Storytelling
Publisher:
Relationship
Publication year:
2023
«Feverish, dreamy and innovative!»
As in the three-volume novel “Septology,” the action is set in motion by driving in this year’s book. But while the main character of the novel goes back and forth between his hometown and Bjørgvin, “Kvitleik” is about a man who gets into his car just to go. He’s not going anywhere, he just wants to move.
Turn left and right alternately at each exit. Eventually he gets stuck at the end of a forest road. It soon gets dark and begins to snow, but instead of turning back for help, he ventures into the woods. There he becomes lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he has a series of visions. First a bright white figure resembling an angel, then his parents who are looking for him and a barefoot man dressed in black.
As they become more and more real to him, he doesn’t know what’s going on or who he is. Fosse describes the situation in a few sentences where his distinctive use of interrogative pronouns in sentences without question marks reaches its absolute climax:
“I sit there on the round stone and look at the man in the black suit. What is happening. Where am I actually, yes I am in the forest, but it’s not like that in the forest, is it? What is happening.”
Masterful by Jon Fosse
What is not a question
When I read the story, I was surprised that the person I consistently follows his instincts rather than his common sense. When he goes into the forest instead of coming back for help, I thought it was a handy device to throw the man off course. But I finally understood that Fosse wrote a mythical world in which it is impossible to turn around. That the car crashes is the first image of the law that applies to the whole affair. Just like in some dreams, there’s no turning back. This makes “Kvitleik” not only a fascinating read, but also a text that does not let go.
In my feverish fantasies, it was mostly the phrase “What’s going on” that haunted me. Because while reading I had inadvertently replaced Fosse’s point with a question mark. But what if you read the sentence as a statement and not a question? I had to find a new reading rhythm, read the sentence aloud and put the emphasis on “what”. Then “kva” is no longer an interrogative pronoun, but the designation of some kind of abyss or something unknown – perhaps what we call death – which takes place in the meeting.
Meditation
What makes “Kvitleik” a condensed and wholly unusual reading experience are precisely these lines of thought. Fosse gave the little word “kva” a whole new meaning, and we have to learn to interpret the word in new ways.
Mighty mass of death
In an extensive interview in Jan H. Landro’s book “Jon Fosse – simple and profound” from last year, Fosse mentions the story for the first time. There he says he is in dialogue with the comedy “I swarte skogen inne” which will be released later this year. However, I can’t help but read “Kvitleik” as an extension of the last volume of the Septologien.
It culminates in a meditation on the end of life. With “Kvitleik,” Fosse wrote a story more focused on man’s strange relationship with death. Yes, it is as if the death drive controls the actions of the ego-person from the first sentence to the last.
“Kvitleik” is simply great literature!
