Trilogy by JON FOSSE

 rilogy by JON FOSSE

Translated by May -Brit Akerholt

Notes from book:

Wakefulness

Trilogy by JON FOSSE

Translated by May -Brit Akerholt

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Wakefulness

Olav's Dreams

weariness(ˈwirēnəs)

Asle and Alida 

"Asle and Alida were wandering the streets of Bjørgvin." Page 3

"It's late autumn, it's dark and cold, and soon it might start to rain as well - we have to have somewhere to live, she said" page 4 and 8

Olav and Åsta

“Where are we going, Alida says

I don't know, Asle says

We'll go to where we end up, she says

We'll go where the road leads us, he says

I,m a little tired, she says

Then we must rest, he says

and they stop and and they stand and look around

Down there, on the ridge, we can rest there, she says Yes we can, he says”

Page 84-5

" With the finest bracelet in his hand, in the yellowest gold with the bluest of blue pearls,"

"She's standing there half hidden behind the curtain."

"I saw them hanging him and I saw him hanging there, he says

and Alida thinks that she and Asle are still sweethearts, they are with each other, he is with her, she with him, she in him, he in her, Alida thinks, and she looks out across the sea, and in the sky she sees Asle, she sees that the sky is Asle, and she notices the wind, and the wind is Asle, he is there, he is the wind, if he doesn't exist, he is still there and then she hears Asle saying that he is there, she sees him there, if she looks out across the sea she'll see that he is the sky she sees there above the sea, Asle says, and Alida looks and of course she sees Asle, but not just him, she sees herself too there in the sky and Asle says that he too exists in her and in little Sigvald and Alida says that yes he does, he always will and Alida thinks that now Asle is alive only in her and in little Sigvald, now she is Asle in life, Alida thinks, and then she hears Asle saying I am there, I am with you, I am always with you, so don't be afraid, I will follow you, Asle says, and Alida looks out to the sea and there, on the sky there, she sees his face, she sees it like an invisible sun, and then she sees his hand, it lifts up and it waves to her and Asle repeats that she must not be afraid and he says that she must take good care of herself and little Sigvald, she must look after herself and little Sigvald as best as she can, and then, before too long, then they'll meet again before too long, Aslesays, and Alida feels his body close to hers and she feels his hand stroking her hair and she strokes his hair" page 152-3

"Ales thinks, and Alida looks at Ales and she thinks that she notices that she is there, of course she does, and perhaps she is tormenting her daughter by being there, and she doesn't want that, why would she want to tor-ment her own daughter, she doesn't want to torment her own daughter at all, her, her good daughter,  her oldest daughter, " page 169-170

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The Name of Cites in Book

Vika     Dylgja       Bjørgvin    Åsta in Norway

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So far, four Norwegian writers have won the Nobel Prize in Literature:

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – won in 1903.

Knut Hamsun – won in 1920.

Sigrid Undset – won in 1928.

Jon Fosse – won in 2023.

Åsta, Norway

here are some interesting and distinctive facts about Jon Fosse, beyond just the Nobel Prize:

Minimalist style: Fosse is famous for writing with very simple words, lots of repetition, pauses, and silence. What is not said is often more important than what is said.

“Fossean” rhythm: His prose and drama have a musical, hypnotic rhythm, influenced by prayer, breathing, and waves. Many readers say his texts feel like listening rather than reading.

Writes in Nynorsk: He writes in Nynorsk, a minority written form of Norwegian. This was a cultural and political statement, helping raise its literary status.

Deeply spiritual (but not religious propaganda): Although he converted to Catholicism later in life, his work explores faith, doubt, death, and grace in a quiet, non-preaching way.

More famous as a playwright (at first): Before his novels became widely known, Fosse was one of the most performed living playwrights in the world, especially in Europe.

Influenced by Samuel Beckett: Like Beckett, he focuses on waiting, repetition, loneliness, and stripped-down language—but Fosse is warmer and more emotional.

THE YEARS BY ANNIE ERNAUX

 

THE YEARS BY ANNIE ERNAUX 

Translated by Alison L. Strayer

Notes from book:

All we have is our history, and it does not belong to us.

-José Ortega y Gasset

Yes. They'll forget us. Such is our fate, there is no help for it. What seems to us serious, significant, very important, will one day be forgotten or will seem unimportant. And it's curious that we can't possibly tell what exactly will be considered great and important, and what will seem petty and ridiculous [. . .]. And it may be that our present life, which we accept so readily, will in time seem strange, inconvenient, stupid, not clean enough, perhaps even sinful...

-Anton Chekhov

Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett

PARADISE by Abdulrazak Gurnah

PARADISE by Abdulrazak Gurnah

For Salma Abdalla Basalama

Notes from book:

"Yusuf had heard the boys say that the Germans hanged people if they did not work hard enough. If they were too young to hang, they cut their stones off." page 7

" They made up names for the places their parents came from, funny and unpleasant names which they used to abuse and mock each other. Sometimes they fought, tumbling and kicking and causing each other pain. If they could, the older boys found work as servants or errand runners, but mostly they lounged and scavenged, waiting to grow strong enough for the work of men. Yusuf sat with them when they let him, listening to their conversation and running errands for them." page 7

He was already twelve. To his amazement she did not let him go this time. Usually She released him as soon as his struggles became furious smacking his fleeing bottom as he ran. Now she held him, squeezing him to her steeping softness,  saying nothing and not laughing. The back of her bodice was still wet with sweat, and her body reeked of smoke and exhaustion. He stopped struggling after a moment and let his mother hold him to her. Page 13

You'll come and trade with us, and learn the difference between the ways of civilization and the ways of the savage. It's time you grew up and saw that the world is like ...  Instead of playing in dirty shops. A smile geew on his face as he spoke, a predatory grimace which made Yusuf think of the dogs that prowled the lanes of his nightmares. page 52

" When I think of truth, I see your face,
And every other face is nothing but a lie.
when I dream of happiness, I feel your caress.
And I see envy burning in everyone eye."  page 54

"Everwhere they went now they found the Europeans had got there before them, and had installed soldiers and officials telling the people that they had come to save them from their enemies who only sought to make slaves of them. It was as if no other trade had been heard of, to hear them speak. The traders spoke of the Europeans with amazement, awed by their ferocity and ruthlessness. They take the best land without paying a bead, force the people to work for them by one trick or another, eat anything and everything however tough or putrid. Their appetite has no limit or decency, like a plague of locusts. Taxes for this, taxes for that, otherwise prison for the offender, or the lash, or even hanging. The first thing they build is a lock-up, then a church, then a market-shed so they can keep the trade under their eyes and then tax it. And that is even before they build a house for themselves to live in." page 72

"Where is this garden? Kalasinga asked. 'In India?  have seen many garden with waterfalls in India.Is this your paradise?Is this where the Aga Khan lives?" page 80

"The east and the north are known to us, as far as the land of China in the farthest east and to the ramparts of Gog and Magog in the north. But the west is the land of darkness, the land of jinns and monsters. God sent the other Yusuf as a prophet to the land of jinns and savages.Perhaps he'll send you to them too."  page 83

"Each day the land changed on them as they descended from the high mountain ground. The settlements grew less clustered as the country dried out. Within days they were down on the plateau and their column raised clouds of dust and grit with every step. The scattered scrub took formidably gnarled and twisted forms, as if existence was a torture. The songs and spirits of the porters also dried up as they contemplated the unkind country they were entering. They came to life when they saw huge herds of animals in the distance, arguing bitterly among themselves as they debated their identities. In those first days, Yusuf's stomach turned to water and his body ached with exhaustion and fever. Thorns tore into his ankles and arms, and his flesh was covered with insect bites." page 116

"Yusuf could not bear to look on the incredible horror of the wounds, swollen now with disease. He wanted life to end at the sight of such a pain. He had never seen or imagined anything like it. They found bodies everywhere, in the burnt- out huts, near the bushes, under the trees." page 127

"look at their happiness, he said, unsmiling. "Like a mindless herd of beasts approaching water. we're all lik that, small-minded creatures misled by our ignorance. What is their excitement for? Do you know?" page 129- 130

"Never trust the Indian!" Mohammed Abdalla said angrily. " He will sell you his own mother if there's profit in it. His desire for money knows no limits. When you see him, he looks craven and feeble, but he will go anywhere and go anything for money.
Uncle  Aziz shook his head at the mnyapara, admonishing him for his impetuosity. 'The Indian knows how to deal with the European. We have no choice but to work with him." page 133

"Then one day that devil Muhammad Abdullah come and took me and my sister away, and brought us here. we were  to be rehani until our Ba could replay his dept. He died very soon after that, my poor Ba, and Ma and my brothers went back to Arabia and left us here. They just left us here." page 203

" Get on with it " Mzee Hamdani says always. 

" I know the freedom you are talking about. I had that freedom the moment I was born. When these people say you belong to me, I own you, it is like the passing of the rain, or the setting of the sun at the end of the day.  The following morning the sun will rise again whether they like it or not. The same with freedom. They can lock you up, put you in chains, abuse all your small longings, but freedom is not something they can take away. When they have finished with you, they are still as far away form owning you as they were on the day you were born." page 224.  (    It means real freedom is inside a person — no one can truly take it away, even if they imprison or control you.)

"When she was seven years old, my poor stupid Ba, may God have mercy on him, offered her to the seyyid as part of the payment. And I was to be rehani to him until she was of an age to be married, unless my Ba could redeem me before then. But he died, and my Ma and my brothers went back to Arabia and left me here with our shame. When that devil Mohammed Abdalla came to collect us, he made her undress and stroked her with his filthy hands." page 231

" He would say to her: If this is Hell, then leave. And let me come with you. They've raised us to be timid and obedient, to honour them even they misuse us. Leave and let me come with you. We're both in t middle of nowhere. Where else can be worse? There would be no wall garden there, wherever we go, with sturdy cypresses and restless bush and fruit trees and unexpectedly bright flowers. Nor the bitter scent orange sap in the day and the deep embrace of jasmine fragrance night, nor fragrance of pomegranate seeds or the sweet herbaceous grasses in the borders. Nor the music of the water in the pool and the channels. Nor the contentment of the date grove at the cruel height of the day. There would be no music to ravish the senses. It would be like banishment, but how could it be worse than this?" page 233-34

" I did her not wrong. I sat with her because she invited me in. My shirt was torn from behind, Yusuf said, his voice shaking in an unexpected and annoying way. 'That show. I\Was running away.'" page 239

THE WILD IRIS by Louise Glück

(The Wild Iris, Louise Glück)

Notes from book:

"THE WILD IRIS

At the end of my suffering

there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.

Then nothing. The weak sun

flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive

as consciousness

buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being

a soul and unable

to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth bending a little. And what I took to be birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever returns from oblivion returns

to find a voice:

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure seawater." Page 1

"Who else would so envy the bond we had then as to tell us it was not earth

but heaven we were losing?" page 44

"EARLY DARKNESS

How can you say

carth should give me joy? Each thing

born is my burden; I cannot succeed

with all of you.

And you would like to dictate to me,

you would like to tell me

who among you is most valuable,

who most resembles me.

And you hold up as an example

the pure life, the detachment

you struggle to achieve-

How can you understand me

when you cannot understand yourselves?

Your memory is not

powerful enough, it will not 

reach back far enough-

Never forget you are my children.

You are not suffering because you touched each other

but because you were born,

because you required life

separate from me. " page 45

"the first rains of autumn shaking the white lilies-

When you go, you go absolutely, deducting visible life from all things

but not all life,

lest we turn from you. "page 55

"SEPTEMBER TWILIGHT

I gathered you together,

I can dispense with you-

I'm tired of you, chaos

of the living world-

I can only extend myself

for so long to a living thing.

I summoned you into existence

by opening my mouth, by lifting

my little finger, shimmering

blues of the wild

aster, blossom

of the lily, immense,

gold-veined-

you come and go; eventually

I forget your names.

You come and go, every one of you

flawed in some way,

in some way compromised: you are worth

one life, no more than that.

I gathered you together;

I can erase you

as though you were a draft to be thrown away,

an exercise

because I've finished you, vision

of deepest mourning." page 60

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke

Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim

Notes from book:

"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan

"Dusk was falling quickly. It is was just after 7 p.m., and the month was October."

- patricia Highsmith, A Dog's Ransom

"I am writing this story of my mother, first of all because I think I know more about her and how she came to her death then any outside investigator who might, with the help of religious, psychological, or sociological guide to the interpretatin of dreams, arrive at a  facile explanation of this interesting case of suicide; but second in my own interest, because having something to do brings me back to life; and lastly because, like an outside investigator, though in a different way, I would like to represent this VOLUNTARY DEATH as an exemplary case." page 5

"This may in his time have been true for my grandfather, the first in a long line of peasants fettered by poverty to own anything at all, let alone a house and a piece of land." page 8

"The fortune teller at our church fairs took a serious interest only in the palms of the young men; a girl's future was a joke." page 10

"And what was "politics"? A meaningless word, because, from your schoolbooks on, everything connected with politics had been dished out in catchwords unrelated to any tan-gible reality and even such images as were used were devoid of human content: oppression as chains or boot heel, freedom as mountaintop, the economic system as a reassuringly smoking factory chimney or as a pipe enjoyed after the day's work, the social system as a descending ladder:"Emperor-King-Nobleman-Bur-gher-Peasant-Weaver-Carpenter-Beggar-Gravedigger"; a game, incidentally, that could be played properly only in the prolific families of peasants, carpenters, and weavers." page 15

"She wasn't lonely; at most, she sensed that she was only a falf. But there was no one to supply the other half. "We rounded each other out so well," she said, thinking back on her days with the savings-bank clerk; that was her idea of eternal love." page 24

"The word "poverty" was a fine, Somehow noble word. ) It evoked an image out of old Schoolbooks: poor but clean. Cleanliness made the poor socially acceptable. Social progress meant teaching people to be clean; once the indigent had been cleaned up, " poverty" became a title of honor. Even in the eyes of the poor, the squalor of destitution applied only to the filthy riffraff of foreign countries." Page 38

"To ber, every book was an account of her own afe, and in reading she came to life, for the first time, the ame out of her shell, the learned to talk about herself; md with each book she had more ideas on the subject ittle by little, I learned something about her." page 44

"Politicians live in another world. When you asked them a question, they didn't answer; they merely stated their position. "You can't talk about most things anyway." Politics was concerned only with the things that could be talking about; you had to handle the rest of yourself, or leave it to God.  And besides, if a politician were to take an interest in your personally, you'd  bolt. That would be getting too intimidate." page 48

"I can't stand it in the house anymore, so I'm always gadding about somewhere. I've been getting up the little earlier, that's the hardest time for me; I have to force myself to do something, or I'd just go back to bad. There's a terrible loneliness inside me, I don't feel like talking to anyone." page 58

"All the Jukeboxes in the region had a record titled WORLD-WEARY POLKA" page 69

"Horror is something perfectly natural: the mind's horror vacui. A thought is taking shape, then suddenly it notices that there is nothing more to think. Whereupon it crashes to the ground like a figure in a comic strip who suddenly realizes that he has been walking on air.

Someday I shall write about all this in greater detail." page 70