This is an archive article published on October 6, 2023

Opinion In a world obsessed with what’s spoken, Nobel laureate Jon Fosse articulates what is not

The foregrounding of his prose -- spartan, and prophetic in its ability to examine nuance -- that is only now making its way to the rest of the world through translations, shows the timeless potency of literature to map the universal and the political

Swedish Academy, Norway, Nobel laureate, Nobel Prize, editorial, Indian express, opinion news, indian express editorial

The Nobel committee’s recognition of Fosse, who writes in Norwegian Nynorsk, a minority language, is both a subtle political statement and a reiteration of his eminence in continental Europe.

By: Editorial

October 6, 2023 06:55 AM IST First published on: Oct 6, 2023 at 06:55 AM IST

The odds finally evened out in favour of Jon Fosse, one of Norway’s most well-known contemporary playwrights and, like the long-suffering Japanese great Haruki Murakami, a fixture on the list of Nobel probables for several years. In keeping with its recent tradition of recognising autofiction as an important literary genre, the Swedish Academy awarded Fosse this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”.

The ability to listen — to words and to silence — is a rare quality. For Fosse, it has been a transformational gift, allowing the 64-year-old to tap into the rhythms of the quotidian and the exceptional. In works such as Red Black, Melancholy I, Melancholy II, Morning and Evening, and Septology, his epic novel written in a single sentence, the writer has explored the Derridean philosophy: What cannot be said must not be silenced, but written. Like last year’s winner, the French writer Annie Ernaux, Fosse, too, has plumbed the depths of personal experience — a near-fatal accident when he was a child, his brief wondrous life as a Communist hippie, his turn towards spirituality and conversion to Catholicism in 2012 — to explore the boundaries between the private, the personal and the universal with Beckettian precision.

The Nobel committee’s recognition of Fosse, who writes in Norwegian Nynorsk, a minority language, is both a subtle political statement and a reiteration of his eminence in continental Europe. In Norway, Fosse is an institution, with an annual international festival in Oslo dedicated to disseminating his poetry, essays, novels and plays; his plays are performed liberally across Europe. The foregrounding of his prose — spartan, and prophetic in its ability to examine nuance — that is only now making its way to the rest of the world through translations, shows the timeless potency of literature to map the universal and the political through visceral self-introspection.