Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse from Norway turns 65
Published: Monday, Sep 23rd 2024, 14:40
Updated At: Sunday, Sep 29th 2024, 09:40
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Jon Fosse's plays are performed on the world's major stages. The playwright, poet and novelist from Norway was considered a favorite for the Nobel Prize for Literature for many years. He received it in 2023. This Sunday, the reclusive author turns 65.
Jon Fosse was not a good student as a child. "To be honest, I hated school," he said in an interview published on the Nobel Prize's YouTube channel. "My teachers said I couldn't write," said the Norwegian author.
Nevertheless, he continued to write. And it paid off: after years of being considered one of the favorites for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the playwright, poet and novelist ("Morning and Evening", "A New Name") won the prestigious prize in 2023. This Sunday, Jon Fosse celebrates his 65th birthday, his first as a Nobel Prize winner.
Fosse was born and grew up in western Norway, the land of the fjords. He started playing the guitar at a young age. When he was 14, he performed for the first time with his band at local dance events. Music was his life back then. When asked why he started writing, Fosse said in the Nobel Prize interview: "I think it was partly because I never became a good musician. I practiced and practiced and practiced, but somehow I never managed to reach a good level." So he replaced playing with writing.
As dark as the Norwegian winter
The rhythm from his time as a musician can still be felt in Fosse's work today. His writing style is characterized by countless repetitions, pauses and tempo changes. Fosse's language is rather simple. However, his books and dramas cannot be described as light fare. The Norwegian often deals with existential themes such as life and death, and faith also plays a major role. For Fosse, literature is a means of expressing the unspeakable, he explained in the Nobel Prize interview in Stockholm: "Some things cannot be said directly. You have to use literature to be able to say it."
The mood in Fosse's stories is usually melancholy and dark like the Norwegian winter - and yet warmth and humor often shine through. This is very evident, for example, in Fosse's children's book "Von Kötern, Kläffern und feinen Hundedamen", which is written from the perspective of three dogs and is also entertaining for adults.
The dark side of success
Fosse achieved his international breakthrough as a playwright. His plays - such as "The Name" and "The Night Sings Its Songs" - have also been performed on renowned stages in German-speaking countries, for example at the Zurich Schauspielhaus, the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Salzburg Festival.
However, success also had a dark side for Fosse. The somewhat shy-looking Norwegian, who describes himself as an "antisocial guy", numbed his stage fright with alcohol before public appearances. "In the end I was a real alcoholic, I drank all day until I passed out," the Norwegian newspaper "Aftenposten" quotes him as saying. Fosse, who converted to Catholicism at the time, said that his faith helped him on his way out of his addiction.
Literature as salvation
Today, the author lives in seclusion, partly in Norway and partly in Hainburg an der Donau in Lower Austria, not far from the Slovakian border. In his adopted Austrian home, a square was recently named after the Nobel Prize winner. In future, he will say no to requests of any kind even more often, said Fosse in an interview with a journalist from "Die Zeit". But he will continue to write - for reasons of self-preservation alone. "Writing is a way of life for me, a habit without which I cannot exist," he said in the "Zeit" interview.
In his lecture at the Nobel Prize ceremony, Fosse said that a reader had written to him after it was announced that he would receive the Nobel Prize. She wrote that one of his plays was the reason why she was still alive. That touched him deeply and made him very happy. But he had actually always known that writing could save lives, said Fosse shortly before the award ceremony in Stockholm. "It may even have saved my own life."
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