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Pacific Coast Philology, Vol. 37 (2002). Ss. 138141

Review

Beata Agrell

Paul Norln. Textens villkor: a study of Willy Kyrklunds prose fiction. Stockholm,Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1997. Pp. vi+240.

The Swedish author Willy Kyrklund (born 1921) is a celebrated outsider in Scandina-

vian literature. Short, elegant, and concentrated, his prose is also conceptually elusive

and resists unambiguous interpretation Kyrklunds irony is famous, and he has been

likened to both Voltaire and Kafka. By now he is translated into eight European langu-

ages, with the exception of English. Nevertheless, the first doctoral thesis in English on

Kyrklund appeared a few years ago: Paul Norlns Textens villkor [The condition ofthe text]: a study of Willy Kyrklunds prose fiction (1997). This study offers an excel-lent introduction to this remarkable authorship.

In his introductory chapter Norln emphasizes the difficulties of previous criticism

to place Kyrklund in any particular school or literary trend (5). Also, his texts offer

great problems of genre: some subtitles read Novel, but the texts do not contain tradit-

ional novelistic traits; they are hybrids, mixtures of different traditional short prose gen-

res. The tradition of moral example (exemplum) is both evident and problematized:Kyrklunds texts have a clearly didactic orientation and yet a clear message is missing.

There is also a problem of subject: the texts deal with existential questions, but these are

not questions of life but of the rules of life, the conditions of life (5). Kyrklunds ap-proach is rather meta-existential, or, if you prefer: philosophical. Thus, the narrative is

reduced, mostly traversed and fragmented by discursive sections.

Norlns Textens villkoris the second doctoral thesis on Kyrklund; the first, by theSwedish scholar Gunnar Arrias, appeared in 1981. In addition, three licentiates disser-

tations have appeared and numerous academic essays and articles. At present another

four doctorate theses on Kyrklund are in preparation in Sweden. The existential and

philosophical questions implicated in Kyrklunds texts have been object of much

previous study, mainly thematic and ideological in approach. Norlns area of investi-

gation, however, is the construction of Kyrklunds texts, primarily the short texts

which make up the bulk of his production (13). Even the long texts, the novels, are

in fact more like montages of shorter pieces: the assembled fragments can be seen as a

collection of short texts.

Norlns issueconcerns Kyrklunds constant genre-bending. This motivates analy-sis of how Kyrklunds short texts play with the readers expectations of the literary

conventions relating to short prose narratives (13f.). Of major concern is also the way

Kyrklunds particular use of intertextual relationships relates to the construction of his

texts in terms of genre, conventions, and reader expectations (14). This is relevant

because of Kyrklunds use of his extensive knowledge of a range of literary and cul-

tural traditions, based on his studies in languages from Arabic to Sanskrit (15). Of

special significance is Kyrklunds use of game like structures that confirm the am-

biguous relationship of Kyrklunds texts to realistic narrative (14).

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Overarching theoretical perspectives pertain to genre and reception theory, especially

the pragmatic approach of H.R. Jau and the conventionalism of E.D. Hirsch; surpri-

singly enough, A. Fowlers standard work on genre is left out. Also in use are Grard

Genettes concept of transtextuality and Peter Hutchinsons inventory of literary games.

The book is cumulatively composed in four main chapters plus an introduction and a

conclusion. The introduction presents Kyrklunds reception history including previous

research. Focus is on the documented difficulties of unequivocal generic classification

and interpretation. Norlns own contribution is said to be the investigation of

Kyrklunds humor and his different kinds of play, at once funny and deadly

serious (17). The following chapters deal with genre and parody, existential irony, in-

tertextuality, and game as thought model, respectively.

Chapter one, Genre, parody, and writing investigates generic play, by means of the

distinction between representative and conceptualelements in the text, that is, between(automatizing) mimetic conventions and (desautomatizing) discursive strategies. Focus

is on Kyrklunds first collection of short prose,ngvlten (The Steam-Roller), of1948. The generic play is shown to operate on mixtures of short prose genres fictional,

narrative, philosophical and discursive. Kyrklund requires and exploits generic and ot-

her conventions, while simultaneously parodying them (27f.). The function of this play

is to challenge conventional reader-expectations of generic boundaries, thereby forcing

fresh reflection on the identity of the text and how it is to be read as well as on the pro-

blematics represented in the text, often concerning the nature of writing and literature

itself.

Chapter two, Irony and mnniskans villkor (the human condition), investigates

the discourses of doubleness and irony as a tool for indirect communication. The analy-

ses include three novel-like texts: Tvsam (a neologism referring to the condition of

being two in one) of 1949, Solange of 1951, andMstaren Ma (The Master Ma) of1952. Focus is on the split between the contradictory perspectives of man as a personalhuman being and the impersonal human condition (76); no unified or univocal per-

spective is available. This split perspective brings forth an underlying existential pro-

blem: mans unhappy attempts to overcome the limiting human condition. A frequent

textual means of displaying this split is counterposing oppositions: man/ nature, inside/

outside, seeing/ being seen, dissolving/ stiffening, necessity/ randomness, uniqueness/

repetition, linearity/ circularity, time/ eternity, etc. In the same spirit, positive existential

terms are defined negatively: memory as absence of forgetfulness (94); creation as

lack of awareness (95). No syntheses or solutions are offered, but the irony of this is

that these oppositions also interact and interpenetrate each other. Seen in this per-spective, the impersonal human condition displayed gives the impression of fooling

around with individual man: creating and dissolving borders at the same stroke. This

harsh existential problematics interacts with the rhetorical construction of the texts,

where narrative takes second place: the conceptual element overrules the represntation.

The investigation of Intertexts and narrative structure in chapter three makes use of

Grard Genettes concept oftranstextuality, which makes differentiation between vari-ous intertextual relations possible. Most important is the phenomenon ofhypertextua-lity, i.e. the relation of the text at hand to another previous text, which it presupposesand is grafted upon. Thus, Kyrklunds story of Den ansprkslse Holofernes (The

modest Holofernes), for instance, relates not only to the apocryphalBook of Judith butalso to a whole tradition of hypertexts (and paintings) re-using that text; and these, in

turn, are now hypotexts in relation to Kyrklunds new hypertext. In his version of the

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