Our choicest plans
  have fallen through
our airiest castles
  tumbled over
because of lines
  we neatly drew
and later neatly
  stumbled over.

What collection of epigrams would be complete without at least one of Hein’s sparkling little grooks? Here’s one of my favourites…

If ever someone deserved the label of ‘Renaissance Man’, it was surely Piet Hein¹, mathematician, scientist, inventor, engineer, artist, poet and above all, genius. It would be hard to say what the most significant of Hein’s many accomplishments was, but high among them is surely the invention and perfection of the grook.

Hein has left behind a body of work consisting of around 10000 of these grooks - an impressive achievement by any standard. But what exactly is a grook? ‘Grook’ (‘gruk’ in Danish) is a word invented by Hein to describe his short, aphoristic poems. There being no formal definition, the best I can do is try to capture the unmistakable, but surprisingly elusive spirit underlying Hein’s poems.

Pithy, perceptive, varying from the gently quirky to the funny, and with a deceptively simple style that hides their richly multifaceted nature while robbing it of none of its impact - the average grook reads like something between a nursery rhyme and a proverb, and like them, is absolutely distinctive. Indeed, that is what most impresses me about Hein’s grooks - how, with very little in the way of formal structure, they manage to be so strongly stamped with his very individual style.

As for today’s poem - not only does it speak for itself; it does so far better than I could hope to.

Links

Here’s an excellent biography:
http://www.powerweb.net/playandlive/piethein.htm

Particularly nice to find was Hein’s quote on his invention of the superellipse - “Man is the animal that draws lines which he himself then stumbles over.” A rare insight into the genesis of a grook - compare this quote with the polished verse form above.

Hein not only wrote and translated all his grooks, he illustrated them too. Here’s a sampling: http://www.dataphone.se/~bm/PietH.html

Doing a google search on grooks brings up several pages full of them - here’re some of the biggest collections
- http://www.wicke.org/priv/Grooks.htm
- http://hjem.get2net.dk/san/grooks.html

While Hein’s grooks are out of print in English, and hence hard to find, they do appear to be getting reprinted:
http://www.borgen.dk/engelske/piet_hein.htm

Amazingly enough, the Britannica does not have an entry for Hein; he is mentioned in passing in their article on the Soma Cube.

— Martin