Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Septology: A Norwegian’s take on Art, God and the Meaning of Life

 


When my son Bret told me he was reading a book by the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who won last year’s Nobel prize for literature, I was intrigued.  He was reading “Septology”, one of many works by Fosse, (pronounced Fossah in Norwegian), who has written many plays, poems and other books that are especially popular in Europe.  Maybe I should read it, I thought.  Bret warned me that it contains seven parts in three volumes of about 700 pages.  What’s more there are no periods in the whole book, making it one very long sentence.  One reviewer says it has 5 or 6 sentences.   Whatever!  Many of the reviewers say they have never read a book like it.  That’s true for me, too.

The last Norwegian to win the Nobel for literature was Sigrid Undset in 1928, for her body of work - the best known was “Kristin Lavransdatter”, a trilogy about life in Norway in the middle-ages. Judy read all three of those books several years ago and I read one of them, also long books.  Undset is a very good writer about day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. 

Septology reminds me a bit of Marilynne Robinson's “Housekeeping” and Virginia Woolf's “To the Lighthouse”.   These are the kind of stories where at times you wonder ‘where the heck is this going?’, trying to imagine how it will ever end – you might even get a bit boughed down in the repetitious details at times.  Robinson’s novel treats the subject of housekeeping, not only in the domestic sense of cleaning, but in the larger sense of keeping a spiritual home for oneself and family in the face of loss.  There is a lot about loss, the traumas of ordinary life, and the spiritual journey in Septology.  Woolf’s book is mostly written as thoughts and observations, and that is certainly true in Fosse’s writing - lots of thoughts of the main character, Asle.  The words, “I think” are repeated hundreds of times within a stream of consciousness about his present and past life.  Perhaps these words are a substitute for a period.

The narrator, Asle, says things like, "all my thoughts are sort of jumbled together, it's like they don't exist in any order but sort of all at the same time" (p.569).  Sound familiar? I go through most days with many thoughts and wonderings going through my mind, some of which are comforting and some a great distraction.  

Christian faith, especially the Catholic version, pervades the book like a ghost.  The book is considered to be quite autobiographical, as the main character, Asle, experiences a conversion to Catholicism in this story, as did Fosse earlier in his life.  The writing captures both the essence of Roman Catholic spiritual practices and the challenges belief poses to the adherent.  Devotion and doubt are woven into Asle’s thinking throughout the few days when the story takes place during Advent, leading to its culmination on Christmas eve.

One reviewer describes Septology like this: “For over 700 pages, Asle meditates on his life as he drives back and forth between the town of Bjørgvin (that seems to be the city of Bergen), and his home in the countryside, near the village of Dylgja.  Sometimes he visits Bjørgvin hoping to check in on another Asle, whom he refers to as his “namesake” and whom he has recently helped check in to a rehab facility. (this Asle had a much more tortured life of drinking and failures).  Other times he visits Bjørgvin to deliver his paintings to a local art gallery for an upcoming show. During these trips, Asle looks back on his life’s relationships and his journey to become a successful painter, but his story is often messily intertwined with his namesake’s, so much so that sometimes it becomes almost impossible to distinguish between the two men. This confusion is by Fosse’s design, as the series attempts to explore themes of personhood, individuality, love, art, and religion all through the lens of sameness”.   Quoted from Spectrum Culture by Miyako-Pleines. 

The two Asle doppelgangers bring to mind what if questions, like “what if life had gone this way rather this that way because of choices along the way?  There are also two women in the story, both named Guro; or is it really just one person? 

Asle is quite successful in selling his pictures, and he does much thinking about them, especially one with two simple lines crossing each other, which his only friend and neighbor, Asleik, calls the St Andrews Cross.  Asle talks of the “inner pictures” inside himself that he must get out onto a canvas. Through his meandering thoughts he tries to work out what he thinks about art, God and life and death.  The other Asle is also an artist, but his destiny ends up much differently. 

He prays at the end of each of the seven parts of the book, using the rosary to say the Lord’s prayer, Ave Maria and other prayers in Latin and Norwegian (translated of course to English). His favorite mystic is Meister Eckhart, and there are several quotes in German I wished I was able to read and understand.   

He thinks about God a lot and tries to put in words what is unsayable, like this quote,

“God is so far away that no one can say anything about him and that’s why all ideas about God are wrong, and at the same time he is so close that we almost can’t notice him, because he is the foundation in a person, or the abyss, you can call it whatever you want,”

Asle sometimes falls into a kind of contemplative silence such as that which I have read about as described by an anonymous mystic of the Middle Ages in “The Cloud of Unknowing”.  But Asle’s active mind, with constant thinking and remembering, seems to be a distraction from pure silence – not an uncommon occurrence for those of us who have tried to practice contemplative prayer.

I don’t think I would recommend this book to everybody, unless your interest is piqued by some of what I tried to describe here or in reading other reviews.  I read the first book and listened to the audio of the second and third.  It can be downloaded on Libby, and if you have the time to listen, the reader Kyle Snyder is excellent as is the English translations by Damion Searls.  I kept thinking it must take tremendous perseverance and patience to translate 700 pages of this kind of narrative.  There are many reviews online, and most are overwhelmingly positive. 

 

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