Nordic and European Modernisms European and Nordic • Jakob Lothe • Jakob Nordic and European Modernisms Edited by Jakob Lothe Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Humanities www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities Nordic and European Modernisms Nordic and European Modernisms Editor Jakob Lothe MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade • Manchester • Tokyo • Cluj • Tianjin Editor Jakob Lothe Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, P.O. Box 1003 Blindern, University of Oslo Norway Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special issues/European Modernisms). For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Volume Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-0365-1523-6 (Hbk) ISBN 978-3-0365-1524-3 (PDF) © 2021 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Editor .............................................. vii Preface to ”Nordic and European Modernisms” ............................ ix Jakob Lothe Editorial Special Issue: “Nordic and European Modernisms” Reprinted from: Humanities 2021, 10, 79, doi:10.3390/h10020079 ................... 1 Ástráður´ Eysteinsson Modernism—Borders and Crises Reprinted from: Humanities 2021, 10, 76, doi:10.3390/h10020076 ................... 5 Susan C. Brantly Nordic Modernism for Beginners Reprinted from: Humanities 2018, 7, 90, doi:10.3390/h7040090 .................... 33 Annegret Heitmann Nordic Modernists in the Circus. On the Aesthetic Reflection of a Transcultural Institution Reprinted from: Humanities 2018, 7, 111, doi:10.3390/h7040111 .................... 45 Unni Lang˚as Urban Space and Gender Performativity in Knut Hamsun’s Hunger and Cora Sandel’s Alberta and Freedom Reprinted from: Humanities 2018, 7, 128, doi:10.3390/h7040128 .................... 57 Mats Jansson In the Traces of Modernism: William Faulkner in Swedish Criticism 1932–1950 Reprinted from: Humanities 2018, 7, 96, doi:10.3390/h7040096 .................... 79 Elisabeth Bladh The Reception of the Swedish Retranslation of James Joyce’s Ulysses (2012) Reprinted from: Humanities 2019, 8, 146, doi:10.3390/h8030146 ....................101 Dean Krouk The Montage Rhetoric of Nordahl Grieg’s Interwar Drama Reprinted from: Humanities 2018, 7, 99, doi:10.3390/h7040099 ....................117 Joachim Schiedermair Agents of Secularisation—Ibsen and the Narrative of Secular Modernity Reprinted from: Humanities 2019, 8, 111, doi:10.3390/h8020111 ....................127 Irina Ruppo Exile, Pistols, and Promised Lands: Ibsen and Israeli Modernist Writers Reprinted from: Humanities 2019, 8, 151, doi:10.3390/h8030151 ....................141 Louise Mønster Dream Poems. The Surreal Conditions of Modernism Reprinted from: Humanities 2018, 7, 112, doi:10.3390/h7040112 ....................159 Per Thomas Andersen The Future Modernism of No-Oil Norway: Øyvind Rimbereid’s “Solaris Corrected” Reprinted from: Humanities 2019, 8, 78, doi:10.3390/h8020078 ....................175 v About the Editor Jakob Lothe is Professor Emeritus of English literature at the University of Oslo. His books include Conrad’s Narrative Method and Narrative in Fiction and Film (both from Oxford University Press), and he is co-editor of four volumes in the Theory and Interpretation of Narrative series published by The Ohio State University Press. He was elected to The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 1999 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2018. vii Preface to ”Nordic and European Modernisms” Presenting the reader with different aspects of, and varying perspectives on, Nordic and European modernisms, this e-book demonstrates the editor’s and contributors’ strong and lasting interest in modernism as a complex international trend. The book contributes to, and thus continues, research on modernism carried out by many literary scholars at different universities inside and outside the Nordic region. More specifically, it continues the work of a Nordic network whose participants have arranged, among other activities, conferences at the Universities of Aarhus, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Reykjavik and Oslo. These have resulted in several publications, including, in addition to this book, English and Nordic Modernisms (Norvik Press, 2002), European and Nordic Modernisms (Norvik Press, 2004), Comparative Approaches to European and Nordic Modernisms (University of Helsinki Press, 2008), Nordic Responses (Novus Press, 2014) and Perspectives on the Nordic (Novus Press, 2016). This e-book is also a contribution to two interdisciplinary research projects at the University of Oslo: Traveling Texts and UiO:Nordic. I would like to thank the contributors to the book, and to the Special Issue of Humanities entitled Nordic and European Modernisms, for their interest in the topic and for their thoughtful and thought-provoking articles. I would also like to express my gratitude to the participants in the Nordic network referred to above. This book is dedicated to the memory of Bjørn Tysdahl (1933–2020). The author of Joyce and Ibsen: A Study in Literary Influence (Norwegian University Press, 1968), Professor Tysdahl played a key role in the Nordic network for studies of Nordic and European modernisms. Jakob Lothe Editor ix humanities Editorial Editorial Special Issue: “Nordic and European Modernisms” Jakob Lothe Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo, 0315 Oslo, Norway; [email protected] This Special Issue of Humanities explores the growth and development of Nordic modernisms in a European context. A truly international movement, modernism cuts across many boundaries—geographical, cultural and linguistic; cross-fertilization is a prerequisite for its very existence. Moreover, the diverse forms of modernism that emerged in the Nordic countries at widely differing moments are not limited to literature but also include other art forms such as the visual and performing arts. Indeed, there are few literary and cultural movements in which combinations of different, and often radically experimental, forms of artistic expression are as significant as in modernism. Concentrating on and yet not limiting itself to the study of literary texts, this Special Issue shows that the emergence of modernism in the Nordic countries is linked to, and inspired by, the innovative works published in western Europe and the USA towards the end of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century. Presenting Nordic art as multi-dimensional and dynamic, it also shows that, while responding to orig- inal aspects of these modernizing texts, Nordic modernism itself contributed to modernism as a complex international trend. Five examples of this kind of impact, in the genres of the novel, drama and poetry respectively, are Knut Hamsun, August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen, Edith Södergran and Tomas Tranströmer. Aspects of these authors’ continuing impact are considered by several contributors to the Special Issue, but the articles also discuss modernist works written by other Nordic authors as well as translations of modernist Citation: Lothe, Jakob. 2021. texts into the Nordic languages. The plural form “modernisms” in the title of the Special Editorial Special Issue: “Nordic and Issue suggests that the contributors adopt an understanding of modernism that, while European Modernisms”. Humanities recognizing the importance of the modernist movement between circa 1890 and 1940, 10: 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/ is sufficiently elastic to include various forms of extension and continuation of Nordic h10020079 modernisms in the post-war period. There is a link between the continuing importance of modernism and the movement’s Received: 21 May 2021 origins, including a strong experience of crisis at the turn of the twentieth century. Prompt- Accepted: 25 May 2021 Published: 27 May 2021 ing a dissatisfaction with prevalent artistic forms of expression, this experience of crisis underlies modernist artists’ search for, and invention of, radically new forms of expression. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral The crisis—cultural, political, moral, aesthetic—was by no means limited to just one coun- with regard to jurisdictional claims in try or one identifiable group of writers; nor was it, as modernisms’ global relevance makes published maps and institutional affil- clear, restricted to just one continent. At the level of historical reality, the First World War iations. represents the culmination of a crisis which had its beginnings several decades earlier. The Second World War, along with the Holocaust, represents a second culmination of the crisis, and there is a sense in which the feeling, and experience, of crisis has continued to influence and shape Nordic literature written in the post-war period. Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the experience of