The silence of the black guitar: Pathos in Jon Fosse’s Stengd gitar.

Introduction

The novel is prefaced by a quote from Theodor Adorno: “[…] at present the point of view of the narrator may be defined as a paradox. It is no longer possible to narrate; however, the form of the novel requires narration”¹. In Fosse’s novel narration takes place spontaneously as a fusion of scattered fragments distributed haphazardly in the mind of the protagonist. The fragments appear as a subtle form of intertextuality. Hypotexts in the form of allegories blend with Liv’s daily experience. Narrative structure is replaced by an obsessive form of repetition emphasizing the need to speak while at the same time expressing an urge to keep silent. The distinctly musical rhythm of repetition is underscored by the fact that the novel is written in nynorsk, New Norwegian, one of two Norwegian language variants, the other one being bokmål. The musical cadence of New Norwegian endows the novel with an original tonality.

The intertexts

There are two allegorical patterns behind the text. Firstly, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The myth appears in the text on two levels: As Orpheus’ song emanating from the black guitar which is played in a trembling tone at first and descends into silence at the end; and in the glance of Orpheus which forces Eurydice to return to darkness as does Liv. Secondly, the story of Abraham and Issac, Genesis 22, 1-19. The two underlying allegorical patterns are intertwined and enhanced by the subtle discursive implementation of the Kierkegaardian concept of self-enclosure, Indesluttethed, as analyzed by Vigilius Haufniensis in The Concept of Anxiety (Begrebet Angest, 1844), and silence punctuated by a trembling speech in Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven, 1843) by Johannes de Silentio. The blue, trembling tones of the guitar turn into bars, sprinklar, blocking the light. Liv descends (or ascends?) into darkness, thus realizing the absolute relation to the absolute, Johannes de Silentio’s definition of the religious. Liv’s interior monologue enacts an Aristotelean pathos in the modern(ist) mode.

In Poetics Aristotle defines action, praxis, as the movement of the psyche towards something it wants. By contrast, passion, pathos is passive; the psyche is moved. Aristotle understands, however, that the two concepts are combined in human experience. Liv is moved; she suffers because of the absence of her brother and her son who is locked in after the door slammed, leaving the key inside the apartment. In Sophocles’ tragedy Electra is locked out by the community and is looking for her brother Orestes. However, Liv also moves towards something as does Electra who is adamant about avenging the murder of her father Agamemnon by her mother Clytemnestra. Fosse’s novel is in every way as tragic as Electra. Several details indicate a similarity: the search for a brother, a lost child, and exposure to the eyes of the community. In Fosse’s novel anonymous people in town stare at Liv because her face is scarred and in Sophocles’ play the chorus admonishes Electra to give up her revenge. Further, like Electra the modern heroine has her hair cut short and wears old clothes, signs of lament. I believe that Stengd gitar was directly inspired by Electra. In Stengd gitar the father has not been murdered but he is in a weak state, missing two front teeth, bent down and casting his eyes on the ground. The state of tragic pathos is transferred to modern times and the protagonist is a young woman engaged in a desperate search not only for her brother but for insight, knowledge about herself and her place. Where is she if she is locked out and cannot obtain a key? Her plight is as desperate as Electra’s. Add to these details the semantic proximity of the names — Electra means light and Liv means life.

During her walk through town Liv feels people’s eyes piercing her and she recalls a nightmare she had during a bad drug trip: the eyes of fierce-looking animals were piercing her skin. She also recalls her eighteenth birthday party where she was tied down and forced to have sex with someone she barely knew. Added to this memory, in the manner of a montage, is her memory of being burnt in a house-fire at the age of four. These episodes, mixing past and present, show the presence in the text of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice: Orpheus turns around and looks at Eurydice thus causing her to return to the darkness she emerged from. Intermingled with this hypotext is a double intertext: Firstly, Abraham and Isaac. Isaac is tied down on the stack of wooden logs where he is destined to be consumed by fire after the knife of his father has pierced his heart; and secondly, Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling as well as his Concept of Anxiety. In the latter work Vigilius Haufniensis describes the mental state of a person who is locked out and locked in at the same time, i.e. locked into herself. Liv states repeatedly during her walk that she is locked into herself and locked out of her place. As I have indicated, Vigilius’ word for this self-enclosure is Indesluttethed, being shut in. In the former work Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes de Silentio describes how Isaac’s voice trembled when addressing his father.

The welded artwork

With the song of Orpheus and with Isaac’s trembling voice we discover yet another motif of Stengd gitar, probably the most significant one: the music of the black guitar. Liv has for several years been a member of a rock band performing in town. The band has broken up but the music persists in her mind as she is making her way through town in search of a key and her brother. Several quotes will indicate the meaning of the music: “mjuke fargar fra ein svart gitar”/“soft colors from a black guitar”; “mjuke fargar, og lys i alle fargane”/“soft colors, and light in all the colors”; “gitaren skjelv mellom veggene”/“the guitar trembled between the walls”². At its full potential the guitar vibrates and spreads light — the music at one point emits a blue light. Liv has a synaesthetic experience, sound and color at once. However, later the guitar strings turn into sprinklar, bokmål tremmer, bars in English: “gitaren er blitt til ein sprinkel”/“the guitar has turned into a bar”; “den svarte gitaren er ein sprinkel mot lyset”/“the black guitar is a bar against the light”³. The guitar is mute — the song of Orpheus is silenced as Eurydice returns to darkness; and Abraham is silent because no words can describe his pathos, his faith and his gratitude when his son is spared. The silence of the guitar opens up a deeper voice that cannot be represented in language. When the guitar is finally closed or locked inaudible tones are sensed beyond the senses: the tones of Liv’s spirit itself whose agony is vented as an obsessive, manic repetition. This agonized repetition alternates with another textual tone: the staccato rhythm of the guitar, now re-created and infused into the text; the staccato effect is interspersed with spiccato (played with a bouncing bow if the instrument is a violin), and even with pizzicato where the strings are plucked. These inaudible rhythms sublimate the text, lifting it into the sphere of music. Words turn into a silence that is at the same time a beat*: the beating of Liv’s heart.

Significantly, Liv’s father is a welder working night shifts in a factory. Welding is a major rhetorical metaphor, indicating the mixing or fusion of the colors emanating from the black guitar and the colors implanted in Liv’s short-cropped hair by the hairdresser. The silent, locked guitar whose music ceased at one point, only to be revived and infused into the text, passes through a second metamorphosis as it is transmitted to Liv’s hair. Her exclusion from the apartment and her frustrated attempt to obtain a key from an elusive building superintendent are thus compensated for.

Although Liv walks into darkness like Electra and Eurydice and does not manage to get inside her apartment at the end of the novel, a chance at a turning point combined with insight, a coming to terms with the fundamental emptiness and loss at the core of her Being, is hinted at: Liv describes the hairdresser who is cutting her hair short as someone who knows; he knows why she wants her hair cut. This is a brief moment of peripeteia and anagnorisis in a modern vein, the vein of an elusive possibility: a potential metamorphosis leading to transcendence.

Fetichism and mimesis

In an essay on Walter Benjamin T. W. Adorno states: “He is driven not merely to awaken congealed life in petrified objects — as in allegory — but also to scrutinize living things so that they present themselves as being ancient, ‘Ur-historical’ and abruptly release their significance”⁴. In Mimesis and Alterity Michael Taussig comments that Benjamin addresses “the fetish character of objecthood under capitalism, demystifying and reenchanting, out-fetishing the fetish”⁵. Taussig proceeds to ask whether Benjamin’s scrutiny does in fact awaken rather than petrify ąnd reify historical objects. The answer is positive: awakening is taking place as the fetishized object becomes an outward representation of an intrinsic spirit. Referring to maternal labor and birth rituals performed by the Cuna Indian shaman of the San Blas Islands off Panama, Taussig describes how the ritual awakens petrified fetish-objects, carved wooden figurines. Taussig concludes that replication, i.e. the artwork, in casu the wooden figurines, possesses a magical power. This is the power of the mimetic faculty, the ability of the artist to represent, to mimic and to replicate. The ancient object, Ur-history, is re-awakened through being turned into an artform. Moreover, the artwork captures the soul, the spirit that had been imprisoned in the body. The Cuna Indian birth ritual attains an existential and aesthetic significance that may be applied to the modernist narrative mode. Jon Fosse’s protagonist Liv goes through such a process of awakening through reproduction, in her case as a reproduction of the multiple colors of the guitar.

Conclusion

What then, is narration in Jon Fosse’s novel? And what is literary and philosophical influence? It is certainly not influence in the traditional sense. Even as I have claimed that Fosse’s novel was inspired by Sophocles’ Electra, I must argue that the intertextuality of Stengd gitar is singularly unorthodox. The intertexts are present in Liv’s mind, and by extension in the author’s mind, as a welded web of scattered but interconnected threads, or rather molten scraps of metal. The narrative welding occurs in a spontaneous manner; it is an unconscious rhetorical maneuver. The absorption in Liv’s and in the author’s mind of the philosophical and literary canon is intrinsic to the discourse; it is one with it. We can detect no external imposition of a narrative plan. The spontaneity of the text illuminates the life of a twenty-year old working-class woman whose experience occurs within the course of two days, Tuesday, December 13th and Wednesday, December 14th. Liv’s experience is universal. It is so because of the uncanny nature of the text: the way it discloses living things in the present as being ancient.

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1. Theodor Adorno, Noten zur Literatur (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1959), 5. — English translation is mine.↩︎

2. Jon Fosse, Stengd gitar. (Oslo: Det norske Samlaget, 1985; Kindle), Loc 660. — English translations are mine.↩︎

3. Stengd gitar, Loc 1293.↩︎

4. Theodor Adorno, “A Portrait of Walter Benjamin,” Prisms, trans. Samuel and Sherry Weber (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981), 233.↩︎

5. Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity. A Particular History of the Senses. (New York: Routledge, 1993).↩︎