Rolling heads and the mystery of love

Christina Hesselholdt
En have uden ende ("An Unending Garden")
Rosinante DK

By Charlotte Hougaard

In En have uden ende ("An Unending Garden"), which is a collection of memoirs, tone pictures and internal monologues, Christina Hesselholdt manages to deal with such themes as joie de vivre, love, and the art of writing without being either sententious or trivial.

To call En have uden ende ("An Unending Garden") a fragmentary novel would be a misrepresentation. In the introduction, we are offered Mandelstam's highly poetic definition of an arabesque as a better way of understanding this collection of short prose pieces: "It is like this, an arabesque is something which appears in the margin of a first draft, and goes on living its own separate, charming and disloyal life...". These short pieces of prose are indeed nothing less than charming, and may, with advantage, be read individually as if they were poems, thanks to their playful language and vibrant themes. But even though they are now very much alive, and do indeed live individual lives which are independent of the context whence they initially arose, there is a connection between all of them, and together they certainly amount to something more than just decoration.

After all, an arabesque is also linear ornamentation, consisting of continuous and intertwined lines creating organic forms. And throughout this collection of prose pieces a connection is created by the continuous use of first person narration, as well as by the themes. The latter constantly recur, even though one doesn't get the impression that they are mere repetitions. Taken all together, the prose pieces tell us the story of a very natural development - from a first glimpse of the light of the world through screwed up eyes to the ability completely to absorb the joy of life without having to close one's eyes to the darker sides of existence.

In the book one finds a gradual acceptance of loss as part of life, beginning with a fascination with death and bones (the title of one of the pieces of prose, "Rolling Heads"   is meant quite literally !). The sight of dead bones can actually be soothing, for they remain behind in all their purity, reminding us of the liberation of the soul. The conclusion is that - even though loss in itself is both an evil-smelling and a slow process - death is not bad. It is love which makes life worth living, and therefore the memory of the loss of the mother is immediately followed by another memory: that of the perfect happiness produced by the daughter's proximity. Just as the white bones elucidate the emergence and disappearance of life at one and the same time, so - all the way through this book - contrasts are strengthened by further contrasts.

To write is to live
In "The Old Oak Trees", the theme of writing - the process in itself of writing - is developed. The continuous first person narrator is fascinated by the written word. And, for this author persona, the old trees are a powerful symbol which combine a lot of the major aspects of existence: life and death, survival, love, and, not least, the creative force which enables the author persona to write. The living branches of the mighty oak grow out of its dead trunk, which awakens associations to a soldier who, in order to survive, must hide in a mass grave and pretend to be a corpse. Big old trees are indeed fascinating, and human beings compare themselves to them apparently because they represent life's most basic act of will: survival.

Another attempt to explain the fascination is that the trees seem to gesticulate with their branches. Depending on the interpreting human observer, their movements may look angry or appealing. Expressing oneself poetically like this through words and pictures is thus also a manifestation of existence, and by extension also a form of survival.

The descriptions of the oak trees are not achieved without a struggle; they disappear like sand between the fingers of the author persona. The narrator's attempts to record the essence of the trees, her absorption with their many details, and her efforts to see them from many different angles, make them all disappear - as if her essay were merely an exercise, just part of some creative writing course. In itself, "The Old Oak Trees" is a demonstration of the writer's own style, where the metaphors possess animating potency, and the prose is as concentrated as a poem. But the object of the description disappears within the description, while, instead, the authorial self comes so much more clearly to the fore. She comes alive and expresses herself through what she writes.

For the author, writing is synonymous with life. Trees are constantly changing, and, for the author, this change is an image of how the mind of the author opens itself up to change. Only with an open mind is one able to write. And thus the old trees become images of the author's own soul.

But life is so much more than just mere existence, and manifestations of it. In the (over!)-sensitivity of her youth, the author persona saw in the treetops an image of love - in the form of a supernatural orgy, in which everyone at one at the same time caresses and gives themselves up to each other unconditionally.

In the piece called "Love, Love, Love", different kinds of love are investigated: caring and taking pains, love for children, for parents, and, of course, romantic love. Love is important for the author persona's ability to write, but it is no longer a precondition for her being able to write - rather, her attempts to describe people and things are the result of her own devotion to them.

There are many details in "An Unending Garden", and the metaphor which has provided the title of the book enables the narrator to imagine herself in a happy place where "time is not meted out in limited amounts ": this is the only place where the world is really good enough for a beloved daughter. But, if one goes a bit beyond the decorative trope, it becomes a comprehensive portrayal of life in which loss and social injustices only help to make happiness shine through even more brightly. In the concluding little piece, "Kattegat", the joie de vivre culminates. The reservations which cast their shadows over the introductory piece, "Spring", are absent, and the author persona opens herself up to - and unreservedly embraces - life, together with all the happiness and sorrow in the world: "Come world, straight into my arms".

Charlotte Hougaard, M.A. (Danish and History)

Translated by Philip Edmonds