A World of Dream and Magic.

Hanne Marie Svendsens franske oversætter om Svendsens forfatterskab.

Af : Jean Renaud

Hanne Marie Svendsen has the gift of mixing a generous portion of dream with everyday reality. When she published Mathildes drømmebog (1977) (Mathilde´s Dream Book), Hanne Marie Svendsen immediately established the tone of her work. This short novel of 60 pages, marking her literary debut, tackles the problem of a woman´s situation with a good deal of originality. Mathilde´s situation is like most women´s: she falls in love, marries, has children and has to work part-time to be in a position to see to them and her house. But Mathilde is a dreamer and the more monotonous and routine her family life becomes, the more crazy and outrageous her dreams: thus she frees herself from all the constraints imposed on her by her role as a woman. Moreover, the contrast between dream and reality is strangely underscored by a two-tone textual quality.

The Golden Ball
However, to Hanne Marie Svendsen dream is happily married to another, equally important element: magic. It was precisely this skilful mixture of dream, magic and reality that enabled her to write one of the most unusual novels in Danish literature: Guldkuglen (1985) (The Golden Ball). It tells the story of a small island over nine generations or, perhaps rather, the myth of mankind from its first appearance on Earth to the extinction now facing it. When Niels Gloe is the first person to settle on this deserted island he does not imagine how, for generation after generation, the little island community which he founds is going to develop from a feudal society to one based on a highly developed technology but afflicted with pollution. For evolution goes wrong when men attempt to conquer nature instead of following their instincts within it. The novel abounds with a host of characters, and the destiny of these men and women is told with passion, love and sadness, amusement or anguish. It is as though time is suspended, and the supernatural becomes quite natural. And among these characters is Maja Stine, who wears around her neck the mysterious golden ball that assures her of extraordinary longevity and allows her to observe history, the world and life. She is present throughout the novel, and it is she who, when the island is definitively lost, flies off into space with her children on the last trees of the forest - in hope of a new life.

Nightmare visions

Certain themes from Guldkuglen reappear in Kaila på fyret (Kaila in the Lighthouse, 1987), though this is a very different novel. Kaila is a little girl; she arrives at a lighthouse where she has been summoned together with four other people by two strange advocates -God and the Devil? - who have chosen them to go through a kind of examination. But the vague answers they give on good and evil do not satisfy their examiners, because they lack commitment and passion. The four characters rebel and as a punishment are changed first into stones and then into animals. But the lighthouse gardener ends by arranging things, and Kaila awakens on a beach: The book is a dream filled with symbols, a nightmare vision of the human condition and morality.
Moreover, Hanne Marie Svendsen knows how to weave dreams and fables into strikingly realistic stories. Old Margrethe Tiede Holm, in Under Solen (Beneath the Sun, 1991), dreams that she is dead and re-experiencing her life. "She has loved two men and hated a third. Perhaps she has killed him. She really doesn´t remember." It looks like a fairly banal existence, and yet it is full of mysteries and ambiguities. Things are not always what they appear to be, and language also has its grip on reality. The novel blends all kinds of different genres (existentialist and detective, love and adventure) but first and foremost is about ordinary people trying to understand the forces determining their lives.

The Devil´s Great Grandmother

Similarly, dream and magic are present in several of the short stories which Hanne Marie Svendsen has written, and of which she has already published two collections. The first, Samtale med Gud og med Fandens oldemor (Conversation with God and the Devil´s GreatGrandmother, 1982) is based on a series of brief, succinct episodes taken from everyday life, but often laden with innuendo. We are left to imagine the thoughts and feelings of these characters whom a tiny element of madness endows with life and passion. They delude themselves about the life they would like to live as opposed to the one to which they are forced by fate or their own weakness, and occasionally they let their imagination carry them away. So, in "Begravelse" (Funeral) from Samtale med Gud og Fandens oldemor, the young woman waiting for the husband whose plane has been delayed begins to imagine what her life will be like as a widow. The adolescent girl of "I røret" (On the Line) from Saintale med Gud og Fandens oldemor reacts violently when she fears that her parents are going to break up and pretends she can hear all they are saying to each other on the telephone. As for the narrator in the title story, she would like to rouse herself from her indifference, but God can only give her evasive answers, while the Devil´s great-grandmother is full of sensible advice - whereby she joins the other dependable and sensible women from the last story in Samtale med Gud og med Fandens oldemor.

Ghosts

The second collection, Kirstines ting og andre fortællinger om genfærd (Kirstine´s Things and Other Ghost Stories, 1992), forces us to accept the unacceptable without demanding an explanation. Here, the mysterious and the fantastic, both of them essential for an understanding of the characters, create some pretty curious perspectives to everyday reality. The house that disappears with its owner in "Historien om Ide" (The Story of Ide) in "Dukkedamen" (The Woman with the Dolls) both from Kirstines ting og andre fortællinger om genfærd the souls of the female writers that some monstrous woman has stolen to use as porcelain figures to decorate her New York apartment; or - in "Kirstines ting" (Kirstine´s Things) - the ghost of old Kirstine´s late husband coming to haunt her when she is at death´s door - these are all subjects that go right to the borderline between the real and the unreal. And what of Aunt Elise in "Til Elise" (For Elise) - she appears so terribly frail, but is she not just a witch who has been relieved of her husband? And how, as in "At forlade et hus" (To Leave a House), do you find yourself back in the clone of your own home, at an age when everything was still possible? In these stories we observe the rift between reason and feeling, and reach the margins of madness and horror.

Childhood

Hanne Marie Svendsen´s realism, with a tinge of humour or irony, can clothe a fascinating form in poetry or shine with a magic that captivates her readers. Towards the end of the second collection there are veiled references to her own childhood in Skagen, lived out between a father who plays the violin and tells sailor stories, and a mother and grandmother with both feet planted on the ground and telling family stories; perhaps we have
here a partial explanation of the recurrence of this double world. Perhaps, too, this explains Hanne Marie Svendsen´s talent as a storyteller, which also encompasses stories for children. She has written two books for children: First there is Den røde sten (The Red Stone, 1990), in which the heroine, little Marie, lives with her grandmother in a fishing village. She is confronted by a magician plotting an attack by rats, and is helped by the mysterious "Baron Arthur" - unless it all takes place solely in the imagination of a girl who is suffering from boredom. And then comes Lisa Månestråle og hendes søstre ( Lisa Moonbeam and Her Sisters, 1990), in which three girls holidaying with their aunt at the seaside, invent new names for themselves and feel able to spoil some wretched plans being hatched by two swindlers - aided perhaps also by the magic of a little Greenlandic drum.

Denne artikel blev første gang trykt i Danish Literary Magazine 5/1993. Den findes ikke i dansk version.

Oversat af W. Glyn Jones