It was about time that Georg Johannesen, one of the most original writers Norway has fostered after the war, got his own biography. The man was a machine-gun of memorable sentences, and they come on a conveyor belt in Alfreds Fidjestøl’s story. Biographies can be written in various ways. It is possible to be sour and delightfully rude, as Torgrim Eggen was about Axel Jensen. But you can’t throw your object in front of the bus – it’s no use being condescending, as Tore Rem was at times in his biography of Jens Bjørneboe. Drillo and Julius Alfred Fidjestøl has previously written about Egil “Drillo” Olsen, the chimpanzee Julius (!) and about the Norske Teatret. He is a rock-solid chronicler – neither snarky nor sour. In the story about Georg Johannsen, Fidjestøl never turns off the heat, not even when Johannesen is at his most irreconcilable – such as when he chooses to stop talking to his ex-wife Kirsten Danielsen, with whom he has a daughter. About Georg Johannesen Photo: Johansen, Erik / SCANPIX Norwegian author Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Bergen Born in 1931 in Bergen Died on 24 December 2005 in Egypt Made his debut in 1956 with the novel “Autumn in March” Has published both novels, poems and plays , non-fiction and essays Is particularly known for the book “On the Norwegian way of thinking” (1975) Begins with the grandparents Fidjestøl feels no need to revolutionize the genre of biography. The contrast to the man he writes about, who constantly tried to turn Norwegian literary culture upside down, could not be greater. There are no breaks in the timeline here. Anyone who doesn’t know their Georg Johannesen on rams has to carefully read through both growing up in Bergen, and the history of parents and grandparents, before we get to the phase where the man starts to become important. Analyzed by Åge Aleksandersen The problem with this strictly chronological form of presentation is that the air goes out of the text when the poet has passed the noon hour. When Johannesen begins to make a mausoleum for his cat at the summer house by Risør and begins to analyze the texts of Åge Aleksandersen, there are unfortunately a hundred pages left in the book. POET, RHETORIC AND POLITICIAN: Georg Johannesen sat on the Oslo city council for the Socialist People’s Party from 1967-1971. Photo: From the biography of Georg Johannsen/Samlaget But before we get that far, we have been on a stimulating safari in Oslo’s urban jungle in the 1950s and 1960s – before we land again in the city where, according to Johannesen, you must live before you are 18 and after 40. It is in the years between then that Johannesen becomes a source of inspiration for an entire generation with sentences like these: On three legs Johannesen had one leg in the literary public and one in politics. The poems were unlike anything you had seen in this country before. The German writers Bertolt Brecht and Günter Grass were perhaps closest to him. Grass combined, just like Johannesen, poetry, politics and visual arts. And both ended up in a stalemate with the most extreme left side. But Georg Johannesen also had a third leg. In the late 60s, he left both poetry and daily politics, and got a foot in the door at university. The texts he then wrote met few of the requirements for academic writing. He simply continued to compose in article form. The more academic texts he wrote in the 70s and 80s are at their best high-quality poetry. “I sought intoxication and sleep in as many books and magazines as I could get my hands on,” says a deeply personal essay . With sentences like this, he also reached out to a new generation – including the undersigned. But Fidjestøl does not undercut Johannesen’s less appealing sides either. He would not get far with the (slightly male chauvinistic) criticism of Sigrid Undset today. De-prioritised fiction In the period when he worked at the university, he contributed significantly to changing the view of what type of literature the students should be interested in. “Georg Johannesen’s interest in essay writing, classicism and trivial literature and the connection between high culture and low culture was ahead of its time and was to become a guideline for the university’s development”, writes Fidjestøl. The question is what this turn away from traditional fiction has come at the expense of – not least in schools. Georg Johannesen has had enough of disciples who have been busy foisting on Norwegian school pupils endless introductions to rhetoric, non-fiction and trivial literature that are anything but intoxicating. They have clearly not realized that Johannesen, according to his editor Herdis Eggen, turned back to fiction and read Per Petterson’s “Out og stjæle hester” and Thomas Mann’s “Trollfjellet”. Georg Johannesen’s own poetry was a lot at once. Uneven, polemical, unreasonable, and deeply original. In the biography, we get to see the main character play out the entire register of complexities that we humans can be – in writing and in life. READING OUT LOUD: Georg Johannesen reads his own poem “Vår 59” from his first collection of poems “Dikt 1959” in the news program “Dikt eller udikt” from 1967. news reviews Title: “Deep in my heart I have my sense: the biography of Georg Johannesen » Author: Alfred Fidjestøl Genre: Biography Publisher: Samlaget Number of pages: 591 Date: September 2022 Hi! I read and review literature in news. Please also read my review of “Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck, “Etterliv” by Abdulrazak Gurnah or Franz Kafka’s “The Process” translated by Jon Fosse.
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“The Biography of Georg Johannesen” by Alfred Fidjestøl – Reviews and recommendations
