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Finn Carling (1925-) | |
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Prolific Norwegian novelist, poet, playwright and critic. Carling's career as a writer has spanned over 50 years. In his works Carling has dealt with the themes of estrangement and isolation. He has also published documentary accounts of groups feared or ignored by society - the blind, homosexuals, the terminally ill. "Jeg er betatt av kvinnelige forfattere, av deres rikdom og nærhet til detaljer. De skriver så man kjenner duften og smaken på deres ord. Virginia Woolf, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing - herregud som jeg misunner dem denne evnen . . ." (Carling in Aftenposten Morgen 16/9 1988) Finn Carling was born in Oslo into an upper-middle-class family. Among his favorite books in his youth was Rosamund Lehmann's Dusty Answer, a story about loneliness, dreams, and young love. The author was 20 when she wrote the book. Carling created in his childhood a fantasy world, which was a source for inspiration for his later writings. He studied psychology at the University of Oslo but never got his degree. He had early on decided to devote himself entirely to writing. In 1962-64 he studied sociology on a grant. As a writer Carling made his debut in 1949 with Broen, an experimental work which consisted of two short stories and a play. Carling's struggle with his affliction - he was born with cerebral palsy - is seen in his novels, especially in the theme of human isolation and in his essays about society's outsiders, the elderly, and misfits. He has also empathically viewed animals, but in spite of his severe disability Carling is known among his friends for his strength and good humor. In the1950s Carling dealt with the relationship between reality and dream. Carling's autobiography, Kilden og muren, appeared in 1958. After publishing poems, articles, and plays Carling again turned his interest to the novel and themes of illusion, fantasy, and myth. The provocative Norwegian writer Jens Bjørneboe (1920-1976) criticized Carling, a prominent figure of modernism, that in Desertøren (1956) he ignored action, the basis of a story, and focused instead on words and thoughts. Kometene (1964) is about a family whose members spend their isolated lives like comets in cold space, never coming near each other. A death in the family causes the first signs of a change in the regular course of life. In Gjesten (1970) Carling dropped his experiments with narrative technique and told about a small family, a father and his daughter and son. In the center of the story is the daughter who grows from a child into a young woman during a few summer days. Inside this simple frame the author spins a net of dreams, anticipations, and hidden meanings. The protagonist of Brevene (1980) is an ordinary woman, Gertrud Angell, who suddenly starts to behave strangely and finally is shut up in a mental hospital. Her change is depicted through the eyes of her husband and other members of the family. Their reactions reveal more about themselves than Gertrud's crisis. Commission (1991) is one of Carling's best-known works in the English-speaking world. In the story a nameless writer staying in Corsica is trying to solve the mystery of Sebastian, a depressive and a playboy. During this search he meets people close to him, among them a brother engaged on animal experiments. The writer - in the text 'one' - tries to help a dog that has been tormented by children and could be an embodiment of Sebastian himself. "A rage one has never felt before is almost bursting one apart. A rage against violence and injustice. In a world like ours, why hasn't one felt it before? Was it such feelings that drove Sebastian in his fight against oppression." In Dagbok til en død (1998, Diary for a Dead Husband), Beatrice, a dutiful middle-aged woman, goes through a period of introspection after her husband's death of a heart attack. In this process Beatrice discovers a wide gap between her own dreams and what her friends and children expect from her. Beatrice has lived in the shadow of her husband, and her diary becomes a vehicle for self-awareness and a freedom that she had not known existed. "First time a tap began to leak or the car refused to start, I was helplessly alone. Not lonely. You took care of practical matters in the forty years we were married. You were married." The story is carefully structured, and written in almost minimalist style, which has marked Carling's work in general. In 1992 Carling was awarded Humanistpriset and in 1999 he received the Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs prize. Carling is married to Anne Carling who also is a writer. Her first fictional work, En´søster er en søster er en søster, appeared in 1999. ----Robert Turner smiled. But my dear chap, he said, in the first place we have our agreement about utter frankness, and in the second we are experienced men who know about most things in life, who know indeed that the lust of the flesh sometimes leads to the destruction of the body. I've seen especially among my artist friends how a wild life in youth has led to an early death in the madhouse. I was once shown a brain that had belonged to one of our most gifted illustrators who unfortunately ended his days like this, and it had become as smooth as a plum and so shrunken that it could have lain in a child's hand. Naturally I can't disclose his name to you - can merely say that he was quite close to me at one period. But your illness hasn't progressed so far in any case, for, from what I can judge, your sanity is still intact. (Special thanks to Nigel Hunter who gave the idea for this page, helped with the biography of Finn Carling and selected the quotation above.) For further reading: Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 1, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); 'Finn Carling: A Personal Introduction' by L. Muinzer (1966, in World Literature Today, 79, Spring) - For further reading: Aftenposten Selected works:
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