It takes confidence to raise the knife and make a specific cut. What you cut into becomes smaller, but you also have to believe that it will be better. Stronger. Jon Fosse has such self-confidence. Through forty years as a writer, he has cut and cut, pared down his texts to something basic and open and potent. He has felt about the short sentences, sometimes punctuated, often not. THE MOMENT: Mats Malm, the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, announces that Jon Fosse will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023. Photo: AFP And he did not seem terribly surprised when it was announced today that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. That some of the world’s most well-read people thought that his work was the best in the world. In a way, there was no reason to be surprised either. Fosse has been mentioned as a Nobel favorite for many years. More and more leading critics and academics from many countries have paid tribute to him. Last year, celebrity critic Merve Emre appeared at the American National Book Award in a royal blue ball gown with “Septology”, the English title of Fosse’s main work, embroidered around the waist. But then it’s still quite overwhelming. That literature so distinct, so rooted in Nynorsk culture and in the Norwegian Westland, travels so easily across the wide world. SUCCESS: Ole Johan Skjelbred and Fridtjov Såheim in the National Theatre’s critically acclaimed production of Jon Fosse’s “Eg er vinden” in 2007. Fosse’s use of mirroring, doppelgangers and repetition is widely used in the play. Photo: Nationaltheatret / Marius E. Hauge This about the wide world is important. It is not many years since the Swedish Academy, which chooses the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, looked like a shadow of itself. The venerable society was founded by King Gustav III in 1786 and awarded the literature prize for the first time in 1901. The members go by the venerable common denominator “De Aderton”. But when the husband of one of the academy members, Katarina Frostenson, was accused of sexual assault, some of which was said to have been committed in the academy’s apartments, it led to a harrowing internal dispute. New questions were raised as to whether any people should really hold such an exalted position, enjoy such respect, as “De Aderton” until then should have done. If they had become arrogant, elevated above ordinary morality. Arnault was later convicted of assault. A LONG TIME AGO: It’s been 23 years since Jon Fosse received the Nordic playwright award for the year 2000. Photo: NTB Several academy members, who were supposed to sit there for life, disappeared. But then they got back on their feet, and in 2023 we sat here again, with eyes wide open and ears pricked, waiting for the white and golden door of the Academy to open, for us to learn the name of this year’s winner. Perhaps it is because there is no similar institution. The Swedish Academy did not go under, did not have its influence dramatically reduced, because everyone really knew that nothing could replace them. No one else has the task of reading literature from all parts of the world, partly translated especially for them, and then saying what they think is the very best. “The Adertons” are just people, they are subject to lobbyists and PR push, and the process of finding a winner is human and fallible. But they are the only ones in the world who have such a job, which is why the price is still sky high. ACTING CHALLENGE: Fosse’s texts require the actors to perform them with the suggestive rhythm they have from the author’s hand. Here Anne Marit Jacobsen in “Morgon og kveld” at the Nationaltheatret in 2015. Photo: Nationaltheatret / Dag Jenssen Jon Fosse’s triumph is also fantastic because this is literature that really requires you to step into the world of literature. So much of what is written and created is nervously extroverted, aimed at specific target groups, anxious not to be understood. This is not the case with Fosse. When I read a Fosse text, or see one of his plays at the theatre, it feels a bit like entering a strange forest. Often, the main characters have no names, no external characteristics. They repeat their lines over and over. It can remind one of the liturgy in a church room, or of the obsessions of a tense mind. The rhythm can be hypnotic. Gradually, you notice that the content of the lines changes little by little with each repetition. The meaning changes almost imperceptibly. You get more and more perspectives, more and more insight. You go deeper and deeper into the forest. PLACE OF HONOR: Jon Fosse’s main work, “The Septology”, is exhibited at the Swedish Academy, where it was announced today that Fosse will receive the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2023. Photo: Reuters What is perhaps Jon Fosse’s main work, the novel series Septologien, was highlighted in the justification for why he received this year’s award. It must feel good to him that he didn’t get the prize until he had made this promise, sent out into the world this narrative that takes up so many of the themes he has danced with: Life and death, reality and fantasy, art and religion, past and present, tangible, everyday realism with spiritual clouds above. But the prolific author had already given the Swedish Academy a lot to be proud of. While he has written on his own works, he has also been behind a number of beautiful retellings, including of the very oldest dramatic works from Greek antiquity. GENEALOGIES OF RANK: Currently, Fosse’s words can be heard at Det Norske Teatret. Gjertrud Jynge plays one of the main roles in Aeschylus’ “Oresteia”, which is rewritten by Fosse. Photo: Erik Berg / Det norske teatret. For those who want to hear Fosse, not just read him, his retelling of Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” can be experienced this autumn at Det Norske Teatret. And there, in the retelling of the almost 2,500-year-old texts, a voice is heard that is still unmistakably Fosse-esque, among other things where he gives Nynorsk language to the goddesses of vengeance. The young Orestes finds his mother killing his father, and honor demands that he kill his mother in revenge. The goddesses of revenge strike him with madness, and when the god Apollo thinks that Orestes has only acted according to the will of the gods, they hiss back: Apollo you are a god But you have forgotten the blind twist in the dense darkness Quite a short break You have broken the laws The oldest laws which the lagnad put into the souls and bodies of people You don’t obey the laws You stood up against the lagnad You can’t protect a criminal who has murdered his own mother There are verses that seem to ring in the whole body when you read them. Happy birthday, Jon Fosse.
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It is enormous that Jon Fosse receives the Nobel Prize in Literature – Speech
