Jens Bjørneboe's History of Bestiality trilogy
Moment
of Freedom
Translated by Esther Greenleaf Murer
The
first novel in this acclaimed Norwegian novelist’s “History of Bestiality”
trilogy. Upon its publication in 1966, Moment of Freedom was widely
acclaimed in Europe as a masterpiece. It was published by W.W. Norton
nearly twenty-five years ago, but has been out of print for years. We
are pleased to make it available once again in an updated translation.
In its apocalyptic view of mankind and in its haunting, devastating portrayal of justice, Moment of Freedom reminds one of Revelation and Kafka’s The Trial. Living high in the Alps in a German principality called Heiligenberg, our narrator tells us he’s dutifully fulfilling his obligations as a Servant of Justice and acting as a daily witness to injustice masquerading as a court of law. One day in the courtroom he notices that the judge is much too engrossed in looking at something concealed in his folder to pay attention to the proceedings. The something turns out to be some pornographic photographs showing various other pillars of the town engaged in a variety of sexual activities with minors. The incident propels him on a mental journey back through his life: dreams and hallucinations, black-humor fantasies and suicidal drinking binges; the Roman catacombs, warm summer nights in Brooklyn; brothels in Stockholm, his childhood in Norway, and wanderings in Germany. But aside from court records he has been keeping his own long and detailed account of man’s cruelty to man in a massive twelve-volume study he calls his History of Bestiality. Acknowledging his Germanic past, the narrator realizes that all his attempts to perceive order in life lead only to his acceptance of the chaos of life. With echoes of Nietzsche and Sartre, we see him striving to live uncoerced by power, unpersuaded by friends, to take for himself the liberty of stating his critique in order to live in his own moment of truth, to stand “far out at the edge of the abyss.”
Generally regarded as part of one of the most important literary works written in Norway, Moment of Freedom is a powerful and unsettling philosophical novel and indictment of western civilization, part of a groundbreaking trilogy which has parallels with the works of Michel Foucault and René Girard.
1999, 8 x 9, 240 pages (Dufour)
ISBN 0-8023-1328-0 Paper $15.95
Powderhouse
Translated by Esther Greenleaf Mürer
Published
in Norway in 1969 and now available in English for the first time, Jens
Bjørneboe’s Powderhouse continues to explore the themes set forth
in Moment of Freedom, the first novel in his History of Bestiality
trilogy: what is the nature of the evil inherent in the human race and
why does man behave so inhumanely to his fellow man.
The story, which is really an anti-story, as this is an anti-novel, is told by Jean, a janitor in a mental hospital in southern France. Just as the narrator in Moment of Freedom did, Jean keeps protocols, keeps for himself a written record of those events occurring around him. Also in the hospital are a strange cast of characters: Dr. Lefévre, the chief physician and Jean’s drinking companion, and his Algerian assistant, al Assadun; Ilja, a Russian nurse and anarchist; a French nurse, Christine, who becomes Jean’s lover; Lacroix, a professional executioner who is suicidal; Fontaine, a Belgian sex murderer; Dr. Bárthory, a wealthy Hungarian who served with the German SS; an American General who killed his Black maid; and the wife of the Russian Ambassador, who is having an affair with the General and has a habit of howling like a wolf. The plot, which is akin to a mystery or espionage potboiler, revolves around the execution-like hanging death at the hospital of Dr. Bárthory. Any of the characters could have done it.
It’s hospital policy that everyone can give a lecture and a large portion of the book is taken up with three lectures: the narrator talks about witch symptomatology; Lacroix offers up a powerful, Foucault-like piece on the history of execution, executioners, and capital punishment; and Dr. Lefévre discusses heresy and heretics. Yet, despite its gruesome subject, Powderhouse does not depress, for it is narrated by a man who loves life, with all his senses open to the warmth of a summer night, the tastes of food and wine, the silky skin of his lover. Just like the narrator of Moment of Freedom who strives to live his own moment of truth, whatever brief moments of ecstasy Jean can grasp in this world of pain, suffering, and madness, he grasps with both hands.
Esther Greenleaf Mürer has also translated Bjørneboe’s The Sharks (available from Dufour).
2000, 8 x 9, 200 pages (Dufour)
ISBN 0-8023-1331-0 Paper $15.95
The
Silence
Translated
by Esther Greenleaf Mürer
“Jens Bjørneboe had one of the most incisive and adventurous intelligences of any European novelist of his time.”—Babel Guide to Scandinavian Fiction
Originally
published in Norway in 1973, The Silence (Stillheten) is
the third and final book of what has become known as The History of
Bestiality trilogy. It will give readers a chance to experience first
hand Bjørneboe’s remarkable, fierce, and even savage fictional inquiry
into what he saw as the nature of evil in the twentieth century.
As with the first two novels in the trilogy, The Silence also rejects the traditional modes of fiction to posit instead an essay-like novel of ideas, philosophy, and argumentation. It is, in fact, even further removed from the loose fictional form of the two previous “protocols,” and owes more to the works of Foucault, Girard, and Sartre. Described by Bjørneboe as an “anti-novel and absolutely final Protocol,” The Silence was ahead of its time in its critique and discussion of the post-colonialist world. Here the inquiring narrator explores not just European history, as he did in the first two novels, but the crimes committed by Europeans against the rest of humanity in the name of expansion and conquest. Set in an unnamed country in northern Africa, the narrator is looking at Europe from the outside. With his friend Ali, an African revolutionary intellectual, he discusses in epic fashion the history of colonialism. Cortez’ destruction of the Aztec empire and Pisarro’s of the Incas were crimes of genocide comparable with Hitler’s against the Jews, and Columbus’s glorious discovery of America becomes simply an act of colonialism. He engages in imaginary conversations with Columbus, Robespierre, God, and Satan. He becomes totally immersed in what he perceives as the world’s wickedness. As he tells us: “I don’t believe that humanity is evil, nor that humanity is good–I believe that a human being is partly evil and partly good. Which side shall be permitted to grow and develop depends on ourselves. On a planet where people have freely chosen to let themselves be burned alive for the sake of truth, the good must have great possibilities. The court sat, the charges were read, the witnesses heard, the evidence presented, humanity was found guilty. I kept the trial records”–these are the protocols, these three novels. This is the History of Bestiality. Now, is “the silence.” As Bjørneboe puts it in the third and final novel, there is a transformation in humanity brewing and whether it will result in total destruction or a redeemed humanity is unknown, but we do have the possibility–the potential, the humanity–of cooperating in our own redemption.
Despite its presentation of horrors and man’s inhumanity to man, and its grim portrayal of the narrator’s long plunge into the tunnel of depression, The Silence does not depress. It praises man’s immeasurable capacity for good; man is the destroyer of all things, but also the renewer of all things. Given what man has done to his fellow man in just these last few years, in Africa, in Latin America, in South America, in Eastern Europe, the twenty-five years that have passed since this novel was first published have not diminished its relevance or its urgency.
2000,
5½ x 8½, 180 pages (Dufour)
ISBN 0-8023-1333-7 Paper $15.95