Per Olov Enquist: A lifelong swaying between novel and autobiography

By Catia De MarcoPhD studentUniversity of Milan

The author The texts Some questions The state of the art Some textual comparisons Provisional conclusions

Overview

The author

Per Olov Enquist

• Born in Västerbotten, Northern Sweden, in 1934 • Successful career as a journalist, novelist,

playwright • First international success: The Legionnaires: A

Documentary Novel (1968) • Rich dramatic production: The Night of the

Tribades (1975), Rain Snakes (1981), The Hour of the Lynx (1988), The Image Makers (1998)

• Second phase of narrative production: Captain Nemo’s Library (1991), The Royal Physician’s Visit (1999), The Story of Blanche and Marie (2004)

• Autobiographical production: The wandering pine (2008; original title «Another life»), The Book of Parables (2013)

The author – Why him?

A number of elements highlight a close entwining of fiction and autobiography in his works:

• Recurrence of key images/episodes of autobiographical nature throughout his production

• Strongly autobiographical setting even in some of historical novels (Västerbotten, his childhood home)

• Publication of an autobiography in the 3rd person

The texts - 1

• The March of the Musicians (1978) - birth of the labour movement in Västerbotten - a community permeated by puritanical Lutheranism - a young boy torn between different loyalties

• Downfall: A Love Story (1985) - a book about the mystery of love, illustrated through three different

stories: 1) Pasqual Pinon and his second head 2) a man who develops an inexplicable affection for the boy who has killed

his young daughter 3) the love story between Bertolt Brecht and Ruth Berlau

The texts - 2

● Captain Nemo’s Library (1991) - complex and fragmentary novel - two boys swapped at birth - tragedy of the step-sister - frame taken from Jules Verne’s The mysterious island

● The wandering pine [Another life] (2008) - autobiographical narration - childhood in Västerbotten - artistic production and years spent in Stockholm, Los Angeles, Berlin,

Paris - years of alcoholism, followed by disintoxication and «new life»

Also included in the PhD research: ● The Hour of the Lynx (1988) ● The Book of parables (2013)

Some questions

● Relationship between autobiography and fiction

● Motivation of autobiography: self-reconstruction or self-construction?

● Showing or hiding?

The secondary literature: The «classical» studies

●James Olney Life […] has no explanation, but it may have a meaning. And that meaning will be discovered by us, if at all, […] as the correlative to one’s own being, a metaphor of one’s own self.

Metaphors of Self (1973), page 332 ●Paul de Man We assume that life produces the autobiography as an act produces its consequences, but can we not suggest, with equal justice, that the autobiographical project may itself produce and determine the life […]?

The distinction between fiction and autobiography is not an either/or polarity but it is undecidable.

Autobiography as De-Facement (1978), page 69 - 70

Paul John Eakin I shall argue that autobiographical truth is not a fixed but an evolving content in an intricate process of self-discovery and self-creation, and, further, that the self that is the center of all autobiographical narrative is necessarily a fictive structure.

Fictions in Autobiography (1985), page 3

The secondary literature: The recent nordic trends

●Poul Behrendt The paradigmatic question about the fictional contract versus the reality contract is not a question that is decided once and for all; on the contrary, it is asked over and over again, in a constant exchange between the two modes, like a secret note that changes everything.

Dobbelkontrakten [The double contract] (2006), page 351

●Jon Helt Haarder What I call performative biographism uses autobiographical fragments like a stark realistic effect on a screen stretched between the woman behind the work, the woman in front of the work, and fiction (itself).

Performativ biografisme [Performative biographism] (2004), page 28

The secondary literature: The recent nordic trends

● Arne Melberg The tendency toward construction is an important element in today’s self-

representations: narrative construction as a strategy to construct, define and present the image of the self. […]

The strategies for memory that I try to sum up with three key words: show, search, and hide.

Självskrivet [Self-written] (2008), pages 14 and 22

● Hans Hauge Fictionless fictions do not create another world, because they are identical

with the world.[...]

It [f.f.] is beyond novel and autobiography. It is in such a way that we read novels as autobiography. We do not believe they are fictions. And the other way round. We read autobiographies as fiction. We do not believe they are real.

Fiktionfri fiktion [Fictionless fiction] (2012), pages 7 and 23

The March of the Musicians (MM) vs The wandering pine (WP)

1a) He was thin and always froze after he had taken a swim, with blue lips and chattering teeth: he stood absolutely still and shivered, waiting for the warmth to come back.

MM, page 11 1b) Apart from his kindness, he is known for his delicacy. You could even call him frail. When he baths in the summer, he turns blue and shivers for hours.

WP, page 30 2a) [It was] Anselm, the maternal grandfather in the family. He happened to have some sort of sores or eczema in his hair and was always scratching himself there. […] It was trying to sit at the same table when he was eating. First he would eat some porridge for a while, then he would put his spoon down, thoughtfully look up at the ceiling and gloomily start scratching his scalp with his right middle fingernail.

MM, page 98 2b) He (the farmhand) is a an old bachelor who scratches the eczema on his scalp while he eats his porridge, which means he puts the eczema into his mouth. No-one likes it, but he will not mend his ways.

WP, page 70

The March of the Musicians (MM) vs The wandering pine (WP)

3a) One of those [theories] regarded one of her uncles, who had impressed the mark of folly on her when she was with child. The uncle’s name was Anton and he had gone insane; they had tied him to the bench, where he sat and howled, rolling his eyes and singing hymns. All pregnant women in the village had been advised not to go there, but since Dagmar was really fond of uncle Anton she had not managed to stay away. He had stared right into her heart and it was as if she was pierced by a streak of fire and she had started to cry. It was certainly then that her melancholy began.

MM, page 197

3b) His mother is pregnant, carrying the only-begotten son. At the same time: one of his father’s brothers is, while still very young, labelled «insane» and spends a period in solitary confinement, locked in the attic, as is the custom. He is not allowed visits from the mother, since she is with child, […], and secret rays emanating from a lunatic («He looks crazy») can damage the phoetus in the womb. […] Insanity, he learns, is a kind of restlessness.

WP, page 13

Captain Nemo’s Library (CNL) vs The wandering pine (WP)

4a) Six months after Johannes and I were born Daddy died, that is, he who was father to at least one of us. They thought it was his appendix. But it was something else, a hereditary illness you can find almost only in the villages of upper Norrland, porphyria. It was hereditary, it was death’s rootlets between generations.

CNL, page 13-14

4b) He had died. Something to do with his stomach. Without warning he stopped breathing in the hospital. Perhaps it was his appendix, as Dr Hultman supposed, or possibly porphyria, a rare inherited disorder he would pass on to his son, like so many other things.

WP, page 58 5a) And the following morning the midwife, Mrs. Stenberg, came in the cottage hospital room number two with two babies on her arms. Both boys. And she said, with her playfully sharp tone that sometimes could be misunderstood, that it was feeding time. And whose boy was that, now.

CNL, page 65

5b) This time it was aunt Vilma who gave birth in Bureå cottage hospital. The nurse came in with a baby in each arm, both one day old; and in a sharp voice she had said to aunt Vilma and Mrs Svensson, «Can’t you recognize your own children!?» But they could not, and so a mistake was made.

WP, page 22

Captain Nemo’s Library (CNL) vs The wandering pine (WP)

6a) Or Mia Hallesby’s “Three hundred children’s tales”. It included the story of the big black mountain in the sea, where a bird went once every thousand years to sharpen its beak. And when the one mile long, one mile wide and one mile high mountain was completely worn, a second of eternity would have passed. It was the dream of man’s fight against God. It was horrible.

CNL, page 22

6b) He had been forced to listen to the tale about the nature of eternity, written by one of the most feared authors of the Catholic inquisition, called Mia Hallesby. Called! There had to be an explanation for who was hiding behind this apparently innocent woman’s name. In her parable about eternity, the word that measured the extent of punishment, there was a mountain in the sea and a bird. The mountain was a mile long, a mile wide and a mile high. Once every thousand years a bird came and sharpened his beak on the mountain. When the whole mountain had been worn away by the bird sharpening his beak, only a second of eternity had passed.

WP, page 66

Recurring images: the celestial harp

7a) It was like at home. One end of the wires was stuck to a wooden house in a village in Västerbotten, the other out in space, the wires suspended from dead stars, whining and roaring, the song from space which was wordless and about the wordless. It was the celestial harp.

* 7b) The wires were stretched to the house. The house was a sounding-box and he was in the middle of the box. The other end of the wire was far away in the stars and the celestial harp was thundering on and on. In his dream the song of the celestial harp was deafening and frightening, not soft, muted and dignified as he remembered it from the winter nights in Hjoggböle, but piercing, thinner and more menacing.

MM, page 45 -215

7c) Johannes had said, before he became a traitor, that it was the celestial harp. You could hear its music on winter nights, when it was cold; then it sung in the secret world we had shaped for ourselves: full of stars and wires and music and secret signs.

CNL, page 21

Recurring images: the celestial harp

7d) In the dream I knew exactly what it was. They listened to the heavenly harp. And its song, which I knew so well from when I was a child. There were some absolutely white January nights, when the moon shone bright on the snow and it was cold cold cold; the telephone wires were stuck to the house wall, the house was made of wood and Daddy had built it with his own hands, it was like a gigantic resonance box, and the wires sang. It was an enormous song brought from the stars, it came night after night when it was cold. It sang in the heavenly harp as if someone out there in the winter’s night had drawn a giant’s bow over the strings, it sang, a thousand years of sadness and forgiving, wordlessly and sadly, all night long, one end of the wires stuck to a wooden house in Västerbotten county, but the other end hung on far out in space, hung on to the dead black stars. The song came from space and was wordless and was about the wordless. Do not forget us, it sang, we are like you, do not forget us.

Downfall, page 56

7e) It happens especially in the winter, when the hum of the telephone wires resonates against the roof of the green house, like a celestial harp, the phrase he was commended for.

WP, page 62

Recurring images: the green house

8a) The house lay a eleven hundred kilometres north of Stockholm, on the right, if you came from the Nordmark’s, or on the left if you came from Koppra. It was green.

* 8b) There were two other buildings on our plot. I will not deny it. So, first there was the green house, that was little, but well-built and painted green, and then the inner stairs, with the piss bucket there on the left […] The bigger of the two buildings was in fact a summer cottage. […] Daddy had built the summer cottage too.

* 8c) They stole my mum, and my father’s house, and the summer cottage, and the privy, and the cold-water spring, and the frogs, and the rowan tree that was a lucky tree. (NB: 62 matches)

CNL, page 43-47-68

Recurring images: the green house

8c) First a slight downhill slope from the green house, then over the stream, next a long, very windswept stretch over the fields by Hugo Renström’s,before going though the forest.

* 8d) The text continues. Page after page, always about the house. In his memoir he has in fact been careless enough to leave out one other construction, a garage down by the road. This meant the green house was surrounded by two other buildings, keeping watch over his father and him. One was the chapel, and the other the garage.

* 8e) So first there was the green house, and at the gable end the metal staircase, and in front of them the lucky rowan tree, then the rosehip hedge, then the cold water spring with the frogs that had to be protected, then the fields, then the hill, then the main road. (NB: 30 matches)

WP, page 14 – 328 - 330

Provisional conclusions - The author's own words

It’s obvious that Johannes lied all the time. He was afraid as well, of course. But I learnt more from his lies than from his truths. The truth was always uninteresting. But when he lied, he got really very close to it.

When he lies, he is generally trying to hide something important. It’s a rule.

CNL, page 9

He has it in several versions. Not so much as a reconstruction. As a spell, rather.

CNL, page 10

One has to find a meaning. Otherwise one can become really desperate.

CNL, page 117

Certainly true, but hardly the whole truth. He has difficulties in keeping poetic excesses in check.

WP, page 135

[He] defines the world as fragments of truth brought together in a mendacious way. This creates a problem, as well as a possibility, if the liar's grains of truth can be identified and used.

WP, page 230

Selected bibliography

AHLSTEDT, EVA & KARLSSON, BRITT-MARIE (ed.), Den Tvetydiga pakten: skönlitterära texter i gränslandet mellan självbiografi och fiktion, Göteborg, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2011 BEHRENDT, POUL, Dobbeltkontrakten. En æstetisk nydannelse, Copenhagen, Gyldendal, 2006 BREDSDORFF, THOMAS, De svarta hålen. Om tillkomsten av ett språk i P O Enquists författarskap. Stockholm, Norstedts, 1991 DE MAN, PAUL, “Autobiography as de-facement”, in The Rhetoric of Romanticism, New York, Columbia UP, 1984 EAKIN, PAUL JOHN, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention, Princeton, Princeton U.P., 1988 EKSELIUS, EVA, Andas fram mitt ansikte: om den mytiska och djuppsykologiska strukturen hos Per Olov Enquist, Stockholm, B. Östlings bokförlag Symposion, 1996 ELAM, INGRID, Jag: en fiktion, Stockholm, Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2012 HAARDER, JON HELT, “Performativ biografisme: Litteraturvitenskaben og det intime liv”, Kritik 167: 28-34, 2004 – “Ingen fiktion. Bara Reduktion: Performativ biografism som konstnärlig strömning kring millenieskiftet”, Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap 4: 77-92, 2007 HAUGE, HANS, Fiktionsfri fiktion - om den nyvirkelige litteratur, København, Multivers, 2012 KONDRUP, JOHNNY, Levned og tolkninger: studier i nordisk selvbiografi, Odense, Odense universitetsforlag, 1982 LEJEUNE, PHILIPPE, Le Pacte autobiographique, Paris, Seuil, 1975 LENEMARK, CHRISTIAN, Sanna lögner: Carina Rydberg, Stig Larsson och författarens medialisering, Möklinta, Gidlunds förlag, 2009 MELBERG, ARNE, Självskrivet. Om självframställning i litteraturen, Stockholm, Atlantis, 2008 OLNEY, JAMES, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning in Autobiography, Princeton, Princeton U.P., 1972 SARRIMO, CRISTINE, Jagets scen. Självframställning i olika medier, Göteborg, Makadam förlag, 2012 SELVSKREVEN - om litterær selvfremstilling, Aarhus, Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2006 SHIDELER, ROSS, Per Olov Enquist: A Critical Study, Westport, Greenwood Press, 1984