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Per Olov Enquist (1934-2020) |
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Swedish novelist, playwright, and
journalist, who gained international fame with his
"documentary-style" fiction. Several of Per Olov Enquist's novels depict his
native Västerbotten, where the Laestadian, pietistic religious movement,
deeply influenced everyday life. Enquist also wrote with
expertness about sports – in his prime he was among the
five best in the high jump in Sweden. His record was 1,97 meters. (Enquist was almost six foot tall.) "But what in truth was a human being, who could be dissected or dismembered and hung up on the post and wheel, and yet in some way continued to live on? What was it that was sacred? "The sacred is what the one who is sacred does," he had thought: the human being as the sum of his existential choices and actions. But in the end it was something else altogether, something more important, that remained of Struensee's era. Not biology, not just actions, but a dream of humanity's possibilities, that which was the most sacred of all and the most difficult to capture, that which existed as the simple, persistent note of a flute from Struensee's era and which refused to be cut off." (from Livläkarens besök, translated by Tiina Nunnally, 1999) Per Olov Enquist was born and raised in Hjoggböle in northern
Sweden, the son of Elof Enquist, a lumberjack in winter and stevedore in summer, and Maria Lindgren
Enquist,
a schoolteacher. While he was still an infant, his father
died. In the autobiographical novel Ett annat liv
(2008, The Wandering Pine: Life as a Novel) Enquist recalled him as a
pine tree that was cut down. One of his father's brothers, who broke
down mentally, was put in solitary confinement in an attic. Most of the
books at his home were religious. The Flash Gordon comic strip, which ran in the local newspaper, Norra Västerbotten, became a means of escape from his surroundings. It was not
until the age of 16 that Enquist was introduced to cinema. From 1955 to
1964, Enquist studied
at the University of Uppsala, where he completed an M.A. and a thesis on the crime noves of
Thorsten Johnsson. For a short period, he shared an apartment with the
writer and scholar Lars Gustafsson (1936-2016), who studied philosophy
at the university. Enquist's career as a writer started among the
modernists
of the 1960s generation, whose work reflected the influence of the
French nouveau roman (Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras). However, in his debut as a novelist Kristallögat
(1961, The chrystal eye), Enquist did not experiment with new forms of
literary expression; the work was made in investigative style, which
would become his trademark. In
the United States Norman Mailer and Truman Capote developed a form of
journalism, that combined actual events with the richness of a novel.
At the Gruppe 47 meeting in Sigtuna in 1965, Enquist encountered
writers such as Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Günter Grass, and Uwe
Johnson, and realized that the gateway to European culture lay in
Germany, not in France. With his third novel, Magnetisörens femte vinter (1964, The Magnetist's Fifth Winter),
Enquist received widespread public and critical acclaim. Set in a small German town, it tells of Friedrich Meisner, who
resembles the famous experimenter in magnetism, F.A. Mesmer
(1734-1815). The miracle worker is caught in a conflict between faith
and disbelief, irrational and rational forces. Meisner helps the
daughter of the townsman Claus Selinger to see again. Selinger falls
under the spell of the doctor, but later reveals his dishonesty. But
nobody can deny that his daughter is no longer blind. "I must show
great circumspection in teaching her to see. She can see now; but no
one knows what she sees." One of the author's documentary sources was P.G.
Cederschjöld's report of 1821 – he was a doctor and utilized Mesmer's
ideas in medical care. Within the frameworks of Hess (1966), Enquist explored
the solo flight of Rudolf Hess to England. In the story a
researcher writes a treatise on the Nazi leader and other people who
have the same name. Gradually he becomes fascinated with the puzzling character, breaking
the principle of scientific objectivity. Legionärerna
(1968, The Legionnaires: A Documentary Novel) won the prestigious Nordic Council literary
prize. Based on documents, interviews, private
letters and many other sources, it
told of Sweden's deportation of 146 Baltic military refugees from the
German army at the end of WW II to the Soviet Union. The original title
of the book was supposed to be "Hess II". Jonas Ingvasson has argued that the novel is "a program,
not a work"; it follows the structure of the new media: "the text
shifts angles and puts together information from different sources all
the time, and there is a constant disruption of chronology." ('Media and the Documentary Strategies' by Jonas Ingvasson, in Documentarism in Scandinavian Literature, edited by Poul Houe and Sven Hakon Rossel, 1997, pp. 83-84) Enquist travelled in England, Denmark
and the Soviet Union where he met the former legionaries and heard
their stories. He even experimented with a hunger strike to feel what
it meant for the Baltic soldiers. Surprisingly the narrative includes an
open letter to Mao Zedong in which the author expresses his distrust in
politics and confesses his difficulties to avoid subjective
interpretation of the facts during the research process. The Legionnaires was re-released
in 2018 by the publisher Norstedt. In the preface the Norwegian
reporter and author Åsne Seierstad argued that Enquist’s novel is a
testimony against the rise of 'alternative facts'. ('Painful Neutrality: Screening the Extradition of the Balts from Sweden' by Lars Kristensen and C. Burman, in Baltic Screen Media Review, Volume 6, Issue 1, December 2018) Sekonden (1971) drew from Enquist's own experiences from sport. It looked critically at society's need for progress, for new records and accomplishments, and weaved together the puzzle of a dishonest athlete and his son, whose relationship with an East German female athlete is paralyzed. The work contained numerous references to the novels of 1966 and 1968. As in Legionärerna Enquist approached his subject as a researcher. Katedralen i München (1972) was based on a newspaper article Enquist wrote at the Olympic Games in 1972. Enquist lived in West Berlin from 1970 to 1971 and in 1973 he was a
visiting professor at UCLA. In Los Angeles Enquist started to write his
most famous and controversial drama, Tribadernas natt (1975, The Night of the Tribades), which opened at the Royal Dramatic Theatre is September 1975. The play depicts August Strindberg's
sexual insecurity, and his relationship with his wife Siri von Essen
and the Danish actress Marie Caroline David. The point
of departure is Strindberg's own rehearsal of his one-act play Den starkare (The Stronger) about two actresses. But Enquist's
interpretation is at odds with Strindberg's text and the way he has
been generally portrayed: "this shy citizen, this little clerk [-] was a completely different
Strindberg when he wrote his plays. And when he is writing his
letters he is yet another Strindberg. My picture of Strindberg is
simply a synthesis of my reading of Strindberg and I don't care a
damn what he was like privately." ('Translating Docudrama: Per Olov
Enquist's Tribadernas natt in English and French' by Egil Törnqvist, in
Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek 19, 1998, p. 131) Upset by Enquist's
treatment of the author's private life, the influential critic and Strindberg expert
Olof
Lagercrantz dismissed the play as dirty, speculative, and caricaturistic. The Night of the Tribades
has been translated into some twenty languages, and has had countless
productions, including a short run on Broadway in 1977 – it was closed
after 12 performances. "The Night of the Tribades is a play that
stretches the mind, bares the nerves, challenges the ear, braces the
imagination. Is that too good for Broadway? Possibly. Possibly not." (T.E. Kalem, Time, Oct. 24, 1977) A man of vendetta or
not, Enquist's name is not mentioned in Lagercrantz's 600-page
selection of articles, Vårt sekel är reserverat åt lögnen (2007). The short stories in Berättelser från de inställda upprorens tid
(1974) reflected Enquist's six months of lecturing in California.
Enquist moved in the late 1970s to Copenhagen, where his second
wife, Lone Bastholm, worked as a chief of dramatic productions at the
Royal Theater. With Anders Ehnmark he co-authored the play Chez nous
(1977), which borrowed its title from the name of a sex club in
Stockholm. Their targets were the world of high
finance and the sensationalist newspapers, trade unionism, and the
sports world. The sex club can be seen as a metaphor for capitalist exploitation. At
Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre, the play became a succès de scandale. In the second half of the 1980s, Enquist serves as a cultural ambassador in Paris, where he lived with Lone Bastholm in a seven-room flat on the
Champs-Élysées and drank a lot of while alone. From this period dates one of Enquist's finest works, Musikanternas uttåg (1978,
The
March of the Musicians). It describes the lives and
working conditions of non-union laborers in the early years of the 20th
century, around the timber-mills of Bureå in northern Sweden. The title
of the novel was taken from a story by the Grimm Brothers, 'Town
Musicians of Bremen'. Controversially, Enquist does not glamorize
workers or the agitator Johan Elmblad, who is chased out of the
neighborhood. During the confrontation between the Social-Democratic
Party and the Christian fundamentalist, Nicanor, a young boy, helps
Elmblad. Nicanor realizes at the end that "there's always something
better than death". Enquist, who was a Social Democrat, argues that
Social Democracy has not kept
its promises and has abandoned Socialism. After the murder of Olof
Palme in 1986, Enquist said in the essay 'Ett svenskt vintermord' (Kartritarna,
1992), that the pistol was raised a long time ago: "Jag tror att
pistolen höjdes för ganska lång tid sedan, kanske för mer än hundra år
sedan; jo, det tror jag." In Nedstörtad ängel (1985) Enquist told three love stories through such characters as a Mexican born with two heads, a male and female, a schizophrenic murderer, and a woman, Bertolt Brecht's third wife, who was confined in a mental hospital. Enquist also written short stories, travel books, a detective novel, and the script for Jan Troell's film Hamsun (1996). It focused on the late years of the Norwegian Nobel laureate, shadowed by accusations of Nazi sympathies. The film was praised by among others director Ingmar Bergman. Moreover, Enquist collaborated with Troell in Il Capitano (1991) based on a true story dealing with the 1988 Åmsele murders. Enquist's literary criticism appeared in a number of newspapers, including Uppsala Nya Tidning, Svenska Dagbladet, and Expressen. Upon the publication of Kapten Nemos bibliotek (1991) Enquist said in an interview that it was his last novel. The family tragedy was based on a real event in which the male babies were mixed in a hospital. When the mistake is found, the nameless disturbed narrator at the age of six is taken from his home, 'the green house', and sent to a less prosperous home. Another child, Johannes, takes his place. The narrator finds a refuge from Jules Verne's stories. Captain Nemo becomes the guide into his confused mind. "The birds slept, tightly wrapped in themselves and their dreams. Can it be that birds dream? The mist was so low that it left only water and birds to be seen, only a black unmoving surface of water, and endless sea. I could imagine myself on the outermost shore, and in front of me nothingness. An outermost boundary. And then the birds, wrapped tightly in their dreams." However, in 1999 Enquist broke his silence as a novelist with Livläkarens besök, which won the August Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2003. The protagonist is Johan Friedrich Struensee, a German doctor and advocate of the ideas of Enlightenment. Struensee became the personal physician to King Christian VII of Denmark (1766-1808), who suffered from mental illness. In his position Struensee gained huge influence, and he issued reformist statutes without the king's signature. His ally was the strong-willed and shrewd queen, Caroline Mathilde. She bore him a daughter. The scandalous business ended violently. Struensee was executed when the old power, led by a palace tutor named Ove Hoegh-Guldbergmade, made its counterattack. Enquist asks the question, "what if an intellectual and humanist were the ruler?" Struensee thinks he is a man of the people, but he is no politician, and in the same way that he believes in his reforms, his opponent Guldberg, politically more talented, also thinks that he works for justice. "Among this book's merits is its perceptive treatment of the collision between the sheer purity of absolute ideas, whether religious or philosophical, and the stubborn impurity, complexity, ambiguity of actual human lives. This collision generates an abundance of ironies. Struensee institutes freedom of the press, only to see it exploited mainly by his enemies." (Bruce Bawer in The New York Times, November 18, 2001) Systrarna (2000), based on Anton Chechov's drama The Three Sisters (1901)
and his characters, was written for the Danish Betty Nansen theater. It
continued the series in which Enquist took as his subject figures such as August Strindberg, H.C.
Andersen, Selma Lagerlöf, and Victor Sjöström. In Bildmakarna (1998, The Image Makers) Enquist suggested that Lagerlöf's creative work was linked to her troubled relationship with her father. Lewis resa (2001), about religion, love and taboos, drew on historical facts, documentary records, and interviews. Enquist himself argued, that the work in not a "documentary novel", although its protanogists are real-life characters – Lewi Pethrus, the founder of the Swedish Pentecostal Revival, and Sven Lidman, a poet. Enquist dedicated the novel to his mother, who was a member of a popular revivalist movement in Västerbotten. Also Lewi in the novel regards his mother as the most important person in his life. Ett annat liv,
narrated in the third person, earned Enquist his second August Prize.
"The book's blending of fact and fiction does raise questions. Are we
judging the character of P O Enquist, or P O as a character (and is
there a distinction)? Is the distance between life and artifice a
strategy for Enquist to assess his actions with pitiless clarity or to
detach himself from his failings?" (James Kidd, Indepedent, 29 January 2015) Per
Olov Enquist died on 25 April, 2020, aged 85. He had suffered from
cancer for a long time. For further reading: Per Olov Enquist by Erik Henningsen (1975); 'Introduction' by R. Shideler in The Night of the Tribades (1977); Per Olov Enquist: A Critical Study by Ross Shideler (1984); 'Enquist, Per Olov,' in World Authors 1975-1980, edited by Vineta Colby (1985); Per Olov Enquist och det inställda upproret by Henrik Jansson (1987); Contemporary World Authors, edited by Tracy Chevalier (1993); The Rhetoric of the Documentary: Per Olov Enquist and Scandinavian Documentary Literature by Thomas Bredsdorff (1993); Andas fram mitt ansikte: om den mytiska och djuppsykologiska strukturen hos Per Olov Enquist by Eva Ekselius (1996); Documentarism in Scandinavian Literature, edited by Poul Houe and Sven Hakon Rossel (1997); 'Translating Docudrama: Per Olov Enquist's Tribadernas natt in English and French' by Egil Törnqvist, in Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek 19 (1998); 'Enquist, Per Olov,' in Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Vol. 2, edited by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Mellan sanningen och lögnen: studier i Per Olov Enquists dramatik = Between Verity and Mendacity: Studies in Per Olov Enquist’s Dramatic Production by Gunnar Syréhn (2000); 'The Phenomenon of "Otherness" in Per Olov Enquist's View of Strindberg in The Night of the Tribades' by Gunnar Syréhn, in August Strindberg: Critical Approaches, edited by Poul Houe, Hakon Rossell and Göran Stockenström (2002); I berättandets makt: om tre romankroppar av Per Olov Enquist by Freja Rudels (2016); Parallella liv: om Sven Delblancs och P.O. Enquists författarskap by Lars Lönnroth (2022) Selected works:
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