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Seven Delblanc uses an unexpected word when he attacks Sweden in his novel “Grottmannen” (1977). He is talking about obedience. “They want to obey!” says main character Sebastian Delfine. It is not what one would expect from a country that is placed in the most secularized and individualistic corner when the World Values Survey maps global attitudes, but while reading I have the impression that “Grottmannen” gives several clues as to why the Swedish public looks like him. do, clues that are still valid for 2020. The alcoholic painter Erik Jerobeam Ahlenius in the same book is even more bad. This is how his outburst sounds:
“Swedish art has always followed in the footsteps of power, like a child after a powerful mother, babbling like an anxious child: do you like me, mother, do you really like me? Do you really think … Did it work well while they needed us? Cong. His Majesty’s counter-sweeper, the home decorator of the bourgeoisie … But today the power does not care about us, there are better means of propaganda. Sometimes a small talk about scholarships to comfort a child who cry. What are we going to do, kick the kids out? Be condescending, pushing daddy’s ideology to the absurd? Or bile screaming like spoiled kids, kicking, smashing things, yelling COCK, PUSSY, FUCKED… Dad doesn’t care. Or in your area, literature, to confess myself as a guilt-conscious child … I blew myself in bed! Whore, love a mule, whatever you want! Well, who the hell cares about that? Swedish art has never been an adult. Now it is an abandoned child who screams. We yearn for a strict father, who c astigue, need us, put us to work … Speer, David, Meissonier, posters, social realism, whatever, but not this hideous freedom … We want to obey! But no paternal master seems to need our services. It is done “.
