Nielse Brunse (b. 1949) has published a number of novels and
collections of short stories and poetry, but can rightly
consider the whole of world literature as his fiefdom. As a prize-winning translator from German, English and Russian he has published Danish versions of drama,
prose and essays by classic and modern classic authors, from Shakespeare,
Kleist and Chekhov to Brecht, Pinter and Erica Jong. Of the interaction between
his own short story-writing and his activity as a translator subordinating
himself to another author's ideas and language, he has said: 'Perhaps I keep my
writing ability fresh by changing from one to the other.'
At all events, one rediscovers an exquisite and idiomatic language in the novels and short stories that of
recent years have occupied him after his verse collections of the 1980s. According to its subtitle, his first book of prose, Den rigeste i verden (Richest in All World),
published in 1989, consisted of six stories about money. It is true that Rockefeller is mentioned in the first paragraph of the very first story, and Scrooge McDuck in one of the book's mottoes. On the other hand, however, Our Lord himself, with long hair and a motor cycle, also makes an appearance, and in a subtle way the stories turn out to be about human excess and wealth - quite the opposite, in fact, of the miserliness portrayed by Scrooge McDuck's inventor, duck artist Carl Barks. The masters who form the
subjects of the books' two other essays are the social theorist Karl Marx and the theologian Karl Barth.
Subtle humour as preparedness for the surprises of the world is a constant feature of Brunse's writing. And
in Svaneprinsessen og andre historier(The Swan Princess And Other Stories, 1997) there is no lack of events that are hard to explain: how can a young girl and a young man lose each other on 'Den brændte ø' (The Burnt Island) on a forest lake in Karelia - and both
row the same dinghy back to the cabin, but without finding each other? Why must the unemployed librarian confirm that
'Visse veje fører til Rom' (Some Roads Lead to Rome) - but without being able to tell which ones? And why does the man in the title story dream about the year 1820, when that is precisely the postal code that is the home address of the sweetheart he does not yet know he is going to deceive?
In contrast to the fantastic events of the stories, the language in which they are written is of soberly
realist style and often, indeed, 'correct' in a way that is downright old-fashioned. This is particularly true of Brunse's first novel Ramoth-Bezer (Ramoth-Bezer, 1994), the narrator of which is a single, male university lecturer of 62 who suffers from acute agoraphobia and never dares to go outdoors. His favourite student, Ulla, has, however, left him a copy of an account of an 18th
century city with a large number of perpetual motion machines and two Biblical names, Ramoth and Bezer - a legendary city from which one can never escape. In
a strange manner, the transcribing of this manuscript also becomes a way by which the tormented literary scholar
- and the reader - can be set free.
Mystery and its elucidation, but in a more contemporary setting, are also the the subject of the novel I
lyset af en kat (In The Light of a Cat, 2000). The unusual title reflects the circumstance that short sections of the story are formed of a cat's 'thoughts', while the four main sections have different narrators. The resolution of the mystery takes the characters back to events of the Second World War, culminating in Part 4, where the angle of vision changes from one chapter to the next.
The book's subtle composition makes it possible for the
suspense to be maintained right to the last page, and also for the inner aspects of the work to be unfolded - as a
novel about love and an investigation of some gender-related areas of our modern idea of ourselves as individual and society.
(2001)
