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Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970) |
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Norwegian novelist, short story writer, and poet, who gained fame in his homeland and other European countries before and after World War II. Tarjei Vesaas wrote his works in New Norwegian (nynorsk), formerly known as landsmål, "rural language." He published several books before his first significant success, Det store spelet (1934, The Great Cycle), in which the protagonist Per Bufast refuses to accept his ordained destiny. Vesaas spent most of his life in the province of Telemark. His most famous novel is the spellbinding Is-slottet (1963, The Ice Palaca). Talk about what home is – Tarjei
Vesaas was born in Vinje, Telemark, an isolated place a
good six hundred meters above sea level. He was the oldest son of the
family, expected to take over farm, where the family had lived for 300
hundred years in the same house, passed down from father to son through
the centuries. "As a boy, I worked on the farm under the supervision of
my severe father," Vesaas recalled. "My much less severe mother, in
addition to being a very efficient housewife, was particularly
interested in music and song. Both had strong literary interest, but
only as readers." ('Vesaas, Tarje,' in World Authors 1950-1970, edited by John Wakeman, New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1975, p. 1484) Vesaas was educated at a folk high school (Folkehøyskole). He was fond of essay writing, but he did not dream of becomin a writer. In the 1920s he travelled abroad, mostly in Germany, with the help of a travel grant. Some of his books Vesaas wrote in Munich. Except theseperiods of travel in Scandinavia and on the European continent, Vesaas spent his whole life in the Telemark valley. He gave up traveling after he married the poet and translator Halldis Moren (1907-1995) in 1934. They settled on the farm Midtbø near the Vesaas farm. Vesaas began his literary career in the early 1920s, when he published his first books, Menneskebonn (1923), Sendemann Huskuld (1924), and Guds bustader (1925). These romantic works, often with tragic ending, were closely tied to the traditional nynorsk literature. In the 1930s he wrote several realistic novels, among them The Great Cycle, which depicted traditional life in the countryside, and Kvinnor ropar heim (1935), partly based on his own marriage to Halldis Moren. Fars reise (1930), Sigrid Stallbrokk (1931), and Dei ukjende mennene (1932) formed the so-called Klas Dyregodt tetralogy. The Berlin-based publishing house Universitas gave out in 1937 Vesaas's Blut und Boden novels Det store spelet (Das groβe Spiel) and Kvonnor ropar heim (Eine Frau ruft heim) in German translation. Oskar Weitzmann translated also Hjarta høyrer sine heimlandstonar (Wächter seines Lebens); it was published by Universitas in 1939. Halldis's influence was crucial for the author, especially in
helping him to win depression and suicidal thoughts about drowning,
which was seen in some of his novels form the 1930s. Also the
atmosphere in his books in the 1930s was mostly oppressive, foreboding a
catastrophe. Happy endings were not his thing. In the 1940s Vesaas's works became more symbolical and
allegorical. Vesaas's central themes were loneliness, guilt, psychological isolation, and death. Like in typical Scandinavian films, people do not say what they think but the silence is full of meanings. His characters seem to be driven by unchained inner forces. The solution offered to their problems is the process of growing up, of learning, or accepting the fate that awaits. The protagonist of The Great Cycle is Per Bufast, the oldest son of a farm family. He rebels against his destiny to take over the farm when his father dies. Per dreams of the many possibilities in the wide world, but finally he realizes that he will spent on the farm the rest of his life. In the play Ultimatum (1934) Vesaas expressed his fear of the approaching international conflict. Through five young people waiting to see whether their country will go to war, Vesaas advocated his pacifist view. Kimen (1940, The Seed), set on a peaceful island, explored the irrationality in the human soul, as Norway had just was drawn into World War II. A mentally disturbed man has killed a girl and a lynching party starts to hunt him. Vesaas underlined, that violence must be countered by rational reflection - otherwise primitive hatred takes power over the people. During the German occupation, Vesaas buried manuscipts in the
earth until liberation came. He wrote Huset i mørkret (1945,
The House in the Dark), and allegorical story of the nature of the evil
and Norway's struggle against invasion. The occupied Norway is
symbolized by a large house, where the "Arrow people" terrorize the
other inhabitants. His next novel, Bleikeplassen
(1946, The Bleaching Yard), was originally written as a play in 1939.
Vesaas dramatized again this heavily symbolic work in 1953 for The
Norwegian Theatre in Oslo. The events are set in a laundry; cleanliness
is represented as the purging of the soul. Vesaas was introduced to modern verse by Halldis Moren who gave him a volume of selected poems by the Finnish-Swedish poet Edith Södergran, Vesaas tried writing
poem, too. "But nothing came out it, no really serious poems came,"
Vesaas later said, "no more now than before. They lay gestating
somewhere for fourteen years. Then they sprang out again for some
unknown reason and became the first attempts at poems in Kjeldene
[The Springs]." (Tarjei Vesaas, in Through Naked
Branches: Selected Poems of Tarjei Vesaas, p. 139) From the late 1940s Vesaas began to publish poetry regularly. His early verses were composed in more or less traditional vein, but later he approached modernism and as in his novels, his writing became more intense and restrained. During his lifetime, Vesaas published five collections of poetry. Roger Greenwald's selection of the author's poetry, entitled Through Naked Branches (2000), won the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize. Vesaas's works from the 1950s include Fuglane
(1957,
The Birds), which tells the moving story of a mentally retarded man,
Mattis, who has an innate feel for poetry. He lives with his sister, Hege, who is
slightly older and who takes care of him. When she falls in love with a
lumberman, Jørgen, Mattis realizes how Hege's life is full of
frustrations. One of the central symbols of the story is a woodcock:
"Mattis bent down and read what was written. Looked at the graceful
dancing footprints. That's how fine and graceful the bird is, he
thought. That's how gracefully my bird walks over the marshy ground
when he's tired of the air. " (The Birds, translated from the Norwegian by Torbjørn Støverud and Michael Barnes, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1969, p. 75) Only Mattis, heading to death, can understand the message of the woodcock. In Vårnatt (1954, Spring Night) the events take place in one
spring night and the morning after and deal with basic questions of
life - birth and
death, family relationship and feeling of rejection. Everyday reality is seen from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old boy,
behind whose observations the reader can anticipate deeper,
transcendental meanings. "In the open patches between the trees
grew patches of angelica – and it was these large flowers more than
anything else that had drawn Olaf to this spot so often throughout his
boyhood. He would not have been able to explain what there was between
him and them, but for him they were wonderful plants as they stood
bristling grotesquely with their bursting wheels of blossom." (Spring Night, translated from the Norwegian by Kenneth G. Chapman, London and Chester Springs: Peter Owen, 2004, p. 14) Vindane (1952), a collection of
stories, won the Venice Prize and Is-slottet
(1963, The Ice Palace), a captivating novel open to many
interpretations, received the Nordic Literary Prize. Peter Owen, its
British publisher, described it as "the best novel I ever published". The story focuses on two eleven-year-old girls, Siss and Unn, who
became friends. "Siss, let's undess!" (The Ice Palace, translated from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Rokkan, London and Chicago: Peter Owen, 1966, p. 18) Although there is a strong bond between them, their
personalities are complete different or reflect different aspects of
the same personality -Siss
is the leader, Unn is shy and introverted, and at the moment when she
is abut to tell her great and painful secret to Siss, she stops and
goes away. Unn discovers the "Ice Palace," a formation of ice created by a waterfall. "Unn looked down into an enchanted world of small pinnacles, gables, frosted domes, soft curves and confused tracery. All of it was ice, and the water spurted between, building it up continually. Branches of the waterfall had been diverted and rushed into new channels, creating new forms. Everything shone." (Ibid., p. 35) Unn freezes to death in the strange labyrinth of ice. Siss is left alone but she is also attracted by the Ice Palace and its secrets. "We are woodwind players, enchanted by things we cannot resist," Siss thinks. (Ibid., p. 120) Eventually Siss is destroyed by the temptation. "Telling the story of thwarted and complicated friendship between two adolescent girls, The Ice Palace is a short and dense novel full of mysterious suggestions and allusions." ('The Mind and Nature of Locked Rooms: Tarjei Vesaas's novel The Ice Palace and metaphysical crime fiction' by Anna Westerståhl Stenport, Studies in the Novel, Vol. 42, No. 3, Fall 2010, p. 305) Like many of the characters of his books, Vesaas was
somewhat shy and reserved, he had the habit of speaking little. His
late work Båten om kvelden (1968, The Boat
in the
Evening), a collection of semi-autobiographical sketches, which
reviewed themes that had fascinated him throughout his life, mysterious
threats and the spiritual condition of the individual. Vesaas portrays
his own psychological development from his early realization of human
isolation to his acceptance of death. These thoughts also marked his
last volume of poetry, Liv ved straumen (1970). Tarjei Vesaas he died on March
15, 1970. Olav Vesaas gathered his father's autobiographical writings in Tarjei Vesaas om seg sjølv (1985). Halldis Moren Vesaas wrote two books of memories, I Midtbøs bakkar (1974) and Båten om dagen (1976). Vesaas's books have been translated into all Scandinavian languages and in English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Spanish, Latvian, Czechoslovakian etc. He was repeatedly named as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature; in 1964 he was one of four nominees for the prize. Elizabeth Rokkan has translated several of Vesaas's novels into English, and his last work, The Boat in the Evening (1967). For further reading: Naturens språk i Tarjei Vesaas’ Is-slottet (1963): Økokritiske perspektiver by Eva Jensine Pritchard (2024); Fortellingen om en som er litt tust, og hvorfor vi skal bry oss om han: En affektteoretisk lesning av Tarjei Vesaas' Fuglane by Maja Sørgjerd (2023); Du skal òg bli glad i jord: Tarjei Vesaas 125 år: 15 nye lesingar, edited by Eirik Ingebrigtsen (2022); 'Tarjei Vesaas og norsk litteratur i NaziTyskland = Tarjei Vesaas and Norwegian Literature in Nazi Germany' by Narve Fulsås, Edda, Årgang 109, nr. 2-2022; Tarjei Vesaas: ein diktar i tida by Olav Vesaas (2018); Tarjei Vesaas' symbolverden by Per Arne Evensen (2017); Bygdemodernisme: Tarjei Vesaas og dei ytste ting by Hadle Oftedal Andersen (2015); Engasjement og eksperiment: Tarjei Vesaas' romaner Huset i mørkret, Signalet og Brannen by Lisbeth Pettersen Wærp (2009); Å vera i livet: Ei bok om Halldis Moren Vesaas by Olav Vesaas (2007); 'Short Fiction as Enstrangement: From Franz Kafka to Tarjei Vesaas and Kjell Askildsen' by Jakob Lothe, in European and Nordic Modernisms, edited by Mats Jansson, Jakob Lothe and Hannu Riikonen (2004); Twentieth-century Norwegian Writers, edited by Tanya Thresher (2004); Kunstens fortrolling: nylesingar i Tarjei Vesaas' forfatterskap by Steinar Gimnes (2002); 'Introduction' by Roger Greenwald, in Through Naked Branches: Selected Poems of Tarjei Vesaas (2000); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Vol. 4, edited by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Child of the Earth: Tarjei Vesaas and Scadinavian Primitivism by Frode Hermundsgård (1989); A History of Scandinavian Literature 1870-1980 by Sven H. Rossel (1982); 'Vesaas, Tarjei' by K.C. [Kenneth Chapman], in Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, ed. by Jean-Albert Bédé and William B. Edgerton (1980); Five Norwegian Poets, edited by Robin Fulton (1976); Tarjei Vesaas: Eine ästhetische Biographie by Walter Baumgartner (1976); Båten om dagen: minne frå eit samliv 1946-1970 by Halldis Moren Vesaas (1976); 'Vesaas, Tarjei,' in World Authors 1950-1970, edited by John Wakeman (1975); Tarjei Vesaas by Kenneth G. Chapman (1970) - Huom.: Halldis Moren Vesaas käänsi norjaksi mm. suomenruotsalaista runoutta, Maria Jotunin teoksen Kun on tunteet (1986, Når ein har kjensler: monologar, dialogar og viser) sekä sekä Eeva-Liisa Mannerin näytelmän Poltettu oranssi (1983, Brend oransje: skoedespel). Selected works:
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