Language generates reality, rather than the other way round
Staying Free of the Delusions of Purity

By Stefan Helgesson

For Roland Barthes, realism was all about the production of superfluous meaning. Don’t say simply that the marquise went out. Say that she went out at five o’clock. Say that it was a rainy day in early spring. Then one creates an impression in the reader of a reality greater than the inner logic of the story. J.M. Coetzee has similar thoughts in the realism chapter of Elizabeth Costello: „Supply the particulars, allow the significations to emerge of themselves.“ Realism is a case of language conjuring up a reality, rather than the other way round.
That is the way that many Swedish authors seem to work with realism today: not as a direct reflection of reality, but as one way amongst many of manipulating language. In Lena Andersson’s Du är alltså svensk? (So You’re Swedish?, 2004), the recruiter who interviews the main character, Fatima, wants exaggeratedly precise details:

„How did you come to Sweden? By boat?“
„Yes.“
„In a tiny little wooden boat?“
„So small it could hardly be seen.“
„Like a fingerborg?“
„What is a fingerborg?“
„Something very small. If you don’t know what it is in Swedish, I can say it in English. It’s called a thimble in English. I’m sure you know what it is now. There must be a word for it in your language too, but unfortunately I don’t speak it.“

In his attempt to establish whether Fatima is trustworthy, the recruiter ends up in absurd semantic expositions. Here the person of authority assumes the position of the reader. At other times, the person who is in power becomes an editor. Someone who is powerless – Fatima – is expected to provide tales and phrases that correspond to authority’s perception of reality. Fatima monitors the slightest nuance in the words in order to find her way. Peripheral details can have a decisive effect on her trustworthiness. When she happens to say that „a whole heap of people“ were sitting in the waiting-room, the recruiter points out that Jews lay in heaps at one time. It was the wrong expression to use. When authority is listening, the meanings of language become slippery. Everything can become wrong because authority wants, with the help of language, to become morally fault-free.
This order is suspended for a short time when Fatima falls in love with the prime minister and they go on a state visit to the USA. A precarious balance is struck between Fatima’s longing to be accepted and the prime minister’s longing to be good. But soon Fatima has become unreal again. Nobody at the government secretariat recognises her. The prime minister is far too busy raising empathy in the community.

This is not realism as „representation of reality“. Instead, Du är alltså svensk? takes Ionesco and the German „Neue Sachlichkeit“ as its models. On the other hand it does deal with how language creates a reality effect called Sweden. Andersson writes – as she did in her first novel, Var det bra så? (Was that OK?) – against the background of the Folkhemmet idea that common sense, consensus and equality form the innermost truth about the Swedish nation state. When the equation between these three ideals doesn’t work out, language is used to correct reality instead of the other way round. Germans should be called Deutschers so that they are not associated with Nazism. Exotic immigrants should confirm the Swedish self-image by being incorporated into the tolerance project, New Blood.
The authorities don’t alter the power relationships. They alter the language’s details. The moral content of the details should then come forward under their own power.
This connection between language and power goes like a red thread through much of today’s Swedish literature. Halim, the narrator in Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s successful début Ett öga rött (One Eye Red, 2003), also thinks that he has uncovered a conspiracy that will put society right. This called the Integration Plan, and is intended to make „all immigrants into Swedes“. Interestingly enough, this differs from New Blood in Andersson’s novel. Instead of making differences decorative, the Integration Plan aims to do away with them. Halim finds proof that the plan has been set going when he reads that „several housing companies have threatened to evict all immigrants who have satellite dishes on their balconies“.

Ett öga rött lies closer to the conventional perception of realism as reproduction. Halim gives the reader a wealth of details about everyday life at school, he records what dishes are served at a party, he watches news reports from Israel. But Khemiri’s language is not transparent either. The risky stylistic device of letting Halim write in „immigrant Swedish“ is used quite deliberately. In addition to the fact that some „Arabic“ sayings are invented – „everything has an end, but the mergueze has two“ – the reader gradually comes to understand that Halim has chosen to write in immigrant Swedish. To write „correctly“ would be to identify with society at large. To write „wrongly“ is to identify with the margins. In this sense, there is no difference between Halim’s choice of language and, for example, Sara Lidman’s use of Norrland dialect. An established language strategy in modern Swedish literature is involved here. But it is, take note, Halim’s strategy. For the author, Khemiri, the language does not offer any promise of an authentic, rooted identity, unsullied by the desire for power.
Somewhere here we can find the core of what has been somewhat vaguely called a new realistic trend in Swedish prose. It’s not that the younger writers have abandoned the linguistic insights of the 80s and become more robust storytellers. On the contrary, they are linguistically hypersensitive. The difference is that they are more inclined towards social critique. Apart from Andersson and Khemiri, one could also name Torbjörn Flygt and Daniel Sjölin. If we widen the perspective, however, the top ranking goes to a pictorial artist who operates on the borderline between literature and art: Joakim Pirinen.

Ingens bästa vän (Nobody’s Best Friend), Pirinen’s latest book of cartoon strips (2004), operates as expected in an alien universe. The narrative, in which it is impossible to separate pictures and text from each other, does not adhere to any agreements about what is real or likely. Style and the stream of associations are the only authorities that Pirinen recognises. He can switch between clear line drawings, cubism and scrawled tangles of black Indian ink, but within a single strip consistency prevails. Likewise, he starts from a definite linguistic technique in each strip: everyday dialogue in „Anhöriga“ („Relatives“), descriptive anthropological prose in „Livet på planeten 2760“ („Life on Planet 2760“), absolute nonsense in „Anagram“ (in which the letters in Pirinen’s name determine the content).
But this generative principle – in which language and style generate the reality of the story – does not lead Pirinen either to turn his back on society. On the contrary, there is no Swedish author today who excavates, and transforms, a physical and political reality with the same demonic energy. Rarely has September 11 been treated as intelligently (and crazily) as in „World Triad Center“. „Den långaste resan“ („The Longmost Journey“) reinvents the genre of Stockholm descriptions. „Tjuven i Bagdad“ („The Thief of Baghdad“) and „1900-tals ABC“ („ABC of the Twentieth Century“) are morality plays about the dark times in history, related to Picasso’s „Guernica“.
Today’s Swedish authors are faithful to reality, but perhaps most of all when they blow apart realism. It is possible that there exists a Swedish nostalgia that creates its own myths: that Swedish is the language of unaffected common-sense; that Sweden by definition should be a homogeneous society in which everyone is moving in the same direction. In that case, literature helps us to keep the delsuions of purity at bay.

Stefan Helgesson is a literary researcher and critic. In 2003, his book of essays Efter Västerlandet.Texter om kulturell förändring (After the West. Texts about Cultural Change) was published by Natur och Kultur.

Translated by Roy Hodson