Carsten Jensen’s first work, Folkelighed og utopi (Populism and Utopia) (1981), is an academic treatise on the socialist and, later, communist novelist Hans Kirk (1898-1962) who also made something of a name for himself as an essayist and social critic.
Jensen’s breakthrough as a social commentator came with the two essay collections Sjælen sidder i øjet (The Windows of the Soul) (1985) and På en mørkeræd klode (On A Planet Afraid Of The Dark) (1986). Common to both of these collections is their rejection of, and their questioning of, the post-modern world of the Eighties, in which cultural relativism and the pursuit of the constantly fluctuating aesthetic of the superficial consigns human beings to a personalized sphere in which the focus is placed on the individual’s need for on-the-spot gratification. Jensen takes issue with Western civilization’s spurious, material values and irresponsibility. Taking his outset in the cultural indicators in the world around us (from New Age therapies, horror films, the cult of the body and computers to literature and brain surgery), he discusses the existential and moral necessity of taking a stand, of making a commitment - of fighting the unbearable lightness, and beguiling delusions, of being.
These two collections of essays bear the mark of Carsten Jensen’s work as book reviewer and television critic with the Danish newspaper Politiken, and the slant of the often provocative and polemic statements voiced in these pieces derives from Jensen’s eminent knack for discerning the universality in the specific, the all-embracing element in a particular instance. As a result, they are as telling today as they ever were.
Souvenirs fra 80’erne (Souvenirs of the Eighties) (1988) features the cream of Jensen’s writings for a number of leading Danish newspapers and arts magazines: articles in which the opinion-shaping power of the media, the concept of post-modernism and the political indifference of the man of the Eighties are just some of the targets of his scathing criticism.
Kannibalernes nadver (The Cannibals’ Communion) (1988) is Carsten Jensen’s first novel; a romantic comedy which tells of one man’s difficulties in dealing with his life, and more especially, his relationships with women. Love affairs are described as being cannibalistic, the one party’s cynicism, posturing and lack of commitment "gobbling up" the other.
The Cannibals’ Communion is packed with narcissistic big-city women who suffer from delusions of grandeur and have a constant need to see themselves reflected in the other’s eyes, as confirmation of their existence. Likewise, the philandering central character is caught up in a web of pretence and playacting. Inspired by the Italian commedia dell’arte, Jensen parodies the lovers’ idealized view of romance in language that is, accordingly, ambiguous, satirical and witty. This novel provides a description of a generation, Jensen’s own, which, in intellectual terms, falls between the vehement ideologists of the 1970s and the style-worshipping aesthetes of the 1980s.
Carsten Jensen’s second novel, Jorden i munden (Earth In The Mouth), published in 1992, tells of a young man who sets out on a journey of discovery; a rite of passage that takes him to India, and leads, not to enlightenment, but to the collapse of a body of entrenched Western ideals and values. The story is constructed like a nest of Chinese boxes with the narrative voice of the adult persona presenting and looking back on his younger self. Repeated descriptions of eating disorders and bodily evacuations stand as an allegory for the spiritual purge undergone by the youthful persona. The intensely evocative descriptions of his encounter with the foreignness of India are one of the most striking features of this novel; as is the exploration of the self and of sexuality, contrasted with the adult narrator’s melancholia, and clear sense of his own mortality. Both The Cannibals’ Communion and Earth In The Mouth contain certain deconstructive narrative elements and more than once the narrator interrupts the story to make some comment on the conception of the text or on the personal traits of the characters. The vivid and psychologically intense world of Earth In The Mouth completely captures the imagination of the reader and is unquestionably the better of the two novels.
In another collection of essays, Af en astmatisk kritikers bekendelser (From the Confessions of an Asthmatic Critic) (1992), the perspective shifts. Here, Carsten Jensen’s reflections on his life as critic and author are imbued with the same measured introspective tone favoured in his second novel. Jensen’s deep respect for world literature is evident in the studies of, or rather, dialogues with, international writers and thinkers (Milan Kundera, Umberto Eco, Elias Canetti, Octavio Paz, Tzvetan Todorov, to name but a few). He explores psychological, political and moral dilemmas and how they relate both to his own personal history and to the greater scheme of things. Jensen’s next work, Forsømmelsernes bog (The Book of Omissions) (1993) consists of five fine essays which address, among other subjects, the question of Europe’s inertia and incomprehension in the face of the war in the former Yugoslavia; and with such concepts as evil, fate and death constituting the principal leitmotivs. The essay on travel writing testifies to Jensen’s great love of journeying, both in the physical and the psychological sense: "I travel in hope of learning to live with the chaos of life," as he writes in a later book.
Carsten Jensen’s gift for seeing the world in a grain of sand, the universal element in each individual’s story, manifests itself most impressively in his two travel biographies, Jeg har set verden begynde (I Have Seen The World Begin) (1996) and Jeg har hørt et stjerneskud (I Have Heard A Shooting Star) (1997). His travels through Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the islands of the Pacific and Latin America were prompted by an existential urge to discover some meaning in existence, but the journey becomes as much a tale of war, violence, suppression and poverty. And his anthropological studies of - for example - the natives of the idyllic South Sea islands, far from civilization, do not fulfil Jensen’s dream of finding an unspoilt Paradise either. Contained within these two travel biographies are a host of psychological portraits which can be read in the light of Jensen’s own view of the world. The old maxim which says that we travel in order to find ourselves in something foreign certainly accords with Jensen’s interpretive insight. For I Have Seen The World Begin Carsten Jensen was awarded the Danish Booksellers’ Golden Laurel Wreath.
Internationalization and politics are two of the predominant topics in Carsten Jensen’s latest collection of essays, År to & tre (Years Two & Three), but room is also found for the occasional wry comment on the self-conceit of Danish artists, or modern man’s blind fascination with genetic engineering and information technology. The fragmentary descriptions of life with his daughter Laura, on the other hand, show the other side of the coin: here, each moment is lived to the full, without the cast of pain, agonizing and melancholy characteristic of so much of his writing.
As a whole, Carsten Jensen’s body of work shows him to be, in many ways, a man of the world, and his prodigious fund of knowledge and satirical pen never fail to ruffle the waters of the Danish millpond.
