Jon Fosse and the art of slow prose

“And I see myself standing and looking at the picture with the two lines, a purple line and a brown line, that cross in the middle and I think it’s cold in the main room.”

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Thus starts each part of Jon Fosse’s three-part novel, Septology. In Septology, written in a melodious and hypnotic “slow prose”, Fosse, the Norwegian writer who has been awarded this year’s Nobel prize for literature, probes into what makes us who we are and why we lead the life that we do. Our lives, his fiction would suggest, are like the unfinished painting before which we stand and stare and ask, just as Ramana Maharishi asked the question, “Who am I?” “What is the purpose of my life?”

At one point in the novel, Fosse writes: “Asle says and I think that that’s how it is, a person comes from God, and goes back to God. I think, for body is conceived and born, it grows and declines, it dies and vanishes, but the spirit is a unity of body and soul, the way form and content are an invisible unity in a good picture…”. When experiencing these lines, one is transported to the verses of the Gita where Krishna says, “As a person sheds worn-out garments and wears new ones, likewise, at the time of death, the soul casts off its worn-out body and enters a new one.”

Septology describes the life and activities of an ageing painter and widower, Asle, who lives alone on the western coast of Norway with a few friends, among them Bjorgvin, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol.

The novel explores the human condition from different perspectives. In fact, the protagonist(s) Asle and Asle are doppelgängers — two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life – both grappling with existential questions.

As Sam Sacks wrote in his review in The Wall Street Journal, “These unique books ask you to engage with the senses rather than the mind, and their aim is to bring about the momentary dissolution of the self.”

Fosse’s Septology communicates as much through form as content, perhaps a metonymic reference to the search for the forms it narrates. The wintry landscape, Scandinavian loneliness, and unhurried quest of the protagonists give it the character of an oil painting being finished before our eyes, stroke by stroke, by none less than a genius. One needs a lot of patience and calmness of mind to read Septology. In fact, he is the guru of Karl Ove Knausgård, another celebrated Norwegian writer of slow prose, both in the art of writing and in real life.

At 64, Fosse is the most-performed Norwegian playwright after Henrik Ibsen. Often referred to as the “new Ibsen”, Fosse’s works have been noted to represent a modern continuation of the dramatic tradition established by Ibsen in the 19th century. He has also written short stories, poetry, children’s books, and essays besides novels and plays and his works have been translated into more than 40 languages. He also plays the fiddle, and much of his teenage writing practice involved creating his own lyrics for musical pieces.

CS Balakrishnan is a Mumbai-based writer. The views expressed are personal