Analysis | Nobelist Jon Fosse’s main work is a strange, mystical work that reads like an endless prayer

“Septology is the only novel I have read that has made me believe in the existence of the divine.”

That’s what one of my favorite critics wrote Merve Emre published in November last year Jon Fosse – in his interview in the New Yorker.

Divided into three different books, the seven-volume main work of Jon Fosse’s (b. 1959) later production had to be acquired immediately, in English. I read the first book quickly, then took a break until I read the last two almost straight from the beginning of the summer.

Do I believe now that the divine really exists?

At least not in the sense that Fosse’s main character Asle says in the second part of the work: “I am one of those who believe, or rather one of those who know, without knowing why, no, I can’t say why, not in the whole thing and not even in part, because I believe, or insight, knowledge, so knowledge is what I prefer to call it, it is something that a person suddenly and mysteriously understands to be true”.

In the last part, Asle says that most of the time those who say they are outside are much more inside the faith than those who claim to be inside. Those who never talk about God are the closest to God. For Asle (and apparently also for Fosse), God “is both a very distant absence, so existence itself, and a very close presence”.

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Fosse’s Catholic mysticism and so-called uncreated light shine through on almost every page.

In septology there are many small essays about God and Christianity and on the other hand also about the union of art and faith. Originally, there were still many more, Fosse told the New Yorker. He removed about a hundred theological essays from the book. Fosse’s Catholic mysticism and so-called uncreated light still shine through on almost every page.

Second, at the level of the words used, the minimalist and easy-to-read text quickly hypnotizes its readers. There is never a point, all about 800 pages are one and the same sentence. The only breaks are between different parts, otherwise the reader is at the mercy of the rhythm created by the author.

Septology sense of rhythm is something I haven’t read in ages. It is full of the same words, concepts and phrases and events, and when they are repeated over and over again with small changes, the words and phrases pile new meanings on top of themselves. Light, dark sea, fjord, rosette, prayer in Latin, Master Eckhart -quotes in German and so on.

Various filler words that are repeated endlessly, such as I think, say, and see, eventually no longer say anything at all, but rather become part of a spell, an endless prayer.

The less words say, the more they say, says Asle too. When he goes to Catholic mass in Bjørgvin, i.e. Bergen, he enjoys the thousand-year formula and the Latin prayers, the words of which no longer mean anything, but which precisely allow the silence below to speak.

Ruth Margalit wrote In The New York Review of Books in 2021 that he hesitated to invite Septology reading as meditation.

“But I can’t get any closer than that when I try to describe how something in my critical self collapses while reading Fosse and is replaced by something more primitive. With a mood. In the atmosphere. With the sound of words moving on the page.”

I couldn’t say it better, and you shouldn’t be alarmed by the scorelessness of the piece. It’s a stylistic device that Fosse has used before, for example in the book that won the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize in 2015 In the trilogy. The characters’ lines are, for example, typed in the usual way on their own lines.

Septology Asle is a successful visual artist who has an old friend, also named Asle, also an visual artist, but a drunkard who has failed in life, while the main character Asle has stopped drinking years ago. They look exactly the same. So, a double creature story, but not a traditional one, because neither of them think there is anything special about it. They are one and the same person, one in counterpoint to the other, each an integral part of the whole.

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Often the past and the present are present at the same time.

All seven parts begin with the same, slightly varied image: Asle sees himself looking at a painting lying on a stand, where a purple line intersects with a brown line. The painting doesn’t feel finished, but it is finished at the same time.

A friend has named it St. Andrew’s cross, and although Asle doesn’t like the name, he has written it behind the painting. Quickly, even within the same sentence, Asle ends up thinking about his past, the other Asle, his dead wife Ale, and just as quickly the past returns to the present.

Often the past and the present are present at the same time, even so that when Asle thinks of her younger self looking out the window, she drives under that window at the same time and the younger Asle sees the older Asle for a moment.

In Asle’s paintings something invisible becomes visible while still remaining invisible. This is precisely why more paintings cannot be described, because in the opinion of Fosse’s characters, a good painting cannot be described with words.

of Jesus however, similes can be presented in the same way. In Asle’s opinion, literature and visual art are ultimately the same thing, because like Biblical literal reading kills, its spirit gives life.

Author Johannes Ekholm wrote in early November Criticism in the news From septology like this: “Also think about when Jon Fosse In septology let’s paint pictures with black color in a dark room, because only in the dark does the darkness of the painting begin to shine!”

In Ekholm’s opinion Septology convincingly describes “how the joys and sorrows of decades can be condensed into an abstract image. So many unlived lives?”

Man is an endless prayer with longing, and Septology sometimes you can see something under the words. Uncreated whiteness?

Maybe something divine really exists.