Nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Award 2003

Classical modernism

BY SINDRE HOVDENAKK

Hanus Kamban
Pilgrims
Mentunargrunnur Studentafelagsins. FO

Hanus Kamban is something of an old master on the Faeroese literary – and cultural – scene. With the publication of Pilgrims, a collection of short stories, he places himself in genre terms well within what could reasonably be called classical literary modernism. And the outcome is a set of short stories of contemporary relevance and permanent value.
Language in Hanus Kaban’s hands becomes almost diaphanous, and his characters are portrayed with intense clarity. These characters bear, moreover, a profound existential concern, a concern only people of the 1900s would recognise. Whether they are emigrants or homebodies, farmers or scholar, all have experienced, more or less brutally, the great drama of history. In that light Pilgrims is also a panoramic overview of the twentieth century, of the vortex of devastation that shook individuals, communities and cultures.

Emancipation
Pilgrims is a collection of nine short stories. The longest of them, and in my view by far the most important, is Den hvide mand (The white man). In an almost outdated way it is moreover something of a thriller in its carefully and closely hewn dramaturgy. The story introduces us to a convict named Dávur on his way by boat to Denmark to serve out a sentence for a murder – a crime of which he is innocent. In his description of the narrow-minded resentments, the intrigues and repressed desires, all of which contrived to incriminate the man, Kamban uses resources familiar to all with an interest in classical Nordic literature and archetypal narrative techniques.
At the same time he demonstrates how the ability to master a language, to narrate, and consequently the ability to shed light on one’s own history, is itself a project of emancipation. A person becomes individualised, distinct, only in relationships with others. And by recounting his story to the Scot MacFarlane – gentleman and fellow passenger – Dávur experiences precisely that: emancipation, both intellectually and physically.

Canterbury
”Is there anything you want more than anything else in this life? ” asks MacFarlane.
”To see Canterbury Cathedral,” Dávur replies.
And so it goes. The Faroese farmhand succeeds in making a new life for himself in a new country and culture which otherwise would have remained out of reach. Had he not transformed his life into a narrative. A narrative only he had the right to own.
This, apparently, is what is known as mastering a culture. Aspiring to achieve a type of knowing that overcomes all the hurdles we as humans place in the way of our own and others’ pursuit of life.
The fact that Davúr, at the end of the day, fails, along with the other characters in the book, to cut himself wholly free from his inherited and externally imposed destiny is just the obverse side of the same story. The story of how existential loneliness follows every personal emancipatory project like a shadow. The shadow of the modern pilgrim.

This review is based on Kirsten Brix’s Danish translation

Translated by Chris Saunders