(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
There was a time when Jens Bjørneboe had sat in Sigurd Evensmo's chair. Evensmo looked at him with his stern, leathery face, while Bjørneboe said: "Sigurd, your face is like a prison lattice. Come out, come out!
This tells Kjell Cordtsen. He is the journalist and editor who can be said to have the honor of getting the mythical writer Jens Bjørneboe (1920-76) into the radical weekly newspaper Orientering. In 1965, after reading a number of chronicles in which Bjørneboe in sharp order made a settlement with the prison system, Cordtsen thought that this was one that belonged in Orientering.
- On 13 February 1965, a portrait interview of Bjørneboe was published in Orientering, signed Kjell Cordtsen. This marks the beginning of Bjørnebo's association with the magazine. And together with the publisher Pax, was Orientering his most important institutional affiliation in the period 1965 to 1972.
That's what Tore Rem, the literature professor who recently released the first volume of his widely-acclaimed biography His Own Master. A biography of Jens Bjørneboe (Cappelen Damm). Book goes to 1959. Currently, Rem is working on other volumes, which will be published in the autumn of 2010, where we are getting to know seriously his left-wing involvement throughout the 60 century.
Next week is the book Sigurd Evensmo. Alone among the many. A biography (CappelenDamm), written by the two cultural journalists and authors Stian Bromark and Halvor Finess Tretvoll.
Miss and Evensmo
In 1912, the author Evensmo (1978-1953) became the first editor of Orientering. He was central in the weekly newspaper until it changed its name to Ny Tid in 1975. Like Bjørneboe, Evensmo, who launched a third path in politics, was a leader in the radical environment that was critical of Norway's and Haakon Lie's close NATO affiliation. They both wrote in favor of radical societal changes. And both seem to be strong personalities, as the biographical titles His Own Lord and Alone Among Many indicate.
But what do these two postwar and 20th century social storms have to say for today's radical youth in 2009?
- For Socialist Youth, a third way is clearly relevant, and we have a relationship with both Finn Gustavsen and Sigurd Evensmo. But that is perhaps not what we are talking about the most, says SU leader Mali Steiro Tronsmoen.
Tronsmoen says she still misses someone like Sigurd Evensmo in our time.
- As an author of fiction books, he used other tools than hard politics, and I would like to see more of that today. But to be completely honest, I think Evensmo today for many appears as an author of a number of good books, which they think they should have read.
Tronsmoen is therefore looking forward to the Evensmo biography:
- It's great that a book about him is coming. It is probably the most tangible step you can take to lift Evensmo forward again, says Trosmoen.
The third way
But let's take a closer look at the weekday show where Evensmo and Bjørneboe met. Cordtsen says:
- It was the Member of the Storting Jacob Friis who first issued a sample number of Orientering, in December 1952. He was in opposition to the Labor Party's official foreign policy after the party had decided to become a member of NATO in 1949. Many others in the Labor Party were also against the NATO line: Evensmo himself had resigned his position as cultural editor in Arbeiderbladet and reported withdrew from the party in protest – but seemed Orientering under Friis had a too communist side. It was called to a meeting about the magazine, in which Friis participated with, among others, Evensmo and Karl Evang, and where the theory of "the third way" was hammered out. Friis was squeezed out, while Evensmo and Evang took over the newspaper. In January 1953 came the first ordinary edition.
- What was the third way to do?
- Two things. First, it pointed to a path to socialism that was independent of both Western social democracy, which had sold itself to capitalism, and of communism, which had become totalitarian. Second, independently of the major power blocs, it was dominated by the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively.
- This sounds like the basis of the Socialist People's Party?
- SF would have been completely impossible to found in 1961 if it had not been for the ideological work that had been carried out in Orienterings columns by Evensmo and Finn Gustavsen. Together, they unloaded the newspaper through difficult years of poor finances and secrecy. "Silent kitten," Evensmo called it, because the rest of the labor press never mentioned Orientering in one word.
repentance
In the 1950s, the rich man's son Bjørneboe was busy with completely different things, such as anthroposophy, national goals and opposition to social democracy and modern science. He was, to put it with Kjølv Egeland, quoted by Cordtsen in the said 1965 interview, "the leader of the modern reaction". Or to put it in the words of Bjørneboe cinema:
Cordtsen believed that the "like of repentance" that Bjørneboe went through from the 50s to the 60s, one had to go back to Nordahl Grieg and his shift from nationalism to Soviet communism to find. This type of understandable reaction from young left-wing radicals may at the same time have helped to clarify Bjørneboe and hide the continuity I believe is found in his revolt, says Rem.
- Some of the first things he publishes in Orientering, is the poem about the French author Jean Genet, and here we see that he again praises the individual, the outsider, the outcast. I want to say that Bjørnebo's role in Orientering may well be said to have been a corrective to the liberal deficit of collectivism.
Because not everyone was equally excited about Cordtsen, who was responsible editor Orientering for most of the period 1965-1975, Bjørneboe let slip into the magazine's columns. One of them was Evensmo.
- To illustrate: In 1966, Bjørneboe translated the book Helten på eselryggen by the Montenegrin author Miodrag Bulatovic. The book was important for his own writing, not least for the trilogy The History of Bestiality (1966-1973), and it was completely sabotaged by Evensmo in Orientering. The reason, as I see it, is that Bulatovic had as dark a view of man as Bjørneboe had, while Evensmo stood for the socialist and more optimistic view of man, Rem says.
Who is most important?
Kjell Cordtsen agrees with this interpretation of the differences between Bjørneboe and Evensmo:
- They were two diametrically opposed people. Evensmo was always the more responsible, who was characterized by a classic working class background and stood on a solid, socialist platform all his life, while Bjørneboe was a kind of free agent and provocateur with anarchist sympathies.
- Who was the most important in his time?
- Hard to say. Evensmo was invaluable in his role in establishing an opposition to the left of the Labor Party. In addition, he enjoyed a strong moral status on the left. Bjørneboe had a greater influence on young people from the mid-60s, but he had a relatively limited influence on political Norway before 1965, Cordtsen points out.
Cordtsen thinks there was a change with Bjørneboe when he started reading and renaming Bertolt Brecht.
- Together with his wife, Tone, he traveled around and gave readings by Brecht. When we met, for the interview, he referred to Sigurd Hoel, Helge Krog and Arnulf Øverland. And commented on David Horowitz's book on the Cold War as a patent SFer. I thought radical Norway should welcome him.
Bjørneboe answered the invitation by staying Orienterings most active writer next to Georg Johannesen (1931-2005). That despite the fact that nobody got paid for the contributions they made to the magazine. Rem sees this as a clear sign that Bjørneboe saw Orientering as a community where he felt at home, because he was suffering from chronic money problems. But once he was still paid for the effort.
- Many newspapers were willing to pay Bjørneboe a large sum for the speech he gave in his defense of Without a Thread. He still chose to give it to Orientering against six bottles of red wine. He was the first to receive any kind of payment in the magazine, and that meant I got packaging from the manager, ”says Cordtsen.
Evensmo, who worked as a movie sensor and was a strong opponent of pornography, didn't like that either Orientering printed Bjørneboe's defense speech.
Read more in the paper edition.
