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Article Excerpt
OLA HANSSON (1860-1925) was a cosmopolitan author leading a nomadic life right up until his death in Buyukdere on the Bosporus in Turkey. Disillusioned with the contemporary Swedish literary scene, Hansson went into voluntary exile in 1889. Henceforth, he lived at more or less temporary addresses, first in Germany but also in other European countries including Switzerland and France: he only returned to Sweden for brief periods. Clearly affected by his own personal experience of exile, the identity crisis brought about by being unable to belong fully is central to Hansson's oeuvre. The sense of simultaneously belonging and not belonging can however also be traced back to the inner conflict Hansson experienced in being at once an intellectual and a farmer's son. (1)
Ola Hansson's two short stories "Husvill" [Homeless] (1889), (2) and "Arkimedes' punkt" [Archimedes's Point] (1894), (3) both center on a fundamental problem infin-de-siecle discourse--the experience of being riven by the opposing forces of the new modern world and the old traditional lifestyle and their respective understanding of time. The first narrative ends in chaos and death while the second finds an idyllic solution. In "Husvill," the main character's attempt to leave the city for the country results in an internal conflict that escalates until he is split in two. He finally stabs himself, mistaking himself for his Doppelganger. The protagonist of "Arkimedes' punkt" is similarly in search of his identity, a quest that is closely linked to memory and an acute awareness of time. Both narratives express a gendered encoding of time. In "Husvill," the main character's ambivalence toward the old and the new is mirrored in his inability to choose between two women whom he loves equally, one representing tradition and the other representing modernity. In "Arkimedes' punkt," the lost center of stability and continuity outside the unrelenting force of time to which the title refers is found in the trope of a maternal redemptive woman.
This article discusses "Husvill" and "Arkimedes' punkt" from a perspective of exile, time, and memory. It explores how conceptions of the new and the old are constructed in relation to the construction of gender, class, identity, and--to some extent--ethnicity. In addition to the thematic analysis, the roles of time, memory, and amnesia are studied in connection with narrative technique. Some background on discourses of time, memory, and gender at the turn of the century will follow, and thereafter the two short stories will be discussed in chronological order.
The fin de siecle was a period of widespread agitation against the old, traditional world rapidly giving way to a new, modern way of living. This point of view led to an intense preoccupation with time, acceleration, and a vacillation between discourses of loss and of progress. The turn of the century can therefore be understood as a threshold of time from which one may straddle two distinct worlds. As Mark B. Sandberg demonstrates, it is especially relevant to speak of a threshold experience in discussing Scandinavia at the turn of the century as its relatively late modernization (from a European perspective) led to a striking juxtaposition of the old and the new. Additionally, the temporal marker that a turn of a century creates, albeit artificial, can in itself elicit responses concerned with the passing of time. Introducing the study Fin de Siecle/Fin du Globe: Fears and Fantasies of the Late Nineteenth Century, John Stokes observes: "These terminal occasions not only seal things off, they redirect the mind, extending its thoughts into a future and a past that are equally provisional" (7).
This intensified perception of time and fear of losing the known world in the wake of modernity also gave rise to an obsession with memory characteristic of the late nineteenth century. Recollection of the past no longer appeared as an integral part of life. This perceived loss led to a cultural disquietude concerning memory evident in literary texts as for example Richard Terdiman shows in a study of what he calls the modern "memory crisis." The perception of an "abyss in time" produced an "obsession with the past" as well as concern with "the functioning of memory itself, the institution of memory and thereby of history" throughout the literature of the time (4-5).
The obsession with time and memory in the late nineteenth century was inextricably linked to the discourse of gender. (4) This connection is evident in how the heated public debate about femininity and masculinity was continually phrased in terms of cultural collapse and corruption. Even though, for example, "the crisis of masculinity" is a conception often used to illuminate connections between time and gender, I will focus my attention on how woman is made symbol of different relationships to the past and the present as these constructions are the most germane to Hansson's texts.
The basis for a gendering of time is a dichotomous codification of gender derived from the perception of woman belonging to a greater extent to the private sphere--a room for intimacy and nurturing-while man is regarded as a part of the public realm, striving to succeed in the new capitalistic market or restlessly wandering the streets of the expanding cities. This dualistic discourse also encompasses a temporal dimension. As Rita Felski writes, "spatial categories of private and public were mapped onto temporal distinctions between past and present" (18). Woman is accordingly placed outside of history, untouched by the social disruptions, and firmly rooted in a traditional continuity: "Thus in contrast to male becoming, woman represents being; whereas he is dynamic, she is beyond historical time" (46). This gendered encoding of time is also expressed in Julia Kristeva's essay "Le temps des femmes" in which she describes women's time as both cyclic and monumental, characterized on the one hand by repetition and on the other by eternity, as if in keeping with the rhythm of nature. Man's time, however, is linear and progressive, "le temps du depart, du cheminement et de l'arrivee, le temps de l'histoire" (304) [the time of departure, of transport and arrival, that is, the time of history] (205). Similarly, a gendered perception of time can be readily observed in nostalgic attitudes. The idealized stable origins, which man leaves behind in an age of alienation and fragmentation, are found within emblematic conceptions of a feminine lost paradise.
However, the idealization of a feminine past is not the only gendering of time evident at the turn of the century. If woman transgresses the heavily patrolled demarcation line between the genders, she can also be made to stand for the destructive, modernizing forces. Just as traditional femininity is representative of a vanishing past, the New Woman, who breaks with complementary gender roles, often symbolizes the dividing forces of progression. Margareta Fahlgren shows evidence of this association between a negative appraisal of modernity and a depiction of a threatening femininity among male Swedish authors of the fin de siecle, such as Sigfrid Siwertz and Sven Lidman.
THE DUALITY OF DISLOCATION
The conflict between the traditional and the modern that provides the narrative structure to "Husvill" is a theme to which Hansson repeatedly returns and is sometimes referred to as the "problem of Husvill" in Hansson scholarship. In addition, Hansson's depiction of the male protagonist's divided loyalty between the country and the city through the two women who represent the opposed realms is a narrative construction to which he frequently returns. (5) However, Hansson critics see "Husvill" as the most charged and vivid expression of this dilemma. For example, Ekelund describes the short story as being the most pregnant and full rendition of the theme (161), and Ingvar Holm insists that, compared to similar contemporary narratives of the tension between the new and the old experienced by "sekelslutsgestalter" [fin-de-siecle characters], it is nowhere "sa obonhorlig, sa till dods forlamande" [so inexorable, so deadly paralyzing] as in "Husvill" (234).
Pertinent to a story of duality, the language in "Husvill" is full of contrasts and juxtapositions. Colors, lights, and shadows, as well as differing states of mind, are constantly balanced against each other echoing the main conflict between the new and the old. The narrative is also characterized by the use of repetitions and accumulated, elaborate tropes which thus creates an emotionally charged imagery reminiscent of the French decadents. A striking example of Hansson's dense metaphorical imagery is found in his description of the feeling of suspicion, which he in rapid succession compares to a hydra, a worm, and a spider:
[D]en misstanken ar som sagans hydra, ty da man afhugger dess ena hufvud, vaxa hundra ut igen, och den ar sore masken, ty den lefver, afven om man styckar den, och den ar som spindeln, ty den spinner ut ur sin egen substans ett nat, hvarmed den innesluter hela sjalsapparaten och hvari den fangar alia sorglost kringflygande minnen, af hvilkas blod den kan suga sig stinn. (27) (That suspicion is like the hydra of a fairy tale because when one chops off one of its heads, a hundred more grow back, and it is like the worm because it keeps on living even though one cuts it up, and it is like the spider because it weaves a web from its own substance with which it encloses mind and soul and in which it captures all memories care freely floating and sucks their blood until satiated.)
The theme of duality, as well as homelessness and dispossession, is paralleled in the frame narrative introducing the short story. The frame story narrator mirrors the main character's dilemma of being torn between the two contending forces of home and away as well as the old and the new and therefore is a double duality as he both experiences the dilemma of duality himself and serves as a double of the main character.
The narrative structure also directly emphasizes the significance of memory. Indeed, the entire narration is a recollection. The frame narrator remembers a night five years earlier similar to the one he is describing in the present when the main character, Anders T., related his tale. This narration in turn is retrospective in that it begins an additional two and a half years earlier. However, the memory around which the story revolves neither evokes a lost continuity nor recovers or restores but instead looks backwards toward absence and separation itself. Hence, a man who himself is suffering from dislocation memorializes the story of a man unable to solve the dilemma of spatial and temporal exile. This situation creates a multilayered experience of loss and bereavement--an irreducible displacement--where being torn between the old and the new seems to be an inevitable condition.
Directly adducing the fundamental tone, the frame narrator conjures up an eerie atmosphere of melancholy and decay as he walks through a landscape covered in "gul dimma" (3) [yellow fog] on a bleak and dismal autumn night. Everything speaks of demise and desolation in this scenery, which is on the verge of disintegration in the autumn rains and the thick fog. It is a psychic landscape he takes a walk in, with an intense association between scene and mood: "Landskapets sjuka melankoli valte sig in i min sjal med en kansla som om det yore ett barn som grat" (3) [The sick melancholy of the landscape welled into my soul with a feeling as if it were a child crying].
The ambivalent attitude toward the notion of belonging is conveyed in how the description of the countryside not only evokes a sense of gloom, but also holds a deep attraction. The fog sweeps away everything that matters to him in the outside world by reinstating childhood's feeling of safety.
Additionally, the frame story immediately poses vital questions about the passage of time by emphasizing the juxtaposition of change and constancy. The strong pull of the native soil evokes an experience of synchronicity, an amalgamation of time in which the intermediate years between his childhood and the present disappear. He has a vision of himself as he would have been had he not left home: "Jag tyckte art det var jag sjalf som nu gick dar inne i dimman" (4) [I thought it was I myself walking through that fog]. This split vision together with his impression of having tried to "springa fran rain egen skugga"(4) [outrun my own shadow] also portends the Doppelganger motif of the main story. The obliteration of the fifteen years that have passed is metaphorically described as fifteen dead leaves falling from his tree of life, and this time span is compulsively repeated in different variations throughout this passage.
The call of the migrating wild geese with their connotations of uprootedness and temporariness wakens him from his reveries of a frozen time and replaces the synchronic view of time with diachronicity resulting in "min nya manniska, bockernas och manniskornas, tog distans fran den gamla" (4) [my new self, belonging to books and people, distanced itself from my old self].
Time is reinstated as he acknowledges that the village exists in time as opposed to outside it. The village "var ej densamma som forr ... somt hade kommit till och somt var borta" (4) [was not the same as before ... some things were new, and some had vanished]. However, the occurrences and activities he envisages are mostly cyclical changes like the harvest, or repetitive routines and rituals like the daily ringing of the church bells. These meditations return to the conception of change as decay, and the thought of the amassing of coffins in the church yard conjures up an experience of the past and present as being divided by "forandringens och forgangelsens spoke" [the specter of change and decay] as the narrator finds himself staring into "tva morka hal: den hvita dodskallens tomma, svarta ogonhalor" (4) [two dark holes: the empty, black eye sockets of the white skull].
Death and decay continue to haunt the frame narrative as the sinister and eerie black holes in the white skull turn out to correspond to two dark windows in the white wall of the house belonging to the main character in the story. The narrator goes on to describe the house in disrepair and its likewise neglected surroundings in a way that foregrounds the repetition of the words "Forandring, forgangelse!" (4, 5, 6) [Change, decay!]. The wind produces a whispering sound in the elms, a rustling that evokes "svepningsklader" [the shroud of a corpse] and whispers like "minnet af en jordfastningssalm" (6) [the memory of a funeral hymn], thus highlighting mourning, memorializing, absence, and distance.
The way in which the story comes into existence repeatedly underlines its nature as a memory, a recollection that seems to be living its own life outside the narrator's control. He is only the medium for a voice from the past; his role is not to tell a story, but to "gifva ord at de minnen i bild och stamning, som vacktes i min sjal" (6) [give words to the memories of images and moods, which were awakened in my soul]. This process is further emphasized by how these memories seem to find their shape and order without the narrator's conscious effort while he continues his evening stroll: "Som en hoptrasslad tradharfva vecklades mina minnen upp af osynliga hander" (7) [My memories were unfurled by invisible hands, like a tangled skein]. He does not even lend his voice to the story, but is rather its listener: "Jag horde en kand stamma tala, om inom eller utom mig, det tankte jag ej pa. Detta ar vad jag horde" (7) [I heard a known voice speak, if from within or outside myself, I did not take heed. This is what I heard]. Thus, one dispossessed man has opened the stage for the story of another man's unattainable search for home.
The narrating voice is then taken over by the...
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