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Septology

by Jon Fosse · 2022

What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbour… more

6 quotes ★ 4.47 (2,770) Fiction

Quotes from the Book

and what the picture is in reality is this spirit, that’s what a picture really is, neither matter nor soul but both parts at the same time and together they make up what I think of as spirit, and maybe that’s why my good paintings, yes, all good paintings, have something to do with what I, what Christians, call The Holy Spirit, because all good art has this spirit, good pictures, good poems, good music, and what makes it good is not the material, not matter, and it’s not the content, the idea, the thought, no, what makes it good is just this unity of matter and form and soul that becomes spirit, that’s what culture is, probably, he says, it’s probably just one person being like another person that creates a culture, for example wearing a suit and tie, while what art is, yes, art is everyone just being like themselves, and totally themselves
15
because a picture says something and doesn’t say it at the same time, it speaks silently, yes, or more like it shows something that can’t be said,
1
he almost always gets something out of modern so-called incomprehensible poetry, not that he understands it either, in the usual way, but he does kind of understand it, in a different way, yes, it's like it's something you have to understand with something other than intelligence, or your mind(...) It's like those poems are incomprehensible the same way life id, he says
1
I try to breathe from what I am inside, to keep the sorrow away, or in any case keep it under control so the fear doesn't take over, so the terrors don't overwhelm me, and I know that this sudden sorrow, these sudden terrors that have welled up inside me will get smaller and I will get bigger - Jon Fosse, The Other Name: Septology I-II
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because why didn’t I go see him? was it because I was scared to? not prepared to share his pain with him? share his suffering
Todo conduce a Dios, y en ese sentido todas las religiones son una, pienso yo, y en ese sentido convergen también la religión y el arte, también porque tanto la biblia como la liturgia son ficción, imágenes y poesía, son literatura, teatro y artes plásticas, y como tales tienen su verdad, porque evidentemente el arte también tiene su verdad.

About Jon Fosse

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About the book

What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbour, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers – two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions about death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness.

Jon Fosse’s ​Septology is a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience – incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.

Book details

First published
2022
Author
Jon Fosse
Genre
Fiction
Goodreads rating
4.47 (3k ratings)

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