – none of them having read it. Therefore : All blame on me – all credit to the author! My only qualification for undertaking this translation is a reasonable degree of fluency in both languages. This is not in any way an 'official' or 'authorized' version!
- David
/////

A FEW WORDS ON THE AUTHOR, HIS WORK AND THIS LITTLE BOOK
                Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff  (ENW) was born in Copenhagen in 1949 and began his career as a writer in the early 1970’s. He is perhaps Denmark’s most prolific author, and definitely the most interesting. His books are all about the good stuff we like so much: UFOs, weird sex, radical socio-political philosophy, brain surgery and people losing their grip on reality and getting away with it. There should be something in it for everybody.
Despite all this he is not widely read. Some may well find him too complicated, too weird or too radical, but “the ordinary reader” would perhaps think likewise of authors like Dostoyevsky, William Blake and perhaps even Douglas Adams. ENW's books are literature as it ought to be – ambitious, complex and very demanding books that will make you realize things, ask you questions you’ve never been asked before and might change your life. However less than a handful of academic papers have been written on his writings of the past 40 years. This is strange, mostly because the reader will find that ENW's knowledge of (among other things) neurology, history, physics, linguistics, mythology, and religion surpasses that of many university graduates in those fields. Incredible claims seem to be made, but always from a very solid base.
                As a reader I have often wished that someone would someday make his books available in English in order to expand the readership from its present 2-3000 Danes (and a couple of Norwegians) with outré reading habits. The problem then facing the would-be translator is that he would have to understand the original (almost) as well as the author himself. I do not in any way claim to possess the necessary understanding of neither his fictional works nor his large non-fiction volumes - such as “Det overnaturlige” (“The Supernatural”) and “Menneskets afvikling” (“The Devolution of Mankind”) - to attempt a translation of these, and I had just enough confidence in my abilities to attempt the present translation.
This little book was first published in Denmark by Spinx publishers, Copenhagen in the year 2009 with the Danish title "Den overnaturlige verden" .

It should be read as a short, preliminary introduction to the supernatural world and to ENWs authorship in general. It is by far the least complicated book of his – some readers have even complained that it was too uncomplicated. I read it with great interest, though.

Questions and comments are welcome, I’ll answer according to ability.

David Hind, Manchester (UK), 19 September 2011