It was no surprise that this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature went to 64yearold Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, whose work has been translated into more than 40 languages.
The author became known in the 1990s through his theater work and is now one of the most performed playwrights in Europe, popularly known as “the new Ibsen”, with more than 900 productions of his plays. This is not only due to his success as a dramatic author, but also because his dramaturgy is known for its inconsistent, sometimes elliptical dialogue.
A graduate of the University of Bergen in literature and philosophy, Fosse sees his inspiration in writers such as his compatriot Terjei Versaas and the Irishman Samuel Beckett, without forgetting the philosophers Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein. His work deals carefully and soberly with the paradoxes of faith and religious mysticism he himself has undertaken an extensive journey of faith.
His parents are Christians, his grandfather was a Quaker and pacifist. As a teenager he left the Lutheran church, distanced himself from religious institutions and, as a student, read more Marx than the scriptures until he rediscovered the Quaker movement in Bergen at the age of 35. 11 years ago, the writer converted to Catholicism after a serious personal crisis.
Since his debut in 1983 at the age of 23 with the novel “Raudt, Svart” or “Red, Black,” Fosse has been extraordinarily productive. In addition to plays, his work also includes novels, poems, essays and children’s books.
In 2015 he received the Nordic Council Literary Prize, the most important in Scandinavia, which recognized the simple and dense style of the trilogy “Andvake” or Vigil, “Olav’s Draumar”, Olav’s Dreams, and “Kveldsvaevd”, “Fatigue, None of It”, highlighted they were still published in Brazil.
The novel “É a Ales”, which Companhia das Letras has just brought to the Brazilian market, comes from the same period. Fósforo is releasing the novel “Brancura” this month, which complements the already published novel “Melancolia” by Tordesilhas. Four more books by the author are planned by 2025.
Everything to read
Fosse’s unique use of language is characterized by sleek craftsmanship, and his works tend to be compact and dense, rarely exceeding a hundred pages. With a poetic prose style, the narrative acquires a strongly musical and rhythmic simplicity that, according to the critic, “lets the silence speak” in the space of the unsaid.
It is not difficult to recognize the legacy of high modernism, which gives form to inner experiences of time and place through monologues and streams of consciousness.
It is writing that can seem inaccessible and difficult especially when the author eschews the use of periods, as is the case in his most recent project, the novel “Septologia,” completed in 2019 and published by Fósforo in two years .
It is his largest work to date and probably the trigger for the Nobel decision a monument in seven volumes with a total of almost 1,300 pages, without a single period.
The novel’s narrator is Asle, a widowed painter who lives alone in a house in Norway in a dark, damp and cold landscape. The story follows Asle as he meets his neighbor Asleik and another Asle, also a painter.
This “Asle 2,” as Fosse calls him, is also alone with his brushes, but while Asle 1 is sober and a believer, Asle 2 is dying of alcohol. The two look eerily similar and we begin to suspect that the two characters are actually the same Asle.
The double motif is common in Fosse’s writings. The names appear again and again in the books and the characters become familiar to loyal readers. The landscapes also bear the author’s unmistakable signature, as do the rhythm, repetition and kaleidoscopic phrases.
The seven parts of “Septology” cover the seven days before Christmas. In fact, very little happens in the time narrated; A car journey can easily last 70 pages or more because Asle 1’s thoughts can flow freely while she sits in the car or lies in bed.
But in harmless everyday actions, the reader penetrates the narrator’s universe, and the almost wordless conversations gradually take on color and meaning, both through what is said and especially through the silence.
Fosse’s nomination as a Nobel laureate will be seen as an oldfashioned and conservative decision, a final tribute to 20thcentury literary modernism. Nevertheless, it is an inevitable recognition of his contribution to world literature.