The amazement that takes hold of a person when he contemplates the miracle inside another. The astonishment, the fascination, of discovering how a human being can perform an activity that seems unachievable to us, and instead, right before our eyes, it is executed with a grace that always comes hand in hand with seeming ease. The flights of the pole vaulter, the concert pianist, and Giselle’s dancers who defy gravity. This admiration, this passion, sometimes becomes a powerful driving force that drives us to act out of the pure desire to touch what is offered to us as a blessing, even in another discipline. It is the same longing that leads us to ask how they do this. What is technique, what is talent? This is genius.
The answer almost always appears in the form of the word dedication, which also includes other meanings such as effort, perseverance, and work. But this was the question on my mind when I had the opportunity to interview Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse at Literature 2023 in March this year; as a result of my devotion to his literature and the complicity of his editors. Conatus made it possible for me to connect with him. For me, this was a significant responsibility, even though I was aware that he was not well known in Spain and that the readership of both the interview and my review of his work could be counted on my fingers. a hand. But the feeling of respect for his literature was great. A brilliant, surprising piece of writing that never hesitates, from the dazzling way of confronting the essence of things to the most intimate.
The question was, but obviously I wasn’t going to ask it directly, so I wrote about what his books, and mainly the discovery of Septology, meant to me, the reading of which leads to a very similar state of entering a trance through what appears to be a single sentence spread across seven books. A sentence that produces a strange energy, rising and falling, captivating and hypnotizing us, making the reading simultaneously fast and slow, unbridled and controlled at the same time, until it reaches a mystical unity similar to that produced by the hero. The painter invoked the Asle, the prayer at the end of each of the Septology books, in Latin and in his own language.
I wrote about the themes of the novel for me (love, hope, the sacred, trust in eternity), the special uncensored way of presenting faith and religion, the conflict between reality and dreams, and the awareness of some loved ones. not being here anymore and the impossibility of overcoming that absence without regret. And I imagined that he kept in mind Caspar David Friedrich’s famous saying that a painter should paint not only what is in front of him, but also what he sees inside, in order to trace the character of his main character, the painter Asle.
Generosity
Fosse was very generous in his answers. Because he is very generous in his literature. His editors sent him the interview on March 6, and the response was received first thing in the morning the next morning. He told us that writing, for him, was associated with disappearing as a person rather than being visible as a person, and that he did not intend to achieve anything because he felt that writing was a form of listening, not a form of planning or pre-assertion. he just starts writing, and sometimes he gets the feeling that what he’s describing is already there somewhere, and he needs to write it down before it disappears. Sometimes this is easy for him, but sometimes he has to go after the text that is somehow already there. For him, writing is a journey into the unknown, and he often wonders what the meaning, or at least the deeper meaning, of what he writes is.
For this reader, the deep meaning of his books lies in a constant and meticulous effort to transcend our condition as mortal beings. A strong desire not to bow to the limits imposed by time and to eliminate all traditional lines that connect the past to the present and push us from here to the future. Fosse (Fosse’s characters) does not bow to the force that drags us towards the future, towards the inevitable conclusion; instead, he surrenders to an artistic and spiritual mission to blur boundaries, bend planes, unite lives and reclaim the past. The usual flow of time seems to have broken away from the usual writing norms (dialogue texts, punctuation marks, capital letters).
When I asked him whether it was more important in a novel how it was told than what it said, he answered yes directly and explained that his literature was, to a very low degree, “about something.” Write well when you feel that there is a unity in the writing with the language that exists beyond the text, a unity that includes what is said but without words, so to speak. the language itself.
As a matter of fact, the main thing in his works is not the events, but the traces left by the events on the characters. Moments pass, scenes change, people leave, and the aim here, what Fosse proposes with a fairy-tale naturalness and touching originality, is to lead to the expression of emotion by using an action, some anecdotes, some dialogues as a tool. What is not expressed? The truth of the permanent, the essence. But going back to the beginning, how do you do this?
literary ostinato
To make a pictorial analogy, considering that not only the protagonist Asle, but also his best friend, the other Asle, and his wife Ales are painters, he applies very long strokes of what is evoked, what is concrete, to the concrete. The background of the concrete held in memory, thus the base of the canvas, what is happening outside, is effectively canceled out by the inner limitlessness of the characters, by layers upon layers of memory, and eternal separation is achieved. The struggle between inside and outside, between private and public, is what is hailed as verifiable and absolute.
In Fosse’s novels, the superiority of the objective and impartial disappears and the characters’ awareness of the events prevails, elevating it to the level of eternity. And all this through a formal motif that is repeated, chained, fixed in a pattern that draws us towards his style of saying with an increasing verbal progression, making use of a very personal style that we can describe as literary ostinato.
My first readings of Septology took place during the quarantine weeks, when we all experienced the impression that physical, consciousness and reality, as well as past and present, were merging, temporal boundaries were being torn apart. I and II. The first part, titled The Other Name, which includes the novels, was published in 2019, when Fosse was at the Frankfurt Fair, where Norway was the guest country. Secondly, in 2020 with deliveries III-V under the title Yo es otro and in 2022 in De conatus, again with a magnificent translation by Cristina Gómez Baggethun and Kirsti Baggethun. And the last one, A New Name, was released in 2021 and in Spain in January 2023.
The waiting period between deliveries was addressed through readings of the Trilogy, published in 2014 and in Spain in 2018, which included three works Vigilia, Olav’s Dreams and Desaliento and Melancolía, published by Emecé in 2006, and used dialogue points and dashes. surprisingly, it suddenly seems conventional. Very recently, De conatus and Nórdica’s joint edition of the magnificent book Morning and Afternoon again focused on overcoming death, enlightenment and transcendence.
Each reader will decide how to include Fosse’s books in their own sanctuary and how to absorb the brilliant exhilaration of reading with the sense of realization that what they have in their hands is an inexhaustible work of art. How to approach its themes (the search for holiness, spiritual experience, the survival of love) and how to read the prayer of this narrative style that makes everything happen at once and expands, contracts and intensifies like a flock of starlings.
Beatriz and I were walking down a street in Bergen, Norway, when Jon Fosse got off the subway. In his black corduroy jacket and ponytail, he walked ahead like Asle, the hero of Septology. We were going to the International Fosse Seminar in Bergen. There were independent editors, literary critics and translators who published their work there. That night he met us at Bergen’s oldest restaurant. We approached him one by one to greet him. Smiling and shaking hands was enough, we didn’t need to talk. We were more interested in septology than Jon Fosse.
Afterwards we went for drinks and started talking about literature. Cristina Gómez Baggethun and I confused our impressions of Fosse’s novels with philosophy. We were excited about a possible paradigm shift. Can you imagine that the attention will now shift to us, and that childish and pathetic self that invades all literature will no longer be interesting? Bring the focus back to the artistic experience. In septology, art is the realm on the other side of human misery. Asle lives in constant constraints and must paint. We realized it the next day. We were at the end of Hardanger Fjord. After the colorful trees, water, mountains, curves and clouds, there was the horizon in front of us. There, far away, was the sun blending into the sea and it was the place of mystical experience. Cristina, Beatriz and I said, look, House, Mountain, Waterfall, Boat, Cabin. Septology’s hero would have no life without Asle. We put so much thought into every word in terms of expression. I talk on the phone for hours.
We returned to the bus and had dinner at the hotel where Asle had slept many times. At the table we talked about the narrator of Septology. I love that narrator. This is the moment of psychological death, the moment of extinction of the self. Asle stands in front of him and observes everything that is alien to him at the time. Now that everything is done, even your final painting, you don’t need to do anything except see what happens. Ales’ love awakened consciousness. And the possibility of death. There they were: Nun, Father, Street, Hotel, Waterfall. And you see it in such detail that you relive the fear and feel the need to pray like a little child. No one conveyed fear better than Fosse. Those of us at that table were part of the classic, old method of book publishing. We were there to delve deeper into Fosse’s writing. We were not thinking about the Nobel Prize, but only about what he wrote.
I remember many decisions now: Should we translate the Great Stone? If we don’t do this, some meaning is lost. But we didn’t translate Bjørgvin anyway. Let’s read it again. Hours of conversations between Norway and Galicia in mid-August. This is independent editing, without rushing, thinking over every word and the reader’s experience. As Fosse says: “This prize rewards literature that simply wants to be literature.”