Melancholy I-II

3Praise for Septology ‘Jon Fosse is a major European writer.’ — Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle ‘[R]eading Fosse … what threatens to be heavy proves lightsome. You put on your boots to wade through the mud and find yourself floating along…. Searls is to Fosse what Anthea Bell is to W. G. Sebald, the best possible intermediary.’ — Blake Morrison, London Review of Books ‘Translated with astonishing grace by Damion Searls … so transcendent that not only is it my best book of the year 2022, it ties 2666 by Roberto Bolaño as my favourite book from the twenty-first century.’ — Lauren Groff, LitHub ‘Fosse’s portrait of memory remarkably refuses. It will not be other than: indellible as paint, trivial as nail clippings, wound like damp string. This book reaches out of its frame like a hand.’ — Jesse Ball, author of Census ‘A deeply moving experience. At times while reading the first two books of Septology, I walked around in a fugue-like state, wondering what it was that I was reading, exactly. A parable? A gospel? A novel bereft of the usual markings of plot, time, and character? The answer appeared to be all of the above, but although I usually balk at anything mystical, the effect was haunting and cumulative…. I hesitate to compare the experience of reading these works to the act of meditation. But that is the closest I can come to describing how something in the critical self is shed in the process of reading Fosse, only to be replaced by something more primal. A mood. An atmosphere. The sound of words moving on a page.’ — Ruth Margalit, New York Review of Books ‘Septology feels momentous.’ — Catherine Taylor, Guardian ‘Fosse has written a MELANCHOLY I–II JON FOSSE Translated by DAMION SEARLS and GRETHE KVERNES Contents TITLE PAGE MELANCHOLY I DÜSSELDORF, AFTERNOON, LATE AUTUMN, 1853: GAUSTAD ASYLUM NEAR CHRISTIANIA, CHRISTMAS EVE MORNING, 1856: ÅSANE, EVENING, LATE AUTUMN, 1991: MELANCHOLY II STAVANGER, EARLY AUTUMN, 1902: TRANSLATOR’S NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHORS COPYRIGHT MELANCHOLY I 11 In memory of Tor Ulven DÜSSELDORF, AFTERNOON, LATE AUTUMN, 1853: I am lying in bed, dressed in my purple velvet suit, my beautiful, beautiful suit, and I don’t want to meet with Hans Gude. I don’t want to hear Hans Gude say he doesn’t like my painting. I just want to stay in bed. Today I can’t bear to see Hans Gude. Because what if Hans Gude doesn’t like the picture I’m painting, what if he thinks it’s bad, embarrassingly bad, what if it makes him think that I can’t paint after all, what if Hans Gude runs his thin fingers through his beard and looks straight at me with his narrow eyes and says that I can’t paint, that I have no business at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, or any other Academy of Art either as far as he’s concerned, what if Hans Gude says I will never be a painter. I can’t let Hans Gude tell me that. I have to just stay in bed, because Hans Gude is coming to the studio today, the studio in the attic where we stand in perfect rows and columns and we paint, and he’ll go from painting to painting and say what he thinks of each one and then he’ll look at my painting too and say something about it. I don’t want to see Hans Gude. Because I can paint. And Gude can paint. And Tidemann can paint. I can paint.