Discovery and Devotion
It often feels like a quiet astonishment when witnessing someone perform something that seems impossible, and yet doing it with such effortless grace that it captivates the observer. The sight of athletes soaring over bars, pianists coaxing music from silence, and dancers bending gravity is a reminder that elegance can appear as a natural consequence of skill. This wonder fuels admiration and, at times, a powerful impulse to learn from what is presented, even when it comes from a different discipline.
Behind that impulse lies a longing to understand the craft—what is technique, what is talent, and where does genius reside. The answer tends to point toward devotion: a broader devotion that includes others’ efforts, persistence, and steady work. This line of thought guided an interview with the Norwegian author Jon Fosse, celebrated for his Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023, conducted in March of the year. The exchange highlighted a shared creation process that connects editor and writer in a meaningful collaboration, exemplified by De conatus, which facilitated the conversation.
For the interviewer, this connection carried responsibility, even as Fosse’s work remained less known to readers in Spain. The interview and accompanying reflections offered a glimpse into a writer whose sentences strike with clarity and daring, whose style confronts the essence of things with honesty and surprise, and who never falters in his literary stride.
Discovery
The central question loomed, yet it wasn’t asked outright. The piece described what discovering Fosse’s books, especially the Septology sequence, meant to the reader. The reading experience unfolds as if caught in a trance, propelled by a single sentence stretching across seven volumes. That sentence generates a dynamic energy, rising and falling, propelling readers forward with speed and yet inviting stillness, until a mystical union settles in. Asle, the painter-protagonist, completes each book with a gesture resembling a Latin prayer that threads through the epic of Septology.
Fosse confronts the essence of things
The discussion then turns to how the author tackles love, hope, the sacred, and belief in eternity. Faith and religion appear without censorship, and the tension between reality and imagination becomes a living thread. The reader is reminded of a painter who must render not only the visible world but what lies within, a motive attributed to Fosse’s artistic credo as he crafts the character Asle.
Generosity
Fosse’s responses come with a generosity that echoes through his writing. Editors sent the interview on a Monday, and the reply arrived early the next morning. Writing, in his view, is less about making oneself seen and more about disappearing as a person. It is a form of listening, not planning or assertion; the writer begins, sometimes sensing that what is described already exists somewhere, and the act is to put it into words before it vanishes again.
Sometimes the text appears easily, other times it requires a chase into what seems already present. For him, writing is a journey into the unknown, and questions about meaning or deeper purpose often accompany the act. The deep significance of his work lies in the reader’s constant effort to transcend mortal limits, to stretch beyond the lines that tie past to present and propel toward the future.
Fosse’s characters do not bow to inexorable force; they engage in an artistic and spiritual mission that blurs edges, bends time, and merges lives. His approach sometimes reverses conventional writing rules, experimenting with dialogue, punctuation, and capitalization to reveal what lies beneath the surface of everyday speech.
Language
When asked whether the way a novel is told matters more than what it tells, the author spoke plainly: language in his work aims for unity beyond the surface, a sense of meaning that exists beyond words themselves. If writing is done well, there is an almost tangible harmony that remains even when words are scarce.
The deeper question behind the act of writing
The core of Fosse’s craft lies not in events themselves but in their traces on characters. Moments pass, scenes shift, people depart, and the aim is to surface the unspoken through narrative and dialogue. The craft becomes a method to evoke permanence, a way to test how memory and meaning endure. The question remains, how does one achieve this? The answer lies in a singular, personal rhythm—an ostinato that guides the prose and shapes the reader’s experience.
Awareness
In the novels, the interior lives of characters take center stage. The painter Asle and his companions inhabit a space where the exterior world is softened by the density of memory and feeling. The boundary between private and public blurs, suggesting that truth lies in inner perception rather than outward appearances. The narrative voice privileges awareness over objectivity, raising the characters to a plane that feels almost eternal.
A distinctive formal rhythm
Fosse’s prose builds a cadence that never loses momentum. The language grows in a sustained progression, revealing a personal style that can be described as a literary ostinato. Early experiences with Septology unfolded during a period when time felt both compressed and expansive, as the seven volumes unfolded in sequence—from initial episodes to later installments—culminating in a late Spanish release. The translation work by Cristina Gómez Baggethun and Kirsti Baggethun played a crucial role in making the series accessible to a broader audience.
Shelter
The reader can see how a reader might pace the experience of the trilogy that includes Vigilia, Olav’s Dreams, and Desaliento, with later extensions in publications spanning 2014 to 2018. The exploration of dialogue and its punctuation becomes a fresh habit, pushing boundaries and inviting new ways of reading. The body of work, along with companion pieces such as Melancholia, opens the door to discussions of death, illumination, and transcendence.
Every reader will decide how to incorporate Fosse’s books into their personal sanctuary, and how to absorb the thrill that reading offers. The works seem inexhaustible, a sculpture that grows as one approaches it. The themes—quest for holiness, spiritual experience, and the endurance of love—unfold with a cadence that expands and contracts, like a flock of starlings circling and settling in a moving dusk.