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Obituary Per Olof Enquist, one of Sweden’s leading writers, died at the age of 85.
Hjoggböle. A lonely village in the middle of forests, a thousand kilometers north of Stockholm: the place of childhood was probably as important to few great writers as to Per Olov Enquist. There he grew up in a small, almost archaic world, alone with his mother, a deeply religious village school teacher. This strict supporter of the Pentecostal movement criticized everything that should shape his son’s life: sports, sexuality, fame, but especially against demonic alcohol, which kept Enquist in his clutches for more than a decade, from 1978 to 1990.
We know many details about this roller coaster, the author literarily processed it in 2008 in the autobiography “Another Life”, even in the third person, to even distance himself from his own experience and suffering and thus get closer to the truth. Because this fabulous narrator was never inspired by spontaneous abundance. He built witty, persistent, and precise fabrics with a calm and sober look, reflected on his own role in the middle, and immersed his prose in the pale colors of melancholy. Enquist’s style was thus in fruitful contrast to his concern, which he attempted to banish in writing.
And about chubby tissues: An international best-seller was 1999’s “The Visit of the Personal Physician”, a landmark documentary novel about Dr. Struensee from Hamburg, which in fact replaced the mad king-boy in the Danish court, brought reforms into the spirit of enlightenment and ultimately because of it an affair with the queen was executed. Or “Captain Nemo Library”, a return to town and the magic of childhood with its confusing fantasies and myths, full of dark and bitter poetry. Writing this book released Enquist from his addiction, it was, he said, a “resurrection.”
Write as an act of penance
What it shows: Enquist never broke free from the religious superstructure with its mechanisms of guilt, conscience, and active remorse. Even if he had “studied” his belief in Uppsala and had jumped out of tight conditions with first-class sport, as a high jumper with the best 1.97-meter mark. But the betrayal of the mother’s world, the break with the origin, remained a wound. And the blood that flowed from her was endless literary productivity.
Throughout his life, Enquist was also politically active as a critical friend of Social Democracy. Through reports of sporting events, he found literature, and the novels were accompanied by dramas. When “The Night of the Tribes” celebrated worldwide success on stage through his colleague August Strindberg, his mother warned him of the sin of pride, and the son praised humility. Today, the works of “P.O.”, as they call it in Sweden, are found on almost all the shelves there. On Saturday night, the father and multiple grandfather, 85, fell asleep peacefully after a long heart and cancer.
And Hjoggböle? The bleak and intolerant nest in the extreme north is an integral part of the world map: it can be performance, magic, or mercy. (all right)
(“Die Presse”, print edition, April 27, 2020)
