PURGATORIO

Author: Dante Alighieri
Year: 1966 (1321)
Publisher: Rabén & Sjögren
Language: Swedish (Translator Aline Pipping)

In the opening of the second part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, “Skärselden” (“Purgatorio”), we find the narrator ejected from the lowest circles of Inferno onto the foothills of the mountain that is Purgatory. In Dante’s cosmology, the mountain of Purgatory rises as a counterpoint to Lucifer’s plunge into earth’s core, thus thrusting matter in front of him forward to create a mountain, roughly as tall as earth’s radius in the opposing end. Dante’s steadfast companion, Virgil, is still by his side. Unlike Inferno, the old man as a heathen and without hope of salvation has no prior knowledge of Purgatory but his wisdom will remain a beacon of advice and comfort to Dante during his continued exploration of the afterlife.  

Emerging from their long stay in the darkness of Hell, both men are blinded by the radiant sun. Although sounds of weeping and sorrow are heard around them here, too, the anguish is of a different kind. No longer the piercing screams of agony nor desperate cries of despair. The tears flowing in Purgatory are tears of insight and remorse. Contrary to the eternal damnation of Inferno, Purgatory offers the promise of redemption. Each soul, in its own time, will be admitted through the gates of Paradise. The role of the crucibles of Purgatory is to purge the sins from the souls in order to purify them before they enter the eternal joys in God’s presence. Though the sins of the souls saved in Purgatory rival those of the damned in Inferno, these sinners have acknowledged them and chosen the path to salvation by accepting the Lord as their saviour.

This truth is explicitly detailed in Canto 5 where Dante is first introduced to the negligent. Neither rejection nor defiance stain these souls. Rather, in their lifetime they succumbed to the trivial weakness of sloth and the distracting allure of simple pleasures which neutralised their capacity to embrace the highest love. Here, Dante moves on to encounter those who met their end suddenly, unprepared to meet their maker, such as victims of assassination or accidents. Yet, if only in the fleeting instant of their moment of death, the faintest whisper of submission to God’s will touched their hearts, they have been spared. For as Jesus replied to his disciples when they asked who can be saved

With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.*

Only through God, not our own actions, can our souls obtain salvation.

The divine beauty of humility is further elaborated on in Canto 11 picturing the souls steeped in the sin of pride and self-absorption. Those who used to look down upon their peers and cast disdainful gazed from their lofty heights, are here forced to carry the heavy burdens of their transgressions on their backs, making them bend down toward the earth, capable of seeing nothing but their own feet and the ground on which they trample, never to look down on anybody else again. Amidst this powerful reckoning, Dante and Virgil encounter Oderisi di Gubbio, the gifted painter, and Dante overflows with praise for his work. The painter gently dismisses him in a testimony of subdued humility.

“Brother!” said he, “with tints that gayer smile,
Bolognian Franco’s pencil lines the leaves.
His all the honour now; mine borrow’d light.”**

Praising your rivals and rejoicing in the success of others is just one of many kinds of love that God wants us to learn. If we cannot do it in life, we may get a second chance in Purgatory.

Similarly to Inferno, which descends through cycles of escalating sin drawing nearer Satan’s sulphurous lair, so too does the mountain of Purgatory reaching for the skies divided into circles of sinners edging ever closer to the promise of permanent redemption. Contrary to common belief, the gates of St Peter do not provide access to Paradise in Dante’s understanding, but to Purgatory. As God is omnipresent, his being is central to all that exists, including sin. All sin is the result of man’s perverted abuse of love, which is God. All who enter Purgatory are guaranteed salvation, but not without the purifying trials of time. The first circles after entering through the gates, are the circles of sins derived from misguided love. Here we find those who love themselves (superbia), those who love what others possess (invidia), and the ones encumbered by inverted love, i.e. hatred (ira). Beyond lies the domain of sinners who did not love enough; the carefree (acedia), while in the final three circles we find those whose lives were ensnared in excessive love; the greedy (avaritia), the gluttonous (gula), and the lustful (luxuria). Together they correspond to the seven deadly sins.

An intriguing cultural tidbit can be found in Canto 6 where Dante enumerates some dynasties that ruled the major city-states on the Italian peninsula. Among them he mentions the Montecchi, Cappelletti, Monaldi, and Filippeschi. Curiously, the first two were rivalling families in the annals of Verona’s tumultuous past, their story immortalised by a certain English playwright three centuries later.

“Skärselden” is sometimes mentioned as the least interesting part of The Divine Comedy but after reading and contemplating, there is good reason to reevaluate this statement. Far from the bombastic visual effects of the Inferno, the melancholic tone of “Skärselden” carries profound truths about the nature of sin and above all, the geography of redemption. If Inferno and Paradise are destinations, Purgatory is a journey. In the words of the Swedish poet Karin Boye

The day of plenty may not the greatest be,
greater still is the day of thirst, you see.
For sure, a meaning to our journey we can find,
yet the road itself is what is worth the grind.***

 

*  Matthew 19:25 KJV
**“The Vision of Purgatory”, Project Gutenberg 2004 translation: Henry Francis Cary
*** My own translation

PAUPER NOBILITY

Author: Agnes von Krusenstjerna
Year: 2010 (1935)
Publisher: Albert Bonniers förlag
Language: Swedish

In the maze of societal expectations, few endeavours are as effortlessly executed as keeping up appearances when one’s coffers harmonise with one’s station and lifestyle. But what drama looms when the reality of one’s means and the exigencies of one’s ideals diverge?

The hallmark of the old European nobility is that they do not labour for sustenance. Historically, their existence has been one of living off the fertile yields of their land, tended dutifully by others. Any work they deigned to undertake was veiled beneath the guise of service, be it to their community, their sovereign, or the nation at large. They could serve at the royal court, in government, diplomacy, or the military. Although they were often rewarded for this, there mere suggestion that their efforts might be tied to pecuniary rewards was to defile the sanctity of their noble lineage.

 In Europe, a seismic shift began to stir at the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment where noble titles were increasingly bestowed by monarchs upon favoured servants as an honour without an accompanying fiefdom or endowment. Thus, a new subclass of landless nobility was born. The momentum gathered further pace as the tide of revolutions swept across the continent, and even more so by the rapid formation of a capitalist class sprouting from the bourgeoisie during the industrialisation. By the end of the 19^th century a significant number of impoverished aristocrats had emerged; a nobility that had no other asset to their name… than their name. And yet, despite their destitution, they were held to the same standards as their affluent peers in terms of lifestyle and material standards. Noblesse oblige, after all.

In the Swedish language, this class is commonly attributed the sobriquet “Fattigadel” (“Pauper Nobility”) which is also the title of the first book of Agnes von Krusenstjerna’s tetralogy known under the same name. Through the lens of her own upbringing as the daughter of a military nobleman, Krusenstjerna offers an intimate chronicle of societal upheaval and familial strife against the backdrop of a world in flux.

“Fattigadel” opens with a short scene featuring Viveka von Lagercrona as an elderly lady receiving a visitor in what seems to be a sanatorium or hospital. After this scene, Krusenstjerna guides the reader through the life of Viveka as the youngest child of four and the only daughter in a financially distressed noble family around the turn of the century. As her father, who, like the author’s own father, is a military officer, keeps changing commands around Sweden, the family is compelled to follow and young Viveka and her brothers are gradually shaped by their parents' responses to the vicissitudes of their class, and by the judgment of others.

Having read the poignant reports penned by the likes of Vilhelm Moberg and Väinö Linna chronicling the hardships of the landless proletariat of the same epoch, one finds oneself grappling with an intuitive difficulty to immediately sympathise with the upper class Lagercrona children and their seemingly imagined misery. Befitting the commander of the regiment, a stately mansion with servants are provided to Viveka’s father and his family. Here, amidst the plush comforts of their domain, Viveka and her siblings can spend their time frolicking carefree, oblivious of the toil that that besets children of labourers and crofters. Their living conditions could not be any more different. However you look at it, the nobility was struggling to keep up with their class, while the workers were struggling to break free from theirs.

A fleeting moment wherein the lives of the privileged Lagercronas converge with the humble existence of their elderly household servant is when one of Viveka’s brothers finds out that the old woman keeps two canaries in a cage at her home. In a life defined by hard work and poverty, the canaries embody what little happiness the old woman has in life. Lady von Lagercrona, eager to win the affection of her son by presenting him with an exotic Christmas gift, takes little notice of this and demands that the woman sell her the canaries at a ridiculously low price. Unable to refuse the desire of the assertive noblewoman, the woman succumbs, is bereft of her only source of solace and left with a handful of change while the von Lagercronas can add another curiosity to their household for the superficial entertainment of their spoilt son. Krusenstjerna never returns to the fate of the elderly woman after the scene of the transaction. She remains an inconsequential witness to the capricious whims of those enveloped in privilege.

Even so, I am compelled to refrain from downplaying Viveka’s internal strife and her experience of inadequacy. It is well documented that negative stress appears when the gap between the expectations and the individual’s ability to meet with them becomes insurmountable and this is precisely what Viveka and her siblings are faced with. From an early age, they are confronted with the scorn of their more affluent peers and the ceaseless efforts to mask their poverty and want, not to mention handling their hysterical and overbearing mother. Anxiety and depression would be expected effects of such an upbringing. Suffering has not hierarchy and I hesitate to compare woes on an individual level as someone else’s misfortune rarely serves to take the edge off of one’s own.

In these poignant reflections, I find myself incapable of escaping the confrontation with the echoes of my own childhood. Though disparate in nature and historical context, the challenges faced by the von Lagercrona family resonate eerily with my own lived experiences of growing up in an atmosphere lined with the bitterness of bygone family greatness.

Irrespective of its contents, the literary value of “Fattigadel” remains undisputed as the book is objectively very well written. The characters, particularly the children, are meticulously crafted and easily distinguishable, and they behave predicably according to their individual personality. My only hesitation is with regard to the disposition of the novel which begins as a story that develops chapter for chapter in linear progression, only to change characteristics in the last quarter of the book to more resembling a series of independent snapshots or anecdotes from the life of the von Lagercronas, as if representing pages torn from a diary. Maybe the author’s own.  

I have three more parts to read of this series but I have a feeling that I may have reason to return to this issue in more depth further down the road.

UNDER THE NORTH STAR - I

Author: Väinö Linna
Year: 1988 (1959)
Publisher: Wahlström & Widstrand
Language: Swedish (Translator N-B Storbom)

In the quiet moments of reflection, one can still hear the echoes of the struggles of generations of the past reverberating through the annals of time. Theirs was a world cloaked in the shadow of hardship, where each dawn brought forth a new challenge to overcome and each dusk offered but a fleeting respite from the burdens they bore. Through the veil of adversity they found solace in the simplicity of their bonds, forged neither in gold nor in silver, but in shared despair and sacrifice.

No one has described these times better than the Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg (see e.g. my review from October 2022), but there are a few who stand shoulder to shoulder with him. The Russian Maxim Gorky is one. The Finn Väinö Linna is another.

The first book in Väinö Linna's epic trilogy "Under the North Star," is “Högt bland Saarijärvis moar” (published in English under the same title as the whole trilogy*). It unfolds with a poignant scene as the stalwart farmhand Jussi receives permission from the local pastor to reclaim a desolate plot of marshland belonging to the parish and forge a new life upon it. Jussi’s journey is one of unparalleled hardship, matched only by his unyielding resolve as we follow him, his kin, and his community, through the tumultuous years of the beginning of the 20^th century.

I have long advocated the necessity for Swedes to immerse themselves in the rich universe of Finnish 20^th century literature, particularly the proletarian and post-war narratives. Such immersion not only grants us insight into the trials of our predecessors but also contextualises their struggles within the broader spectrum of our shared Nordic heritage. A Swedish reader of "Högt bland Saarijärvis moar" will no doubt recognise the echoes of the bygone plight of the Nordic peasants a century ago and the hard labour, oppressive landowners, disease, and the unrelenting scorn of the privileged elite.

But besides that, there were two dynamics in the reality of a Finnish farmhand, that would seem strange to a Swedish crofter from the same period: the tug-of-war between languages and the resistance against an foreign sovereign. Despite the dominance of Russian overlords, the Finnish upper echelons clung to the Swedish language as a symbol of status and education. In this era of societal upheaval, marking the advances of Socialism, Liberalism, Temperance, and the emancipation of women, the promotion of Finnish language, known as Suometarianism, emerged as a beacon of cultural identity. In Linna’s view, this was an upper-class project as the under-class did not really care if their abusers spoke Swedish, Russian or Finnish with one another.

Linna skilfully portrays this linguistic struggle through the whimsical exchanges of the pastor's la-di-da wife, whose insistence on Finnish discourse incites both hilarity and introspection. Although both she and her husband hail from the urban elite, and consequently speak Swedish better than Finnish, she insists on forcing the monolingually Swedish Baron to speak Finnish whenever conversing with them, and gives her and the pastor’s children classic Finnish names. In Chapter 5, her attempts to whip up indignation among the altogether indifferent labourers against the so-called February Manifest issued by Tsar Nicolai II which would transfer power from the reasonably autonomous Finland to Russia, result in several humorous encounters.

As a writer, Väinö Linna shows true mastery and his love for his homeland and its history shines through every character and every scene.  I furthermore find myself compelled to pay tribute to the translator whose Herculean task of rendering Linna’s carefully crafted working-class Finnish vernacular into Swedish deserves the highest commendation. Linna lets his characters converse in a provincial Finnish which is reproduced in a non-standardised semi-phonetic writing designed to convey the flavour of the language of the uneducated. The translator was himself a Swedish-speaking Finn and must have had to reach deep into the swedophone provinces of Finland and thereafter ruralise the language to obtain the right effect. His laborious efforts ensure that the essence of Finnishness remains intact, bridging cultures and allowing literature to transcend linguistic boundaries.

It is no wonder that “Högt bland Saarijärvis moar” has become a classic in Finnish literature. It is a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who toiled the earth and forged a nation through hardship and sacrifice. Their sweat may have long evaporated and tears dried, yet the echoes of their labour and the resonance of their laughter still reverberate through the majestic pine forests of Finland.

 

*The Finnish original assigns no individual titles to each part of the trilogy which is simply called Here, Under the North Star parts 1, 2, and 3, but the Swedish publisher named each part after the opening words of different famous poems.