Identifying Helle Helle -- In light of anti-realism

By : Jan Bruun Jensen

As I was reading, it struck me that Eksempel på Liv (Example of Life) was above all true, while the stories in Rester (Remnants) each represented a little dead-end; there was no way out. And my perception was partially confirmed upon closer examination. All of the stories turned out to be about death, although death was present as a prerequisite; without it, the stories would not be possible. Death was present to delimit the time of the story itself. I see this writing toward death as a natural result of the language usage and theoretical intent which Helle presents thematically in Eksempel på Liv.
...
   When Helle begins Eksempel på Liv with "Marianne" vomiting up letters of the alphabet, any idea of verisimilitude in fiction comes into question. Language and the body are two incompatible entities. The letters emerge completely undigested; there are no smooth transitions, no intersections. Language can be said to have an outright poisonous effect on life itself: "The first spattering of vomit lands right in front of her feet, emitting an odor of wet fur." (E, 5) Language itself is alive, has its own life, but with no direct relationship to reality. Naturally we can look for realism in this type of text, but it will have little meaning. The meaningful question must be, of course, whether the picture drawn by the text is true or false: Is this the way things are with language and real life, or not?
   All of the sentences of theoretical intent are either true or false, and it is reality that dictates the language: what is true and what is false. You might say that in this way reality contains all potential utterances; in principle everything has already been said, since the condition that a term refers to must already exist. And perceived in this fashion, an individual’s use of language can manage at most to draw attention to these pre-existing conditions. Language, which is already developed, is given birth through the individual. The individual becomes the medium for language, a tool for language to express itself about the world, or, referring to Helle’s text: The individual becomes the host for language.
   In another passage from the beginning of Exempel på Liv, Helle shows a man hanging up a picture which portrays two swans at sunset with their necks intertwined. The man then goes to get a rifle, shoots at the picture, and "a hole appears in the wall. Otherwise it’s made of something hard." (E, 8)
   We would hardly call this type of metaphor-conqueror a realist. Yet the man’s error resides in his theoretically realistic perception: That the swans in the picture are seen as substitutes for real swans, and that he is trying to strike at reality by shooting at its reproduction in language, or in this case in popular art.
   This is Helle Helle’s point of departure. This is the position she starts off by discarding, and in Exempel på Liv she finally reaches the view which is largely congruent with Wittgenstein’s philosophical studies. Helle comes to a theoretical anti-realistic view, whose popular slogan is Wittgenstein’s: The meaning of a term resides in its use in language.

Extract from an article in Den blå port 41/1997

Translated by Tiina Nunally