The Autobiographical Element in Per Olov Enquist's Works
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by AIR Universita degli studi di Milano Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere CORSO DI DOTTORATO IN STUDI LINGUISTICI, LETTERARI E INTERCULTURALI IN AMBITO EUROPEO ED EXTRA-EUROPEO XXIX ciclo a.a. 2016/2017 L-LIN/15 – Lingue e Letterature Nordiche Self-representing Parables: The Autobiographical Element in Per Olov Enquist’s Works Tesi di dottorato di CATIA DE MARCO Tutor: prof. ANDREA MEREGALLI Coordinatore del dottorato: prof.ssa GIULIANA GARZONE Contents Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2 Chapter 1: The state of the art ----------------------------------------------------------------9 1.1 Studies on autobiography ...........................................................................................9 1.1.1 «From lived farrago into a thought whole» ......................................................11 1.1.2 Writers and autobiography: «A fatal attraction» ..............................................16 1.1.3 From autofiction to self-representation ..........................................................19 1.1.4 Feminist criticism ...........................................................................................25 1.1.5 Autobiography as a performative strategy .......................................................27 1.1.6 I or he? ..............................................................................................................29 1.2 Studies on Per Olov Enquist .....................................................................................33 Chapter 2: The methodological approach -------------------------------------------------40 2.1 «Utgångspunkter» .....................................................................................................40 2.1.1 The poetics of repetition ..................................................................................42 2.1.2 The art of assembling puzzles ..........................................................................48 2.1.3 Drawing maps ..................................................................................................51 2.1.4 «Smärtpunkterna» ............................................................................................58 2.2 The choice of texts ....................................................................................................62 2.3 Ett annat liv: Fish or fowl? .......................................................................................64 Chapter 3: Exercises in self-representation ------------------------------------------------67 3.1 Kristallögat and Färdvägen: In search of an identity ...............................................67 3.2 Hess: A shadow of himself .......................................................................................71 3.3 Legionärerna: A self-portrait in the corner ...............................................................84 Chapter 4: Self-revealing masks -------------------------------------------------------------95 4.1 Sekonden: «Something about himself» ....................................................................97 4.2 Musikanternas uttåg: A family history ...................................................................117 4.3 Nedstörtad ängel and I lodjurets timma: A metaphor of the self ............................126 Chapter 5: The whole story? ----------------------------------------------------------------141 5.1 Kapten Nemos bibliotek: From metaphor to spell ..................................................142 5.2 Kartritarna: A personal essay .................................................................................150 5.3 Interlude: The historical novels ..............................................................................155 !i 5.4 Ett annat liv: The official version ...........................................................................158 5.5 Liknelseboken: The obsession of the untold ..........................................................173 Conclusions -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------182 Acknowledgements ---------------------------------------------------------------------------186 Abstract (English) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------187 Abstract (Italian) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------188 References ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------189 !ii Je n’ai jamais parlé d’autre chose que de moi. Alain Robbe-Grillet Peut-on – ou du moins pouvait-on autrefois – commencer à écrire sans se prendre pour un autre? Roland Barthes Introduction One of the first things that strike the affectionate Enquist reader is certainly the recurrence of a set of key motives (images, memories, dreams) in several of his works, also many years apart from each other1: the heavenly harp, for instance, which appears a first time in Sekonden (1971) and then again and again up to Ett annat liv (2008); or the obscure and fascinating image of a man in his ice-grave, his face covered by a film of ice, which makes its first appearance in 1966 with Hess and reappears constantly until 2008 with Ett annat liv – and I could mention many others. These motives intersect and overlap the main plot(s), thus giving Enquist’s books the appearance of a puzzle – itself a recurring image in his production (cf. 2.1.2) – or of a palimpsest2 where one can still glimpse traces of previous texts. At the same time, these motives charge themselves with symbolical meaning at every new recurrence, until they assume an almost mythological dimension, a sort of reference frame in which the writer’s whole production is inscribed. Although quotations and inspirations from other authors are also frequently inserted in the texts as mosaic tiles3, in this work I will focus on the intertextual recurrences that can be traced back to an autobiographical origin. In fact, even when attributed to fictional characters, in the eyes of the contemporary Swedish reader some of these images and memories were from the beginning recognisable as, or at least suspectable of, being of autobiographical derivation: Enquist was too much of a public figure for his readers not to notice the traces of his Västerbotten origins or his personal and professional life scattered here and 1 Cf., for instance, Lindberg, according to whom Enquist’s writing «känneteckas av ett livligt återbruk av teman, motiv, miljöer, händelser, personer och språkliga formuleringar från tidigare historier: upprepningens rörelse» (Lindberg 1999: 5; «is characterised by a keen reuse of themes, motives, settings, events, people and wordings from earlier stories: the movement of repetition»). Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine. 2 More in the spirit of De Quincey’s (1998) use of the word than of Genette’s (1997b). 3 Cf., for instance, the quotations from St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians 13:11 («När jag var barn, talade som ett barn, och hade barnsliga tankar», Enquist 2014 [2004]: 32, 43, 45, 158; «When I was a child, spoke like a child and had childish thoughts», Enquist 2006: 32, 41, 42, 146) and from T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land, ll. 15-16 («Marie! Marie! Och så bar det av», Enquist 2014 [2004]: 73, 78, 88; «Marie! Marie! And then it started», Enquist 2006: 76, 82, 99) refraining through Boken om Blanche och Marie. !2 there in his novels. However, it was only after the publication of the avowedly autobiographical Ett annat liv in 2008 that the full extent of this kind of inspiration became visible. These elements are precisely what kindled the first idea for this study. As a translator of a few of Enquist’s books, I was obliged to get to the bottom of each enigmatic image appearing in apparently incongruous contexts. By tracing them back to their origins, I began to sense a red thread that runs throughout his more than fifty-year- long career, a red thread which seems to originate from an autobiographical origin. I therefore have analysed most of Enquist’s works4 following the traces left by recurring images and themes, always with a great attention to the texts themselves: it is there, in the specific words used and reused by Enquist, that the loose end of the thread is hidden. Of course Enquist is far from being the first writer to find a constant source of inspiration for his or her writing in his or her own life. However, I do believe he belongs to the most persevering in doing so, to the same degree as one of his most famous and celebrated predecessors, August Strindberg, a master in blending fiction and autobiography5, who declared in a letter to his first wife: «En författare är endast en referent af hvad han lefvat»6 (Strindberg 1948: 190). Strindberg’s example – and Michael Robinson’s study of it – is in fact quite useful in identifying the questions to address in this study, and the route to follow in order to try to answer them. As in Enquist’s works, also in Strindberg’s «[h]is past is written and rewritten, lived and relived, across a succession of texts that comment upon each other as well as upon the life they record» (Robinson 1996: 16). The idea, then, is to find the elements of this past, used «som bitarne i en bygglåda»7 (Strindberg 1994: 49), and analyse how they have been written and rewritten through the years, in search of a possible pattern – or 4 For an explicitation and explanation of