A Discrete Cronicle of Modern Times

By : Henk van der Liet

In 1999 Vibeke Grønfeldt was nominated for the European Aristeion Award for her novel I dag (Today). On that occation Henk van der Liet, Professor of Nordic Languages and Literature at the University of Amsterdam, wrote the following article for the nomination report.

The title page of the Danish writer Vibeke Grønfeldt’s latest work, entitled Today (I dag), does not give any clues with respect to it’s generic classification. While reading the book, puzzlement does not decrease, on the contrary. It is finally, in the very last chapter that the genre of the text can be determined and the pieces of the puzzle fall in place. The contents of Today are not easy to summarize, as it is not an epic novel in the usual sense of the word, nor a loosely composed collection of short stories – although it does have some of it’s characteristic features. The best solution seems to be, to define Today as a fictitious chronicle. Thus signifying that Today is a historical account, dealing with the ruptures in everyday life, over a longer period of time, which indirectly describes the slow, and often imperceptible, process of change, in a neutral, more or less objective way. The chronicler’s task is to register, whereas it is up to the readers, to evaluate and judge the events recorded.
   Today consists of thirty stories - all preceded by a date between 1952 and 1996 - which are ordered in a strictly chronological way. The stories are fragmentary descriptions - essentially snapshots - of people’s lives at a given moment in time. Besides being fixed in a temporal continuum, all the tales brought together in this chronicle, appear to be closely related to the Danish countryside. But, the function of this couleur locale is an allegorical one, because the backdrop of the stories might be substituted by any other rural community, anywhere in Europe. Thus, the reader is offered a number of short glimpses of recent European history as experienced in a rather peripheral part of Denmark, where the shock waves of fundamental historical events arrive retarded and in less vehement form. And - last but not least - in this book history is perceived by relative outsiders. Today’s mimetic horizon is limited to rather inconspicuous people who lead ordinary lives, and these people, as well as their surroundings, are essentially interchangeable, while time - and notably the progression of time - becomes the cornerstone of Today, as the title indicates. It is this formal - temporal - framework, which ties the stories together, establishing a time span which can be described as ‘living memory’. This does not merely make Today a chronicle of modern times, seen from a marginal perspective, but, first and foremost, a well arranged narrative structure, which reflects universal human conditions and thereby generates allegorical meaning.
   This synoptic description may seem to indicate, that Today, as a work of prose, is firmly rooted in a longstanding realistic tradition in Danish literature, depicting the hardships of the peasant population in the country’s rural areas, often thematically connecting life with seasonal change. True enough, these elements are present in Today, but the author consciously uses these features to achieve a radically different objective. Grønfeldt’s obvious usage of certain aspects of realistic discourse, offers her - contradictory as it may sound - a unique opportunity to experiment with ways to communicate (implicite) moral aspects. It is in this paradox, that the innovative powers and thematic richness of Grønfeldt’s prose best can be observed. The provincial context, the ‘pastoral’ backdrop of the lives recorded, becomes an allegorical - and therefore universal - frame of reference for human existence. As a matter of fact, the natural surroundings, and their fundamental cyclical character, make the vicissitudes - and tragedies - in the lives of these humble people, stand out even clearer. Today contains abundant lyrical descriptions of plants, trees, flowers and weather conditions, which serve as a kind of double-edged scalpel in Grønfeldt’s dissection of everyday life. These passages also add a modernist ingredient to this work’s intrinsically realistic narrative, in the sense, that the richness of nature is a recurrent phenomenon, which in itself is indifferent to human presence. In Today, the beauties of nature - the seasonal metamorphoses, fragrances and colours - serve as an artistic means to emphasize the futility of human endeavour. The splendours of nature never signify idyllic, nor bucolic, interpretations of existence. Of course, these eloquent and lyrical descriptions bear testimony of the author’s devotion and skills as a writer, but, at the same time, they serve as a means to achieve a more sophisticated goal. Grønfeldt emphasizes the futility of people’s material strivings, in the light of time’s - and especially nature’s - indifference. Man’s desire to pursue progression, reflected by his materialism, becomes an empty gesture against the timeless and indifferent cyclical character of nature.
   Vibeke Grønfeldt concentrates on what might be described as ‘living memory’, and, as human memory tends to be fragmentary and eclectic, the text reflects this human shortcoming in a highly sophisticated manner. In every story or fragment, there are two voices to be heard: one telling the story from an outside position, and the other from the inside, which also is reflected in the alternation of past and present tense. History becomes palpable when the tale is in present tense, and turns distant and abstract, when it is told in past tense.
   When the reader has arrived at the final story, closest to the present, the book’s formal construction becomes apparent, and the storyteller’s identity is revealed. Then we also understand the short interruptions in the stories, printed in italics, which contain evaluative comments on the life stories reported. These comments turn out to be intersections by the chronicler - Grønfeldt’s alter ego - whose identity is revealed in the final chapter. The composer/collector/writer of the entire work is a man, called Verner, who – just as Grønfeldt herself - is an observer. This man has been a bystander all his life, and a kind of ‘servant’, spending most of his life as janitor of the local home for the elderly. In a sense Verner stands outside of time as well. Although he is a middle-aged man, he still lives with his mother, and the pensioners see him as a kind of infant. Verner also has a passion for words, as he likes to read and think about dictionaries and what they tell about the world. In short, Verner is an observer and the guardian of the local community’s past and consciousness. He is also the man to see the people in the community he describes, before they die. Verner signifies the last resort before the Grim Reaper. But above all, Verner is the text’s unobtrusive organiser, a chronicler, who takes the people’s tales down, records them and comments them in a reserved and subdued manner. The reader can observe traces of his moral judgements only through small details in Verner’s commentary, and by the way he organizes the various stories.
   If there is any moral lesson to be extracted from these stories, it must be, that all the people depicted neglect life’s intrinsic values in favour of materialism. Thus, they are deprived of reconciliation with existence itself. All the stories registered by Verner, the janitor, are fundamentally tragic, not because the people living in this part of the world are less fortunate and more deprived of the pleasures of life, than others, but because the narrator simply has chosen to concentrate on a special category of people, those who are indifferent to the elementary conditions of life and it’s fundamental values. These people break an intrinsic and implicit moral – or as Grønfeldt would put it – natural law: to live in concurrence with destiny, and not in forced opposition to it.
   In Grønfeldt’s cool and subdued analysis of this microcosm, the idyllic Danish countryside turns out to be an apt scale model of the world at large. In Today the facades of ordinary, everyday life, is torn aside and hidden motives exposed without restrictions. And, last but not least, the reader is mesmerised by the subtlety of Grønfeldt’s style and the richness of her discourse. Grønfeldt’s sophisticated juxtaposition of the wonders of nature with the vanity and idleness of human endeavour, turns Today into an exceptional work of art, characterised by classical themes, modern, formal and precise composition and surprising imaginary power.