The Saga of Gösta Berling

I had trouble getting into this and nearly put it down with no intention of picking it back up. But I decided to stick with it and, as my rating suggests, it was well worth the time and effort. The core story, about the fall and redemption of defrocked pastor Gösta Berling, is a much larger story about redemption in general. This is not a theme I generally have much interest in but Lagerlöf’s approach is unlike anything I have encountered before. Many, if not most, of the chapters are self-contained stories about one of the large cast of characters who come into (and out of) Berling’s own life. Many, if not most, of the chapters can be read as parables. I think that I had trouble at the outset because it took me quite a while to show more fall into Lagerlöf’s rhythm and into her universe. Although I have read a number of Scandinavian classics, none, I think, are so heavily indebted to the old sagas…about which I am embarrassed to admit I know almost nothing. One might be tempted to call some of the writing “magical realism” and, in its way, that’s not wrong. But Gösta Berling owes so much to the history and myth, the fables and stories of this region—too much for me to appreciate given my ignorance—that only by reading enough of the first dozen chapters or more did I gain enough courage to go on. Even so, the Faust story (to cite but a single work) is amply visible. The writing, I think, is excellent and I suspect that the translation (by Paul Norlén), while good, doesn’t adequately represent the original. Occasional flashes of brilliance come through but I cannot help but wonder. In any event, a superb book. show less

I don't know quite why, but I was expecting this to be a kind of generic late 19th century novel - agricultural realism, a family struggling to hang on to their estate in difficult times. And of course it turns out to be something quite different, much harder to pigeon-hole. There is an element of realism in the underlying description of ordinary people's lives, but there's also a picaresque arbitrariness about the sequence of events that seems almost 18th century; larger-than-life characters stomp about in seven-league boots in a rather ETA Hoffmannish way; there's a Faust-story that keeps popping up in the background when we least expect it; nature intervenes whenever it chooses; the whole thing is set seventy years back in the 1820s show more in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, and narrated by someone who claims to have been around at the time (but Lagerlöf was only in her late 20s/early 30s when she wrote it); altogether it's difficult to work out when you are supposed to be.

While the story is full of parties, celebrations, escapades and practical jokes, there's a very hard moral line under it all. Frivolity is good and necessary, but as soon as it's taken too far (as it invariably is, here) we are brought down to earth with a painful bump and shown that events have consequences that are almost always both nasty and irreversible. Without order, work, and moral discipline the community falls apart into chaos (but we can't rely on established institutions to keep us in line: it's a matter of individual responsibility). Mostly, but not exclusively, it's the men who make a mess of everything and the women that suffer and try to patch it up again. But practically everyone in the novel is weak and fallible and makes at least one culpable mistake. But don't imagine that it's all dour moralising: apart from the occasional sentimental deathbed scene, the atmosphere is consistently light and ironic, and there are some very good jokes.

I haven't advanced far enough in Swedish to tackle something like this, so I was grateful for Paul Norlen's translation, which reads very naturally and mostly manages to avoid being either intrusively modern or archly Victorian. Penguin are clearly patting themselves on the back because this is the first new English translation in over a hundred years, but that does rather lay them open to the question why didn't they commission one earlier? Could it be that they were just waiting for Lagerlöf's copyright to expire...? show less

Kiérdemelte mind az 5 csillagot. Nem azért, mert olyan szerethető a címszereplő, hanem azért mert olyan kitűnő a meseszövés. Remek kis novellák vannak elrejtve a regényben. Engem Mikszáth Kálmán stílusára emlékeztet. Megérdemelné a hős a boldogságot, de a sors nem akarja - ezért a keserédes íz. Tele van emberi gyarlóságokkal és lelki szépségekkel - ezek harcolnak egymással, néha egy emberen belül, néha pedig párbajként hosszú időn keresztül két sorsban. Nagyon különleges élmény volt olvasni, megismerni az északi életérzést, összehasonlítani más tájon élő emberek világával.

Set in rural Sweden in the nineteenth century, this is as much a collection of short stories that follows the same characters throughout a year as it is a novel. Gosta Berling is a disgraced pastor who wanders the country until he is taken in by the Major’s wife as one of the cavaliers of Ekeby. The cavaliers live at her expense and spend their time eating, drinking, and causing mischief. During their Christmas Eve festivities, an evil spirit (or possibly a local trickster in disguise) joins them, and they sign a contract with him guaranteeing that the Major’s wife will be turned out of Ekeby for a year and that the cavaliers will have control of the estate as long as they do nothing that is un-cavalier like during the year. The show more rest of the stories show different events in the lives of the cavaliers and nearby residents during that year with a focus on morality and religion.

I liked this book because it was a nice light read to give me a break from the more serious literature I’ve been reading lately, but at the same time, there was a lot to think about in it. I would compare the stories to fables or fairy tales, although they’re more realistic folklore than either of those. I also enjoyed reading about such a different culture.

The following quote resonated with me enough for me to write it down:

“Young horses who cannot bear the whip or spur find life hard. At every smart they start forward and rush to their destruction, and when the way is stony and difficult, they know no better expedient than to overturn the cart and gallop madly away.” show less

This is a romantic novel in every sense of the word, and mythical too. Set along a lake in northern Sweden in the early part of the 19th century, it tells the tale of Gösta Berling interwoven with the stories of other residents of the area, along with a dash of the supernatural.

Who is Gösta Berling? In the prologue, the reader learns that he started out in life as a preacher but fell prey to drink, was defrocked and set out as a traveling beggar. But the majoress (wife of a major) of Ekeby, owner of seven mines and the most powerful and richest person (not just woman) around, takes him to her household as one of the twelve "cavaliers" who live there -- a group of men who have fallen on hard times and who live a life of entertainment show more that borders on dissolution, playing music, eating and drinking, wild parties, etc. Unlike many of the cavaliers, Gösta is young.

The novel takes place over the course of a year -- 12 months -- starting at a Christmas feast at which the cavaliers make a pact with the devil that gives them control of Ekeby for a year and sends the majoress out into the world to beg for her living. Gösta attracts women and vice versa. As the year progresses, several tragic romantic attachments occur, with flashbacks to others. At the same time, other events take place in the villages and farms surrounding the lake, and each of the cavaliers faces a challenge of some kind. The novel builds to its climax as the next Christmas rolls around and the pact with the devil expires.

Such is a broad outline of the novel, but it hardly gives the flavor of Lagerlöf's writing or the broad scope of the book. Local history, geography, the beauty and the threat of nature, fairy tales, and a strong thread of self-effacing religion all play a role. Lagerlöf, as novelist, frequently addresses the reader, often characterizing the time she is writing about (less than 100 years earlier) as olden times, a time of legend. Her characters are often more symbolic than real, and their actions sometimes not entirely believable but this is not a book meant to be taken literally. Her writing can be dramatic, and this worked best for me lyrical (but often haunted) passages about nature. In fact nature, as it affects people, is a character too. Some examples of Lagerlöf's writing:

"He knew every tree the way you know your siblings and playmates." p. 240

"But we were thinking, we, in the peculiar spirit of self-observation, which had already made its way inside us. We were thinking about him with the eyes of ice and the long, crooked fingers, he who sits in the soul's darkest corner and tears apart our being, the way old women pick apart scraps of silk and wool." p. 112

"Oh month of May, that lovely time when the birches blend their light greenery into the dark of the spruce forests, and when the south wind comes again far from the south saturate by heat!

I must seem more ungrateful than others who have enjoyed your gifts, you beautiful month. Not a word have I used to show your beauty. . . .

May others listen to talk of flowers and sunshine, but for myself I choose dark nights, full of visions and adventures, for me the hard fates, for me the sorrow-filled passions of wild hearts." pp. 226-227

The grieving mouth is easily forced to smile, but someone who is happy cannot weep. The old ballads believe in tears and sighs, in sorrow alone and the signs of sorrow. Sorrow is real, is lasting, it is the firm bedrock under loose sand. In sorrow one can believe and in the signs of sorrow.

But happiness is only sorrow that is playacting. There is really nothing on the earth but sorrow." p. 296

Depressed yet? There is some fun in this book too!

At times, the thread of piety and the virtues of serving others without thought of person vanity got to me, but there was also plenty of adventure and romance. This book grew on me. show less

These tales gather in sophistication. They seem almost crude at first.

My Penguin translation of 2011 seems to struggle to describe this work, and I do too. ‘Sweeping historical epic’, in the book description, won’t do for this interweave of stories, and if, like me, you look askance at the ‘string of women who fall under Gösta's spell’, you may, like me, yet be glad you pursued your curiosity nevertheless. The back of my book even sells it as ‘the Swedish Gone With the Wind’. Plot fiends who expect a Gone With the Wind ‘sweep’ are likely to be frustrated with these short episodes that focus on different people; and while the majority of tales have to do with love, they don’t add up to a grand romance. Rather they show more give viewpoints – women’s and men’s, sad, ecstatic, cynical or idealistic – and often operate with irony.

Trust Lagerlöf. First woman to win the Nobel. Lived as a lesbian (with a fellow writer) but the literary establishment presented her as a maiden aunt who told charming fairy tales. On the ways she had to let them ‘present’ her and her work, see this article: ‘Selma Lagerlöf: Surface and Depth’.

http://publicdomainreview.org/2012/01/11/selma-lagerlof-surface-and-depth/

The eponymous hero is more an excuse to spin tales with, his counterweight being ‘the majoress’, in whom the author probably situates herself. There is psychological portrayal; it just does not reside in the ‘hero’. At times it resides in imagery, in the construction of the brief plots, or of course in whichever from the cast of persons steps forward for a particular tale. The book is notable for personifications, of animals and of an animist landscape. A bravura one is a flood, whose waters have their opportunity to wreak vengeance on humankind. Typically, this tale becomes diverted: another crosses its path and we follow that one instead; I never heard what happened with the flood. Often you hear, though, as if by chance interconnection in another tale.

Intriguing work. show less

The Saga of Gosta Berling is a novel by Swedish author and Nobel prize winner, Selma Lagerlof. Combining two of my current obsessions, Scandinavian literature and women authors, I've been really looking forward to this one. This ended up not being an easy read for me, though I ended up finding it rewarding.

Gosta Berling starts out his adult life as a minister, but is quickly run out of town and defrocked for his excessive drinking and bad behavior. He falls in with a misfit group of cavaliers in the town of Ekeby. The rest of the book chronicles his various love affairs (which always end badly for the woman) and tell the stories of his fellow cavaliers. There is a strong element of folklore/mysticism running through the book and the show more stories are told in an episodic fashion. The episodic nature of the book kept me at arm's length, as I was never sure whether this was a character I would continue to run in to, or one I'd get to know for a few pages and never see again. It also made it a bit hard for me to get in to the flow of the book.

There is a lot of death in this book and a lot of infatuation (I can't call it love). What saved the book for me was that in the end there were a lot of loose ends tied up that I'd despaired of ever revisiting. Also, several of the women sort of come in to their own instead of killing themselves over Gosta Berling. Though I found the characterizations a bit weak or at least different than I'm used to, I will say that the writing is beautiful and I think the translation by Paul Norlen must be very good.

All in all, I'm glad I read this and I suspect it is a book that will improve for me as I think about it more and more. show less