Victoria - Knut Hamsun

 VICTORIA - KNUT HAMSUN

Who makes the Nazis? What turns a man to Fascist? No-one is born that way because Fascism is not a natural human condition so what's the trigger - the spark - that leads to the burning down of one's own house and everything and everyone in it? Fascism as an ideology can unquestionably be described as evil because what Fascism leads to is certainly evil, as history has shown. There's no debate to be had. Evil begets evil - it's as simple as that.

During the Nuremberg trials, a US Army psychologist by the the name of G M Gilbert was assigned to watch the defendants and during the course of his work it became clear to him that the one characteristic that connected them all was the incapacity to feel anything toward their fellow men. Gilbert came to define the nature of evil as 'a lack of empathy' or in his exact words 'Evil is the absence of empathy'.

It's a point of view I agree with and as a guideline it's a useful tool to assess the state of play when it comes to individuals within your own personal life as well as institutions of power.

What then explains Knut Hamsun, the man who Charles Bukowski once described as being one of the greatest writers ever? What explains his collaborating with the Nazis during World War Two, becoming so close to them that he was even able to engender a meeting with Hitler himself? How can a man who is able to write what Arthur Koestler described as being one of the greatest love stories of world literature end up as a supporter and enabler of Fascism?

The book to which Koestler was referring to is Victoria, written by Knut Hamsun in 1898. Whether or not it is as Koestler proclaimed is for the individual reader to decide but it is absolutely a love story of great intensity, employing methods of post-modernism long before the term had even been invented. A story of unrequited love, thwarted not only by class and social mores but by life itself.  

To be able to write such a story the writer would need to know something of love and compassion, and even to have experienced both. To be able to write in such a way that Victoria is written, utilising streams of consciousness and deep insights into the thoughts and emotions of the characters, the writer would need to be able to empathise. 

It's very clear from reading Victoria that Knut Hamsun possessed these qualities at the time of writing it, so what happened to him? How did he end up as an ardent supporter of Hitler? How did he end up on the side of evil?

Does empathy wane over time? Can empathy be eclipsed by political naivety, denial, propaganda, stupidity and national pride? It would seem so. Which means that while Victoria is a lesson in love, the story behind it regarding its author is a lesson from history needing to be learned.

John Serpico

Astragal - Albertine Sarrazin

 ASTRAGAL - ALBERTINE SARRAZIN

Like a lot of other people, I first came upon Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin through Patti Smith's endorsement of it. Patti had written an essay about the book and it was a glowing one, singling it out from all the many other books she was fond of. Like David Bowie was, Patti Smith is a big reader and the list she composed some years ago of her favourite books is an exemplary one. So, for her to heap praise upon one book in particular was something to be noted.

Astragal is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Sarrazin whilst she was in prison. It starts with her escaping from a prison by jumping from a 30-feet high wall and ends with her arrest, presumably to be returned to the same prison? In jumping from the wall, however, she breaks a bone in her ankle and is rendered immobile, leaving her able only to drag herself to the nearby road where she is picked up by a passing traveller by the name of Julien. Sarrazin's flight for freedom lasts all of the few seconds from her jumping and her landing on the ground below. Unable to move, stuck out in the cold and the wet, she has simply exchanged one form of incapacitation for another. Hope, however, arrives in the form of Julien, an ex-con himself who rescues Sarrazin and deposits her in a series of safe-houses whilst her ankle heals and she's able to walk again.

The premise of Astragal is a promising one, with suggested shades of Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless', Jean Genet's 'The Thief's Journal', and even Bonnie And Clyde, the film version starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. What we get, unfortunately, is something completely different with two thirds of the book comprised of Sarrazin laid-up in bed ruminating over her broken bone.

It's all very well written but the actual subject matter and the non-stop internalising doesn't really make for an exhilarating read. Once her ankle is healed and she's able to walk again we're into the last third of the book and it's here that things start to liven up a bit.

Sarrazin is in Paris but still an absconder and there's no way to gain lawful employment so she turns to prostitution. She's very much in love with Julien - her guardian angel - but he's not exactly ideal boyfriend material due to him vanishing for weeks on end pursuing his own criminal career involving it seems a lot of petty burglary.

Finally, Julien is away for a lot longer than usual and in a bid to track him down Sarrazin discovers he's been arrested. On his release they meet each other and decide to spend the rest of their lives together in fugitive bliss but then Sarrazin herself is re-arrested and their dream thwarted.

Astragal obviously spoke to Patti Smith and touched her in a way some books are able to but very few do. Something about Astragal chimed with Patti but clearly on a very personal level. Was it something to do with chasing a fugitive vision of freedom? Chasing a fugitive vision of fugitive love?

The circumstances of Patti discovering Astragal are very similar to her first discovering of Seasons In Hell by Arthur Rimbaud. Desperately poor whilst living in New York, she found both books on two different occasions at a second-hand bookshop in the East Village. On both occasions she was attracted initially by the pictures of the authors on the covers; Rimbaud and that classic portrait of him as a boy, Sarrazin and her 'striking, remote face - rendered violet on black - on a dust jacket proclaiming its author a 'female Genet''.

Apart from both being of French origin, the two books couldn't, however, be more different. Whilst Rimbaud is poetry of a boy-genius able to tear away the veil and blow holes in the fabric of imagination, Sarrazin is feistiness disabled and reduced to helpless navel-gazing. Sarrazin is teenage rebellion curtailed and reduced to being a package moved from one 'safe-house' to another. Julien - her rescuer - her seducer, her co-dependent in captivity.

Astragal is ultimately an empty promise. A book and a story to inspire but paradoxically only through its failure to inspire. Its strength but also its weakness is in its lack of sensationalism though in this it's arguably very true to life. There's no-one wielding guns here, for example. What we have instead is a wrought, somewhat complicated affair. Astragal is a lesson in potential unfulfilled, both as a book and as the story of Albertine Sarrazin's  life.

John Serpico