Shyness & Dignity 

By Dag Solstad 

Translated by Sverre Lyngstad 

This translation published in 2006 by Graywolf Press

It’s probably the long and circuitous sentences and paragraphs, turning in on themselves, constantly referring to the same idea(s) and reestablishing their own importance, becoming, in that way, familiar to all who have read Bernhard or others in that camp (not too hard to find some Hamsun here as well), which, I’m coming to learn, is something that I can’t seem to get enough of, though what that says about me, being so entertained from reading works with narrators who constantly obsess and revise their thoughts, is probably worth consideration (much in the way that this high-school teacher obsesses over both a minor character in Ibsen’s The Wild Duck and his own disappointment that no one cares how he’s noticed something potentially important about this character), e.g., “The very thought of the contrary situation sufficed to make one quickly understand how impossible it would have been if it had not been the way it, as a matter of fact, was.” (15)

As he processes his own irrelevance (a theme throughout) as a literature teacher, it becomes too much, and he lashes out in front of students and teachers, breaking his umbrella on a water fountain, even jumping up and down on it before yelling at some of the nearby students. It is a turning point, calling to mind the “twitching convulsively” of the Ibsen passage he is so focused on, clearly mirroring the descent of that author’s plays. It makes me think of this bit from “The Shoelace” by Bukowski:  

“with each broken shoelace 

out of one hundred broken shoelaces, 

one man, one woman, one 

thing 

enters a 

madhouse. 

so be careful 

when you 

bend over.”

The narrative shifts as Elias tells of his college days and his close friendship with Johan Corneliussen, a philosophy major. They become such good friends that Elias can hardly experience life without him. They both come to love a beautiful woman, Eva Linde. Eventually Johan, unable to find reliable work/a path forward for himself and his new wife, Eva, runs away, leaving both her and their newborn child in the hands of Elias: “And so, here he sat on the ninth floor of a high-rise building at Grorud, in his friend’s apartment, together with his friend, knowing he was half a person who would never be whole and feeling overcome with grief at the prospect of never becoming whole…I steal into a woman’s slumbering state, as the shadow of Johan Corneliussen that I am.” (79)

The problem of Johan’s absence comes more fully into the picture as Elias reaches middle age and finds himself becoming irrelevant to society. “It was as though the shapers of public opinion were not paying attention to him at all anymore. On the contrary, they seemed to make a point of looking straight past him, almost as if it gave them a special pleasure to do so. He had become nothing to them, and Elias Rukla found that to be deeply wounding.” (115) As a teacher and step-father, he has dedicated his life to service, to helping better or uphold the values of his culture/society, and his great reward is to be cast off, to become a member of the unacknowledged, unmarketed-to middle aged. This, of course, is the natural progression for all of us, but it is interesting because it's a facet of life that is so often ignored either in art or culture, like a fate too terrible to contemplate. 

In Elias’ case, everything is compounded because his double, his other who he could buoy himself with, is nowhere to be found, exists only as a phantasm, a lingering reminder of his youth. That Eva would never fully open her innerworld to him also deprived him of opening himself to her even though she relies on Elias financially makes it so that Elias is a completely alienated man. He has been unable to connect to anything around him and his realization of this and his attempt to push a thought beyond the prescribed syllabus only furthers his disconnect. How, then, you extrapolate all this i/r/t Norwegian culture, modern society, capitalism or socialism, and on and on is, of course, up to you. 

Heavy Lit rating: Recommended 

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