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About Kjartan Fløgstad
- by Atle Kittang

In recent years we have seen the signs of an ever so small youth protest against Kjartan Fløgstad. Younger writers and critics have found reason to criticise elements of the political orientation of his books - the part sober, part nostalgic solidarity with the waning culture of industrial workers which so many of his books draw upon, and which they describe and celebrate. To be the target of youthful criticism is a fate that Fløgstad shares with his colleague Dag Solstad who is of the same generation. However, there is no doubt that this criticism is a sign of quality. Successors, says American critic Harold Bloom, will always turn their "fear of influence" against their most important predecessors, and there can no longer be any doubt that Fløgstad is among the most important Scandinavian novelists of this century. However, Kjartan Fløgstad, born 1944 in Sauda, the most important industrial town in Ryfylke, made his debut in a very different arena, that is, as an elitist poet. He was obviously inspired by a classic modernism that has its roots in the works of Rimbaud and Mallarmé, and with Claes Gill as his Norwegian rôle model. However, the fact that Fløgstad had studied Spanish as well as German Baroque poetry was equally obvious. Both of these influences can be seen in the titles of the two collections of poetry which he published in the 1960s: Valfart (Pilgrimage) (1968) and Seremoniar (Ceremonies) (1969). We sense a kind of aristocratic existentialism which also comes to the fore in his first work in prose, Den hemmelige jubel (The secret exultation) (1970). With its many references and allusions to existentialist heroes like T.H.Lawrence, Ernst Jünger, Albert Camus and Regis Debray, this book often brings to mind the ideas of British essayist Colin Wilson, who was a cult writer ten years earlier. But other aspects of Den hemmelige jubel carry an even clearer premonition of the type of writing which Fløgstad in due course was going to develop. Even at this early stage we see how much he has learnt from modern Latin American literature. The way he plays with various prose forms and genres points to the Argentinean José Cortázar, but even more to Jorge Luis Borges, the father of modern Argentinean literature, and probably the most permanent of the Latin American influences throughout Fløgstad's literary work. From this point on Kjartan Fløgstad is primarily a prose writer. This does not mean that he turns his back absolutely on poetry. In 1973 he translated a selection of poetry by Pablo Neruda, and also published Litteraturen i revolusjonen. Dikt frå Cuba (Literature in the revolution. Poetry from Cuba). Later he has also occasionally published translations, for instance, of work by British poet Tony Harrison and of contemporary Arabic poetry. And throughout his novels individual poems are woven in - simple and of conventional form, often clearly related to the tradition of the popular ballad. In 1993 Fløgstad collected his poetic production in Poesi og spelemannsmusikk (Poetry and Fiddlers' Music) (1968-93). But even several years earlier, he had acknowledged Claes Gill's influence by writing the biography Portrett av eit magisk liv. Poeten Claes Gill (Portrait of a Magic Life. Poet Claes Gill) (1988). As indicated by the title, it is not the man of the theatre or the conservative culture personality of the post-war period that concerns Fløgstad in this work, but the vagabond and poet growing up among industrial workers in Western Norway (in Odda), learning a trade at sea and living the life of the vagabond in Latin America and in other foreign continents. A similar pattern of dual environments and life fates (Western Norway and exotic foreign places - a permanent home and drifting around) was to characterise Fløgstad's prose during much of the 1970s. The first taste of his particular brand of "dirty realism" can be seen as early as in Den hemmelige jubel: small, precise sketches of everyday life of sailors and industrial workers suddenly twisting into the images and stylistic patterns of a B-movie. In the background the reader senses Fløgstad's home town of Sauda, one of those Western Norwegian industrial towns which are such perfect emblems of modern Norway. However, we also sense the main lines of what was going to develop into one of the most ambitious novel projects in Norwegian post-war literature. The fine collection of prose narratives entitled Fangliner (Ropes) (1972) and the novel Rasmus (1974), make up a preparatory stage of preliminary work and stylistic exercises. But in Dalen Portland (Dollar Road)(1977) novelist Kjartan Fløgstad finally opens up completely. Many were surprised that this novel was awarded the Nordic Council's prestigious literary prize for 1978. But a discerning Scandinavian public now had its eyes opened to the fact that novels could be written in completely new ways - also in Norway. Kjartan Fløgstad has published six major novels after Dalen Portland. (He also wrote two crime novels in the mid-70s under the pen name of K. Villun.) In all of these novels we discover - in various blends - the motive powers of Fløgstad's art: burlesque imagination, realistic precision, sociological insight and a critical will that often takes its tools from the tradition of satire. Together they make his novels into forceful attempts to interpret in writing and fiction those processes of outward and inward existence that have been dominant in Norway in the twentieth century. One dimension of Fløgstad's work is his description of the economic and social transitions from an agricultural to an industrial society, and from an industrial to a post-industrial society. He creates a small Western Norwegian town that he calls Lovra and that has a lot in common with both Sauda and Odda. In this micro-universe he permits the basic processes to crystallise - most obviously in Dalen Portland, and in the masterly Fyr og flamme ( Fire and flame) (1980). Fløgstad does this with a precision, a sense of style and an understanding of the dynamics of history that proves that he might have been our foremost realist, if that had been his objective. But Fløgstad is well trained both in literary theory and in philosophy. He knows that "realism" is only one of many types of literature. It does not tell the "truth" about people and society, but is rather a reduction and a simplification. The novel that is supposed to chart modern man in all his historical complexity therefore has to be "impure". It has to mix various styles, to remove the distinctions between "high" and "low" and between the physical and the spiritual, to make room for the burlesque elements of life, and - not least, take the consequences of the fact that literature's particular potential for insight resides in the power of imagination. In addition to the so-called "magic realism" of the Latin American novel, it was primarily in Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian philosopher known for his work on the theory of the novel that Fløgstad found the crucial impulses during the period in which his great novel project was taking shape. And from Bakhtin it is particularly the theories about "carnivalization" and the analyses of François Rabelais's novels that have influenced Fløgstad. Most of Fløgstad's social and cultural criticism is criticism from "below": It reveals a solidarity with the attitudes and the patterns of imagination of a popular culture in which it also finds its own images and stylistic models. At the same time the novels create their own mythographic patterns - characters, situations and events which on occasion surpass even Rabelais's burlesque creations. In Fyr og flamme Fløgstad brings the full range of his literary powers into play in the description of the development (and dismantling) of industrial Norway. The novel is built up around the proletarian hero Hans Hertingen, whom we also meet in other novels by Fløgstad. Hertingen is much more of a myth than a realistically depicted industrial worker. But it is precisely these mythical dimensions (including some direct imitation of Rabelaisian motifs) that make him into one of the most memorable characters in Norwegian prose. At the same time Hertingen also represents the decline and fall of the proletarian culture, which is bitterly depicted in the closing scene where the old worker is on his death bed, entangled in the jumble of tubes and cables of modern medical technology. Fyr og flamme is certainly both nostalgic (looking back to the heyday of the industrial society) and satirical (in its bitter criticism of people's absurd antics in a post-industrial society). But the novel itself has a drive and an energy that deny both the nostalgia and the disillusionment. "Through its own vitality the novel points beyond the back waters that it depicts", wrote critic Øystein Rottem in a precise description of one of the truly great novels of Scandinavian literature after the Second World War. As the liberal market-orientation is gradually becoming more dominant, both internationally and in Norway, it may seem as if the vitality that characterises Fløgstad's art in Fyr og flamme, is slowly giving way to depression and desperation. This is particularly evident in Fimbul (1994), a novel that depicts and explores the type of political desperation that leads to terrorist actions. Many critics have seen this as one of Fløgstad's weakest novels. It is far from certain that this characterisation is justified. However, there is no doubt that Fløgstad in this novel has renounced some of the linguistic and imaginative surplus that we find in the other of his major works. Fimbul is Fløgstad's great "winter novel", and as such perhaps also his most consistent work. Next to Fyr og flamme, Det 7. klima (The Seventh Climate) (1986) and Kron og mynt (Heads or Tails) (1998) are the works that loom largest in Fløgstad's writing - both in volume and quality. Det 7. klima is partly a satire on traits of today's post-industrial Norway and the "virtual realities" produced by this society, partly a meta-novelistic reflection on the conditions of art. All in all, this is clearly the most difficult (but also the most intriguing) of Fløgstad's novels. Its publication led to a discussion about the degree to which Fløgstad had become a "post-modernist". To-day we can more clearly see that the novel employs post-modernist tactics in order to criticise typical aspects of the post-modern society. In Kron og mynt, on the other hand, the reflections over the conditions of art lead both author and reader back to the baroque elements that were so important to Fløgstad in the early phase of his work. For one thing the novel contains the most fantastic interpretations of baroque church art ever written. At the same time the satire on contemporary society is even a notch sharper than in earlier novels. This time the satire is primarily taken out on modern broiler-type politicians that dominate our "real world" at the turn of the century. And like all Fløgstad's novel it abounds in fantastic characters and burlesque stories. For this novel and his whole authorship Kjartan Fløgstad received the important Gyldendal's Prize for literature for 1999. Kjartan Fløgstad is also an intelligent, knowledgeable and stylistically competent essay writer, who in his non-fiction reflects theoretically on topics and cultural situations which he has treated in fiction in his novels. He has published five collections of essays, from Loven vest for Pecos (The Law West of Pecos) in 1981 to Antipoder (Antipodes) (1996) and Dei ytterste ting (The Ultimate Questions) (1998). These have all been important in the discussion of Norwegian culture. Fløgstad's continued interest in the combination of Latin America, emigration and exile comes to the fore once again in his latest book - a documentary about the fates of Norwegians who emigrated to Argentina. Eld og vatn (Fire and Water) is the title Fløgstad has given this book published in 1999 and written in solidarity with those who believed that it was possible to make a better life for oneself on the other side of the great ocean. It is stories of disillusionment that Fløgstad presents in this book, but he has filled them with the warmth and the empathy that so often strikes us in this outstanding body of writing. Atle Kittang 20.12.1999 Professor, Department of Linguistics and Comparative Literature, University of Bergen. Member of Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and of Lund Academy of Science and Letters (Sweden). Translated by Kjell and Judy Morland

© Bergen Off. Bibliotek Last updated 15 March 2000 by Dagny Eide, Henrik Kiiehn Nielsen and Eli Randmo