A DOUBLE PORTRAIT

Author: Agneta Pleijel
Year: 2020
Publisher: Norstedts
Language: Swedish 

My first brush with Agneta Pleijel’s writing occurred in the early noughties through her work “Lord Nevermore”. This is a tale spun around two Polish souls of vastly different temperaments yet bound by the exquisite absurdity of friendship, and parted, as fate would have it, by the ruthless savagery of inane politics, in this case the first world war. What struck me the most was the ease and elegance with which she recreates the private chambers of her characters’ minds, not so much depicting the young men but rather listening in to a conversation between them. To read her was like attending a séance where the dead remained unaware of the living and conversed uninhibitedly with one another in our presence. In later years, she turned her art inward and produced that singular re-invention of the autobiography that I was moved to christen synaisthimatography; the cartography of the emotional landscape itself. By this work alone, she surely established herself as a towering giant of modern belletristic writing.

In “Dubbelporträtt” (not available in English but a rough translation could be “A Double Portrait”), Pleijel returns to the semi-biographical but deeply personal storytelling. The tale is based on the true story of Agatha Christie, the undisputed queen of mystery, sitting for Oskar Kokoschka, the world-renowned Viennese painter from whom Christie’s grandson Matthew commissioned a portrait of his grandmother for her 80^th birthday. Both Christie and Kokoschka reluctantly accept the initiative.

In her subtle orchestration of this encounter, Pleijel permits Kokoschka to try to engage in meaningful and intimate conversation with his highly reserved subject, in an attempt to capture her personality for the portrait. The elderly lady, ever on guard and unwilling to let anybody in, especially not a foreign painter, no matter how prominent her grandson assures her that he may be, proves delightfully impervious to analysis. While the painter imagines himself dissecting her soul, it is she who conducts the true inquisition, listening serenely as he reveals far more of himself than she ever intended to yield.

And so the drama unfolds across six sittings, each one a duel disguised as civility, while the portrait slowly but surely takes form. Not until the very end, Christie finally opens up and grants Kokoschka the keys to her inner self allowing for the portrait to become the masterpiece that is still in Matthew’s possession to this day. A memento of an English heart momentarily unveiled.  

“Dubbelpoträtt” may lack the sweeping grandeur of “Lord Nevermore” but the inimitable Pleijelan blend of whit, warmth, and curiosity all abound. Beneath its modest frame, dwells an investigation of more profound dimensions than first meets the eye. For what, in truth, is a portrait? Is it the likeness of the subject, or the confession of the artist? Is the final painting really a portrait of Agatha Christie? Or is it a portrait of Oskar Kokoschka painting Agatha Christie?

And here Pleijel strikes her most modern note. In an age intoxicated with machines that imitate human thought and creativity, she reminds us that art has never been about replication, but revelation. A machine may produce an image; only a human can err beautifully enough to make it art.

Art in all forms can be said to be a reflection of the artist. This includes the art of writing. In an interview from 2020, Pleijel confessed that her choice of exploring this legendary encounter was born from love for their arts. No one was present in the room when Christie sat for Kokoschka. No one knows what words were uttered. So Agneta Pleijel does what historians cannot. She invents. The novel is a re-imagination of the event. The conversation is what Pleijel imagines could have taken place. Or maybe even what she hopes actually transpired.

Thus, as the portrait was more about its creator than its subject, “Dubbelporträtt” becomes a story less about Agatha Christie or Oskar Kokoschka and more about Agneta Pleijel. Perhaps, she does not step into the minds of her characters. Rather, she invites them to dwell within hers. As did Kokoschka. The outcome is that most exquisite of human inventions; the fusion of creator and creation, where truth and illusion clasp hands and become what we call art.