(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
With his previous novel The Prophets in the Eternal Fjord Kim Leine went into clinch with one of the darker chapters in Danish history, namely the Danes' actions in colonial Greenland. In his new novel Afgrunden, which is published in Norwegian on Saturday, it is rather a dark chapter in the Danish present that is being examined. Sure enough, the story is temporarily spun from the Finnish Civil War in 1918 to the Occupation's last moments in 1944, but Afgrunden draws clear strands up to present-day Denmark as a nation at war: «As a belligerent nation, I think it is important that we make it clear what is alluring about the war. The main moral of the book is probably that if you first enter the war, you will never get out of it again. It is an experience that one of the novel's characters makes, but it is also an experience that many young people make during these years, as we as a nation take part in several wars around the world, "explains Kim Leine and continues:" Denmark needs to recognize that once we have started to get involved, we cannot get out of it again. If there is a major war in Europe, which there is a lot of evidence of happening in this century, then Denmark is no longer a small, innocent country. Then we are an active participant, and then the war will come within the borders of the country with the consequences it will have. I will not judge whether it is wrong or right that we have joined wars, but I will draw attention to the dynamics of the nature of war. ” Epic. His work with Afgrunden was kick-started by a film project in which Kim Leine authored a longer monologue on the nature of war. The first thought was then to write a shorter 120-page novel that would activate the contrast with a large perspective in the small format, but since then the fabric has grown into an epic 600-page novel, especially revolving around the fascinating nature of the war.
I think most men flirt with the idea of killing another human being and how it feels.
"War novels are today automatically anti-war novels. But one does not have to wave one's arms and say that war is terrible. We know that, comrade. Therefore, one can focus on something else. I thought there must be something about the war that is good. Otherwise it will probably not continue to exist. If it were just awful, with some Darwinian mechanisms it would probably cease to exist, "says Kim Leine, who was himself a military conscientious objector and actually considers himself a pacifist. "Pacifists usually only go into war literature if it is satirical, but I would write a novel that takes its characters seriously and is on the same level as the characters. At the same time, I myself am subject to a war mythology. It is, after all, one of the great male myths. I think most men flirt with the idea of killing another human being and how it feels. Instead of resisting this fascination with the war, I think it was natural to go into it and examine it. " What is it alluring about the war? "It is to a large extent a distancing from the reality we are familiar with. Our reality has become too unrealistic and alienating. There is an honesty in the war. And a loyalty to the real world. Peace requires a struggle on a completely different level than war. The battle of war is so easy. It is easy to spot. It is divided into good and bad. Black and white. The peace struggle is challenging in a completely different way. " That reality is becoming more unreal because of peace sounds almost a bit paradoxical. One would think that peace is, after all, the normal state, and war is the exception, the deviation. So why do you think war is more real? "It's because there are no ideals associated with peace. It is grayish mottled and diffuse. In the war, it's all cut up crystal clear, and you also get the feeling that you are doing something important. And it's a feeling that probably primarily attracts young people. At the same time, there is an inherent boredom in democracy and in peace. Democracy is damn just not very sexy. And it is not very tempting to fight for the existing. " Do you think that the volunteers who travel from Norway and Denmark to fight in Syria, among other places, should primarily be seen as a distancing from the inherent boredom of democracy, or can there be ideological motives? "As an alibi, one has idealism. That one wants to go down to fight for democracy, but in its form of expression it always becomes anti-democratic. The result may well be democratic, but the very form of expression of war is the same. Research from World War II has also shown that the methods of the resistance movement were as anti-democratic as those of the opponents. We fought for the right thing, people say, but it falls outside the scope of the action itself. " So it is only at the end result that one can justify the action? 'Yes, I would say so. It is a declaration of bankruptcy for Western democracies that the Middle East is becoming more and more filled with young people from Europe fighting for ISIS. People down in the Middle East that I have contact with say that it is precisely the travelers who are the most brutal. They are the ones who cut the throats of people and film it. It is the volunteers who come from Europe who want the extreme excesses. It is the children of democracy who jump into the other ditch and become extreme. " Manhood test. Is it not at all related to the fact that the young people who go to war are marginalized in our society? "Yes, absolutely. I think everyone feels a fascination with and an urge to travel to war, but for the marginalized, the road to war is obviously shorter. I understand the volunteer warriors well. " Can you also relate to it on a personal level – could you even be a volunteer warrior? You lose your childhood. Its immaturity. You become a man and an adult. The baby ham is peeled off. "I could easily imagine being a soldier and going to war. I might think I could do something constructive and important, but behind all the alibis I make for myself, the real thing would be that I just have to go down and shoot with gunpowder and feel the kick. Experience the adventure. And have my manhood test. One needs a kind of initiation ritual with which all the tribes of the world somehow operate. It has to be brutal. You have to put your life on the line. Right now, the manhood test consists rather of traveling to Prague and drinking from sense and collection and taking hard drugs. Maybe it was an idea to introduce a mandatory manhood test in our society so that the only option is no longer to go to war. " Why will it be good? “It will give a sense of transition to adulthood. We no longer have that rite of passage. " Somewhere in the novel it says: 'I often think about what it will do to us, the war. What I want to lose, what I want to gain ': What is it that is to lose and gain in a war?
"You lose your childhood. Its immaturity. You become a man and an adult. You peel off the orphanage. "
If we have to following that analogy with maturation, it is then the same as is in færd to happen to our nation that we are being matured as a country by being a warring nation? "You could say it's the same analogy. We have been in war before and had trauma over, for example, Dybbøl. Then we retreated into ourselves and became pacifists who did not participate in anything. Now we are crawling forward again. That movement will happen constantly. We live in an interwar period now. When the next big war comes, we will be one of the active ones. And the consequences of the next great war will then create a new myth about the war and shape our perception of war in future generations. "
Steffen Moestrup is a journalist and critic in Ny Tid. moestrup@gmail.com
