Morning and Evening — WINNER OF THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE E-Book

Jon Fosse

• Herausgeber: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 142

Beschreibung

A child who will be named Johannes is born. An old man named Johannes dies. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed. Beginning with Johannes's father's thoughts as his wife goes into labour, and ending with Johannes's own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different, Morning and Evening is a novel concerning the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning.

Leseprobe

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Praise for A Shining

‘A Shining can be read in many ways: as a realistic monologue; as a fable; as a Christian-inflected allegory; as a nightmare painstakingly recounted the next morning, the horror of the experience still pulsing under the words, though somewhat mitigated by the small daily miracle of daylight. I think the great splendour of Fosse’s fiction is that it so deeply rejects any singular interpretation; as one reads, the story does not sound a clear singular note, but rather becomes a chord with all the many possible interpretations ringing out at once. This refusal to succumb to the solitary, the stark, the simple, the binary – to insist that complicated things like death and God retain their immense mysteries and contradictions – seems, in this increasingly partisan world of ours, a quietly powerful moral stance.’

— Lauren Groff, Guardian

‘Fosse’s prose doesn’t speak so much as it witnesses, unfolds, accumulates. It flows like consciousness itself…. This is perhaps why A Shining feels so momentous, even at fewer than fifty pages. You never quite know where you’re going. But it doesn’t matter: you want to follow, to move in step with the rhythm of these words.’

— Matthew Janney, Financial Times

‘The translation by Damion Searls perfectly judges the pitch and rhythm … producing a natural reading beat…. A Shining is a neat example of Fosse’s gift for portraying porous psychological states, and its publication is perfectly timed for a satisfying Samhain evening read.’

— Rónán Hession, Irish Times

‘The physical and otherworldly hinterland of A Shining through which Jon Fosse is the guide is at once terrifying and deeply reassuring.’

— Catherine Taylor, Times Literary Supplement 4

‘He touches you so deeply when you read him, and when you have read one work you have to continue…. What is special with him is the closeness in his writing. It touches on the deepest feelings that you have – anxieties, insecurities, questions of life and death – such things that every human being actually confronts from the very beginning. In that sense I think he reaches very far and there is a sort of a universal impact of everything that he writes. And it doesn’t matter if it is drama, poetry or prose – it has the same kind of appeal to this basic humanness.’

— Anders Olsson, Nobel committee

‘A Shining is marked by what is perhaps Fosse’s defining skill: his ability to effortlessly marry the mundane and the sublime. The author is himself a practicing Catholic; he was received into the Church in 2012, and a certain spiritual seriousness is at the heart of his works’ power, even while their spirit everywhere shuns the dogmatic. Expect from Fosse neither the supposedly infallible truths of the pulpit nor Scripture’s resonant cadence. The experience of reading him is of a different order entirely, one more humble, and perhaps as illuminating.’

— Luke Warde, Sunday Independent

‘In this spare tale of disorientation and longing, by the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, a man gets stranded on a back road in a forest and wanders deep into the trees…. Fosse uses fleeting allusions to a world beyond the reach of the narrator to explore some of humanity’s most elusive pursuits, certainty and inviolability among them. His bracingly clear prose imbues the story’s ambiguities with a profundity both revelatory and familiar.’

— New Yorker5

Praise for Septology

‘Fosse has written a strange mystical moebius strip of a novel, in which an artist struggles with faith and loneliness, and watches himself, or versions of himself, fall away into the lower depths. The social world seems distant and foggy in this profound, existential narrative.’

— Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears

‘I hesitate to compare the experience of reading these works to the act of meditation. But that is the closest I can come to describing how something in the critical self is shed in the process of reading Fosse, only to be replaced by something more primal. A mood. An atmosphere. The sound of words moving on a page.’

— Ruth Margalit, New York Review of Books

‘With Septology, Fosse has found a new approach to writing fiction, different from what he has written before and – it is strange to say, as the novel enters its fifth century – different from what has been written before. Septology feels new.’

 — Wyatt Mason, Harper’s

‘Having read the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse’s Septology, an extraordinary seven-novel sequence about an old man’s recursive reckoning with the braided realities of God, art, identity, family life and human life itself, I’ve come into awe and reverence myself for idiosyncratic forms of immense metaphysical fortitude.’

— Randy Boyagoda, New York Times

‘Septology is the only novel I have read that has made me believe in the reality of the divine, as the fourteenth-century theologian Meister Eckhart, whom Fosse has read intently, describes it: “It is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.”’

— Merve Emre, New Yorker6

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MORNING AND EVENING

JON FOSSE

Translated by

DAMION SEARLS

8

Contents

Title PageIIIAbout the AuthorCopyright

910

I

 11

More hot water, Olai, says the old midwife Anna

Don’t just stand there in the doorway, she says

No, sorry, Olai says

and he feels a heat and a chill spread all across his skin and make it prickle and he feels a joy move through all of him and force its way out through his eyes, as tears, as he hurries into the kitchen and over to the stove and starts to scoop steaming hot water into a wooden bowl, hot water like this yes that’s what she needs, yes, Olai thinks, and he scoops more hot water into the bowl and he hears Anna the midwife say that’s probably enough, yes, that should be enough, she says and Olai looks up and there is Anna the old midwife standing next to him and she takes the bowl

I can take it in myself, I’ll do it, says the old midwife Anna

and then a muffled scream comes from the room and Olai looks the old midwife Anna in the eye and he nods at her and is that a little smile on his mouth as he stands there

Not much longer now, the old midwife Anna says

If it’s a boy we’ll name him Johannes, Olai says

We’ll see, she says

Johannes, yes, Olai says

Like my father, he says

Yes, that’s a good name, the old midwife Anna says

and another scream comes from the room, louder now

Patience, Olai, says the old midwife Anna

Patience, she says

Do you hear me? she says

Be patient, she says

You’re a fisherman, you know how womenfolk don’t belong in the boat, right? she says

Uh huh, Olai says 12

It’s the same for menfolk here, do you know what would happen? the old midwife Anna says

Yes, bad luck, Olai says

Exactly, bad luck, yes, the old midwife Anna says

and Olai sees Anna the old midwife go straight to the door of the room and she is holding the bowl of hot water in front of her with outstretched arms and then Anna the old midwife stops in front of the door to the room and she turns around to face Olai

Don’t just stand there, the old midwife Anna says

and that scares Olai, can just standing here cause bad luck unintentionally? no that can’t be what she meant, and will something go wrong now, with Marta, the woman he loves and honours and respects so much, his beloved, his wife, now will something, no, it can’t

Close the kitchen door, Olai, and sit down on your chair, the old midwife Anna says

and Olai sits down at one end of the kitchen table and he puts his elbows on the table and he holds his head in his hands and it’s good he took Magda to his brother’s today, Olai thinks, when he went to get Anna the old midwife he rowed around to his brother’s with Magda first and he didn’t know if that was the right thing to do, because she’s almost a grown woman, Magda, the years go by so fast, but Marta asked him to, when it was time and he was going to row out to get Anna the old midwife he had to take Magda with him so that she could stay with his brother during the birth, she was still too young to learn too exactly what awaited her as a grown woman, Marta had said, and he had to do what she told him to do, of course, even if he would actually have liked to have Magda at home now, she’s such a smart and sensible girl, has been for as long as he can remember, good at everything she does, he ended up with a good daughter, Olai 13thinks, but then it didn’t seem like the Lord God would grant them more children, Marta wasn’t with child again and the years went by and eventually they resigned themselves to not having any more children, that was just how it was, that was their fate they said and they thanked the Lord God for having given them Magda because if they hadn’t had even her, no, it would have been sad and lonely for them here on the island of Holmen where they lived, in the house he had built himself, his brothers and neighbours had helped of course but he had done most of the work himself, and when he’d proposed to Marta he already had Holmen, he had bought it for a small sum and thought it all out, where their house should be built, he had thought of that, it had to be sheltered from the wind and the storms, where the boat house and landing should be, he had thought of that too, he needed those too didn’t he, and the first thing he built was the landing, in a calm bay facing inland, sheltered from the wind and storms from the sea to the west of Holmen, yes, and then he built the house, not so very big and not all that nice maybe but it was good enough and now, now Marta was lying in the room there about to give him a son at last, now little Johannes was about to be born, he was sure of it, Olai thought, sitting there at the end of the kitchen table, on his chair, his head propped up in his hands, as long as nothing goes wrong, as long as Marta has a good birth, brings the child into the world, as long as the child little Johannes doesn’t stay inside Marta’s belly and neither survives, little Johannes or Marta, as long as what happened to his mother that terrible day doesn’t happen now, to Marta, no, he can’t bear to think about it, Olai thinks, because they’ve been so good together, Olai and Marta, they loved each other from the very first moment, Olai thinks, but now? will Marta be taken from him now? 14could God be so evil to him? no, God surely doesn’t want that, no, but Olai has never doubted that Satan rules this world as much as the good Lord does, it’s probably ruled more by a lower god or by evil itself, this world is, but not entirely, because the good Lord exists too, that’s how it is, Olai thinks sitting there at the end of the kitchen table on his chair and propping his head in his hands, no the good Lord has been merciful to him, at least so far, he has been so happy and loved his wife and his daughter Magda, no complaints, no since Magda they had no complaints about their fate at all but only praise for the Lord God because they had had her, that’s what they really thought, both Marta and him, but then Marta’s belly began to get bigger and then it was clear to them both that now the Lord God had given them another child and when there was no more doubt they thanked the Lord God for having blessed them with another baby and this time it would surely be a boy, now it was time for little Johannes to be born, Olai was very sure of it, so now the day and the hour had come and it was taking such a long time, such a long time, Olai thinks sitting there at the end of the kitchen table on his chair and propping his head in his hands, now it is time for the baby boy to come into the world, that was certain, the only thing uncertain was whether it would come into this evil world alive or dead, yes, that’s what mattered now, Olai thinks, but if the boy was born alive there was no doubt about what he would be named, he had told Marta a long time ago that the child she was pregnant with should be named Johannes after his father and she had not said anything against it, yes, that’s a good name, she’d said, the boy should be named Johannes after his father, Olai’s father, Olai thinks, and why is it so quiet in there in the bedroom now? can something have gone wrong? it didn’t seem like anything was wrong when the 15old midwife Anna was in the kitchen to get more hot water, did it? no he couldn’t see any sign in the old midwife Anna that anything wasn’t the way it should be, no, Olai thinks, and suddenly he feels calmer, yes, almost happy, that’s how he feels all of a sudden, yes you can change just like that, can’t you, hard to believe, Olai thinks, now a little baby boy, little Johannes, will see the light of day, in the darkness and warmth inside Marta’s belly until now he has grown big and healthy and strong, he has turned from being nothing at all into a person, a little fellow, yes, there in Marta’s belly he has gotten fingers and toes and a face too, eyes and a brain in there and maybe a little hair too, and now he’s coming out, while Marta his mother screams in pain, out into the cold world and there he’ll be alone, separated from Marta, separated from everyone, he’ll be alone there always alone and then, after it’s all over, when his time comes, he will be dissolved and turn back into nothing and go back where he came from, from nothing to nothing, that’s the path of life, for people, animals, birds, fishes, houses, bowls, for everything that exists, yes, Olai thinks, and then there’s so much more too, he thinks, because even if it’s possible to think such thoughts, from nothing to nothing, it’s not like that’s it, there is so much more to it than that, but what is this everything else? the blue sky, the trees where leaves grow? the word that was in the beginning, as it says in Scripture, that lets a person understand deep things and shallow things, what is this everything else? no, to say it, who can say it? because probably it’s a spirit of God that’s in everything and turns everything into more than a nothing, gives it meaning, and colour, and that, Olai thinks, is why God’s word and spirit is in everything, that’s how it is, he’s sure of it, Olai thinks, but he is just as sure that Satan’s will is active too, and whether there is 16