That place, where something comes into being that was not there before, is the essential place of all creative endeavor, it is where the artist must go, and the task consists quite as much in getting there as in the work that is done there. And that progression, by which one thing becomes another, that transformation, is the method of art. The blue oil color that becomes a sky, the sentence that becomes the motionless suspension of clouds, the flowing black water that becomes stone, the boar hide that becomes bark. Moreover, it is the method of our physical world – a smooth, round cell divides and divides again and becomes the eye of a deer; the deer dies and rots to become soil, apart from its bone and horn, which remain to be gnawed and lie white on the ground.
The photographs in Night Procession have a ceremonial quality about them, as if the animals and the birds present themselves to us one by one – the fox, the hare, the wild boar, the deer, the mouse, the snail, the bird of prey, the fledglings, the owl – as well as something rather solemn, in that we see them the way they are in themselves, in their own worlds, normally so out of reach from our own. The world we see in these images is a secret world, though no less so when light returns to the land, the animals retreat into hiding and the forest again becomes recognizable to us; on the contrary, the mystery seems only to thicken. The image of snow-dressed trees at a black pond across which lies a fallen trunk, for instance, blurred and diffuse, seems almost turned away from us, nothing in it appears to address us. And yet we are near to it. The question is what kind of phenomenon is familiarity with a landscape?
Fundamentally, we are familiar with the already seen, familiarity confirms what we already know and is therefore the enemy or opponent of art. But it seems to me there is another kind of familiarity in art, one that requires its formal expression to be as near to thoughts and feelings as possible. Van Gogh is the best example I know, the way in which he broke down the resistance of form, battling his way to the most consummate intimacy with it so as to be able to represent the world as he experienced it, alien and near at the same time, and inhumanly sublime. Or was it the other way round, sublimity emerging only in the form? Was it the act of painting in itself that brought into being the wholly characteristic nearness-remoteness that is so forcefully apparent in his canvases? Did it exist only by his intervention?
I cannot say for certain, but I have a feeling that with these photographs this was indeed the case, that it is their very form, the rules and restrictions they have followed, that has permitted what we see – the bare and yet densely meaningful reality of the forest – to be revealed in such a way, at once unsentimental and grand, remote and near. They are images without ego, and this is one of their most unusual qualities; they approach the forest, and the forest does not shrink back, does not seek to hide itself away in any assumption as to its nature, but stands as it is, the way it always has and always will, marginally, outside our world.
Ten Years Old
On my knees in front of the toilet bowl I try to vomit as quietly as possible. But I can’t, the convulsions of my stomach make me groan. My vomit sprays yellow against the white porcelain. I hear footsteps approach from the living room and immediately flush the toilet. When he opens the door I’m standing bent over the sink, splashing my face with cold water. He looks at me, his eyes dart about the room. I hold my breath and watch the water as it whirls down the drain. Without a word he closes the door again. His footsteps grow fainter as he goes down the stairs; I turn the tap off and wipe my face with a towel, pull the curtain aside. The heaps of snow that border the road have slumped as the day has worn on. The black asphalt glistens with rain. A bin lies overturned in the driveway across the road. A pair of magpies have torn a hole in one of the plastic bags inside. Wings flapping, they pick through the trash with their stabbing beaks: coffee grounds, packaging materials, eggshells, crusts of bread. When he opens the door below me and walks to the car they take to the air, rising effortlessly to the telephone lines which sway as they settle on them.
I stand and watch them long after he has gone. Their black eyes, their shiny claws in the dull drizzle, their beaks pointed aloft with every screech. The way they sit motionless as their horrid noise issues into the landscape, as if only then they become aware of themselves, that this is where they are now.
Acknowledgments
“All That Is in Heaven” first appeared in Allt som är i himmelen, a book of Thomas Wågström’s photographs, Max Ström, Stockholm, 2012.
“Pig Person” was first published in the catalog to the exhibition Untitled Horrors in Oslo, Stockhom, and Zurich, and in Klassekampen, 2013.
“Fate” was first published in Granta Norway and Granta Sweden, 2015, and in English, translated by Damion Searls, in the Paris Review no. 223, Winter 2017.
“Welcome to Reality” was first published in the Swedish and Norwegian newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Klassekampen, 2012.
The section on Mysteries in “America of the Soul” first appeared in Norsk litterære kanon, edited by Stig Sterbakken and Janike Kampevold Larsen, Cappelen, Oslo, 2007.
Sections of “At the Bottom of the Universe” first appeared in an essay on Dante in Vagant, 2000.
“Tándaradéi!” was first published in English, translated by Ingvild Burkey, in the exhibition catalog Anselm Kiefer: Transition from Cool to Warm, Gagosian, New York, 2017. Sections also appeared in So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch, translated by Ingvild Burkey, Penguin Press, 2019.
“Michel Houellebecq’s Submission” was first published in English, translated by Martin Aitken, in the New York Times Book Review, 2015.
“Feeling and Feeling and Feeling” was first published in Ingmar Bergman’s Arbetsboken 1975–2001, Norstedts, Stockholm, 2018.
A small section of “Idiots of the Cosmos” appeared in Tiina Nunnally’s translation with the title “The Magical Realism of Norwegian Nights” in The New York Times, 2013, and in the anthology Up Here: The North at the Center of the World, University of Washington Press, 2016.
“In the Land of the Cyclops” was first published in Dagens Nyheter, 2015.
A version of “The Other Side of the Face” originally appeared in Neckar [Necks], a book of Thomas Wågström’s photographs, Max Ström, Stockholm, 2014. The essay was first published in English translated by Ingvild Burkey in the Paris Review online, 2014.
“Life in the Sphere of Unending Resignation” was first published as an e-book, Livet i den uendelige resignations sfære, Informations Forlag, Copenhagen, 2013.
“Madame Bovary” was first published in English, translated by Martin Aitken, as a new introduction to Gustave Flaubert’s novel, published by the Folio Society in Adam Thorpe’s translation, 2020.
“The World Inside the World” was first published in English, translated by Martin Aitken, in Stephen Gill’s Night Procession, Nobody Books, 2017. Sections also appeared in So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch, translated by Ingvild Burkey, Penguin Press, 2019.
“Ten Years Old” was first published in Sjelens Amerika, Oktober, Oslo, 2013.
Sources
Quotes are taken from the following works:
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (transl. Robin Kirkpatrick), Penguin Classics, 2006
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (transl. Robert Pinsky), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995
Don DeLillo, The Names, Alfred A. Knopf, 1982
Gustave Flaubert, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830–1857, selected, edited, and translated by Francis Steegmuller, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (transl. Geoffrey Wall), Penguin Classics, 2003
Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of Saint Anthony (transl. Lafcadio Hearn), Random House, 2001
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Heidenröslein” (transl. Richard Wigmore)
Witold Gombrowicz, Diary (transl. Lillian Vallee), Yale Un
iversity Press, 2012
Knut Hamsun, “From the Unconscious Life of the Mind” (transl. Marie Skramstad de Forest), White Fields Press, 1994
Knut Hamsun, Growth of the Soil (transl. Sverre Lyngstad), Penguin Classics, 2007
Knut Hamsun, Mysteries (transl. Sverre Lyngstad), Penguin Classics, 2001
Knut Hamsun, The Ring Is Closed (transl. Robert Ferguson), Souvenir Press, 2010
Knut Hamsun, The Road Leads On (transl. Eugene Gay-Tifft), CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013
Knut Hamsun, Wayfarers (transl. James McFarlane), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981
Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics (transl. Ralph Manheim), Yale University Press, 1959
Homer, Odyssey (transl. Stanley Lombardo), Hackett Classics, 2000
Michel Houellebecq, Submission (transl. Lorin Stein), William Heinemann, 2015
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (transl. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong), Princeton University Press, 1983
Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety (transl. Alastair Hannay), Liveright, 2015
Blaise Pascal, Pensées (transl. W. F. Trotter), Dutton, 1958
Peter Sloterdijk, Bubbles (transl. Wieland Hoban), Semiotext(e), 2011
Walther von der Vogelweide, “Under der linden” (transl. Raymond Oliver), 1970
Remaining quotes translated by Martin Aitken.
Art
Stephen Gill
(1)
Hooded Crow
silver gelatin print
28 × 35 cm
Copyright © Stephen Gill from The Pillar, 2015–2019
Thomas Wågström
(2)
From the series “All That Is in Heaven,” 2012
50 × 75 cm
© Thomas Wågström
Thomas Wågström
(3)
From the series “The Zero Moment,” 2006
30 × 45 cm
© Thomas Wågström
Andrea Mantegna
(4)
Lamentation of Christ, 1483
tempera on canvas
68 × 81 cm
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
Rembrandt van Rijn
(5)
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman, 1656
oil paint on canvas
100 × 132 cm
Amsterdam Museum, inv./scat.nr. SA 7394
Cindy Sherman
(6)
Untitled #150, 1985
chromogenic color print
49 ½ × 66 ¾ in
Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
August Sander
(7)
Mädchen im Kirmeswagen (Girl in Fairground Caravan), 1926–1932
silver gelatin print
25.9 × 19.6 cm
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY 2020
Cindy Sherman
(8)
Untitled Film Still #48, 1979
silver gelatin print
8 × 10 in
Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
Sally Mann
(9)
The Hot Dog, 1989
silver gelatin print
8 × 10 in
Edition of 25
© Sally Mann. Courtesy Gagosian
Sally Mann
(10)
Battlefields, Manassas (Airplane), 2000
silver gelatin print
40 × 50 in
Edition of 5
© Sally Mann. Courtesy Gagosian
Francesca Woodman
(11)
It must be time for lunch now, New York, 1979
silver gelatin print
20.3 × 25.4 cm
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago © Estate of Francesca Woodman
Francesca Woodman
(12)
Untitled, from Eel Series, Venice, Italy, 1978
silver gelatin print
21.9 × 21.8 cm
© Courtesy Charles Woodman / Estate of Francesca Woodman and DACS, 2020
Anselm Kiefer
(13)
aller Tage Abend, aller Abende Tag (The Evening of All Days, the Day of All Evenings), 2014
watercolor on paper
33 × 24 ½ in
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo © Charles Duprat Courtesy Gagosian
Anselm Kiefer
(14)
Die Sechste Posaune (The Sixth Trumpet), 1996
emulsion, acrylic, shellac, and sunflower seeds on canvas
204 ¾ × 220 ½ in
Collection SFMOMA, through a gift of Phyllis C. Wattis. © Anselm Kiefer
Thomas Wågström
(15)
Nackar no. 3, 2015
75 × 52 cm
© Thomas Wågström
Thomas Wågström
(16)
Nackar no. 2, 2015
75 × 52 cm
© Thomas Wågström
Stephen Gill
(17)
Marsh Harrier, female, 2019
silver gelatin print
28 × 35 cm
Copyright © Stephen Gill from The Pillar, 2015–2019
Stephen Gill
In the Land of the Cyclops Page 32