“VU Experts Help Understand”: the Nobel Prize in Literature Awarded to Jon Fosse for Innovativeness

This year’s Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Jon Fosse, a 64-year-old Norwegian author. In the last two decades, this playwright, poet, essayist, children’s author and novelist has been honoured with almost all literature awards available in Norway. The Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”. Assoc. Prof. Ieva Steponavičiūtė-Aleksiejūnienė, the head of the Centre for Scandinavian Studies of the Institute for the Languages and Cultures of the Baltic at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University (VU), describes the laureate as a master of omission which conceals unnamed conflicts and emotions.

Universal themes in his creative work

‘In all fairness, Fosse can be called a master of omission; that is especially relevant to his plays, where laconic syntactic structures and repeated phrases hide unnamed conflicts and emotions. Longing, love, jealousy, fear, uncertainty... Everything that makes us human and probably impacts us the most in art, but especially when it is not fully expressed,’ Assoc. Prof. Steponavičiūtė-Aleksiejūnienė shares her insights.

According to her, universal themes of time, language, and memory are prevalent in the creative work of the Norwegian author: ‘Another important theme is the very creation process, transforming pain into art – a theme as eternal as art itself. In some of Fosse’s texts, such as the novel “Melancholy” (“Melancholia”) (1995), the main character is an artist. His newest project, a seven-part cycle “Septology” (“Septologien”), is constructed as a continuous stream of consciousness of an artist attempting to understand themselves, the world, and God.’

Awarded for talent and original forms

The attempts to attribute the creative work of Fosse to a single literary movement are viewed sceptically by the Assoc. Prof. Steponavičiūtė-Aleksiejūnienė: ‘Another Norwegian author Dag Solstad has once compared literary critics to the devil, as all they do is try to squeeze artists into boxes of the history of literature or a museum. The Nobel Prize is only awarded for originality and exceptional talent. In Fosse’s case, it is completely justified. There are still, however, attempts to label him as a minimalist or a mystical realist.’

The creative works of Fosse, written in Nynorsk, encompass a variety of genres and include a large number of plays, novels, poetry books, essays, children’s books, and translations. The author is more well-known as a playwright in Lithuania and the world, yet his prose has been increasingly gaining more attention.

Works translated by VU alumni and directed by Oskaras Koršunovas

His creative works have also been translated into Lithuanian, some – by VU alumni: ‘Jon Fosse’s book „Vaizdai iš vaikystės“ (“Prosa frå ein oppvekst”) (2021), a compilation of several short prose texts, was translated by Justė Nepaitė, a former student of the Centre for Scandinavian Studies who is now an experienced Norwegian-Lithuanian translator. Another former student of ours – Titas Satkūnas – translated the short story “O tada lai ateina šuo” (“Og så kan hunden komme”), published in “Metai” in 2014. VU alumnus Alma Ločerytė-Dale, one of the first Lithuanian translators from Norwegian, translated the novel “Alesė” (“Det er Ales”). It was also published in the journal “Metai” in 2013. The theatre director Oskaras Koršunovas directed several plays written by Fosse, but these translations have probably never been published,’ explains the Associate Professor at VU.

She hopes that the awarded Nobel Prize will boost new publications of this versatile, interesting, and productive author in Lithuanian, as well as encourage people to seek the already existing yet scattered Lithuanian translations.