«MI felt alone and often sad, I made a terrible poems … in short, I was a normal adolescent! ” joke Elisabeth åsbrink. Which at that time discovered Victoria Benedictssonwriter born in Sweden in 1850 and died suicide in Copenhagen in 1888. “I associated the name of his extreme gesture, rather than his protofeminist novels: at that age he happens to be attracted by the figures of artists who have committed suicide”.
Women’s empowering
Today the point of view of that melancholy teenager of Gothenburg – which has become the first investigative journalist, then author of appreciated essays (Made in Sweden, 1947) and’an engaging Memoir (Abandonment) – It has changed radically.
“Victoria was an essential figure for the transformation of Scandinavia In a modern society where men and women have a fair relationship. An evolution passed through sexuality, the theme I wanted to deal with for a while: ours is an era obsessed with sex, yet we do not recognize it as a driving force, like that historical-political phenomenon that instead is. Female empowering also passes through the question: who really holds sexual power? ».
Elisabeth åsbrink (Photo Eva Tedesjo).
From these reflections it was born My great, beautiful hatredthe biographical novel – published like the others by hypeborea – that åsbrink will present on February 16 in Milan, al Boreali Nordic Festival. The title? It comes from a letter in which Benedictsson alluded to a phrase by Émile Zola: “Hate is the indignation of powerful hearts, the militant indignation of those who detest mediocrity and foolishness”.
“The courage of imperfection”
In the imagination of Italians Sweden is the land of freedom of customs, but we did not imagine that it was due in part to Victoria …
In his time he was more famous than August Strindberg! Who, ten days after his disappearance, “stolen” her personal story to use it in Miss Julie. Ibsen, on the other hand, later Doll house It was a sort of secular deity for her, an inspirer. But the price to pay for emancipation was very high, in addition to the use of a male pseudonym (Ernst Ahlgren) to facilitate the publication of the books: she had to give up the children, her husband (he could not stand a celebrity), to the house , in the village (the fellow villagers did not tolerate that he turned out to be more intelligent). He found himself in extreme solitude. Victoria had the courage of imperfection: she did not like her daughter, for example, and she was not pleasant.
“The taboo of motherhood”
A real taboo.
Yes! If a father confesses that he is not interested in children, one does not scandalize. A mother says it, although in Sweden, it is unacceptable.
He suffered for not having been able to have higher education as a female.
Culture and thought believed to be fundamental, stigmatized laziness and energy made in trying to make themselves beautiful and pleasant.
What did he find out about her who did not suspect?
Two things. First of all, that you can trace a clear separation in its existence before and after the encounter with Georg Brandes, the literary and philosopher critic at the center of a club, in Copenhagen, of intellectuals determined to change the rigid, religious and deeply bourgeois setting hypocritical that provided for female submission. He remained the victim of a manipulative relationship, on the other hand his private diaries became exceptional, very modern, intense literature: a mix of reality and fiction worthy of Karl where Knausgård (author of the monumental My fight, editor’s note), a turbine of hatred and desire.
And the second?
It concerns childhood: in an archive I found the announcement of his brother’s death. In an era in which only men counted, the loss of the only male child was devastating and Victoria was born immediately afterwards, in a family in mourning. The event marked it deeply: he always perceived that the parents would have desired a child, and perhaps this prompted him to develop hatred towards himself.
The cover of the new book by Elisabeth åsbrink.
Elisabeth åsbrink and the missed catharsis
Did you feel close to her in some way?
He claimed the freedom to write, to exist as an artist and, to do it, he had to almost turn into a man: this strenuous struggle for independence I fully understand it. But we are not similar: it looked like my mother a lot, (smiles) Which had a complex, very narcissistic and extremely fragile personality. Benedictsson presented the same combination of strength and fragility.
The story of her grandmother, her mother and her – linked to the refusal of the Jewish identity of her grandfather and dad – intertwine in Abandonment. Did telling had a cathartic effect?
No, indeed. He worsened things. My mother stopped talking to me for a long time and one of my sisters has furious with me. It was a painful experience: I knew he could have hard consequences, I chose to face them.
His approach recalls that of Emmanuel Carrère, but without self -centeredness.
Maybe I just know how to hide it better … (laughs)
“My mourning diary”
What is being dedicated to now?
In autumn I published Glorythe portrait of Gloria Ray Karlmark, one of the “Little Rock Nine”, the first group of African American students who, in 1957, was able to enter a school for whites in Arkansas. And I’m finishing a diary on mourning, it could come out this year: it is titled Requiem for my mother.
But then there is a therapeutic value!
Emotions are transfigured into work material, but they do not disappear. Writing helps to clarify, the pain remains.
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