Journey into the fragmented mind of Lars Hertervig, the enigmatic nineteenth-century Norwegian artist renowned for his luminous landscapes. In Jon Fosse's masterwork, Melancholy I-II, we witness the harrowing descent into mental breakdown that marked Hertervig's life, culminating in his impoverished death in 1902.
This wild, feverish narrative plunges deep into the events of a single day that precipitate Hertervig's collapse. A student of Hans Gude at the prestigious Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, Hertervig is tormented by anxieties surrounding his immense talent and consumed by an overwhelming, obsessive love for Helene Winckelmann, his landlady's daughter.
Marked by breathtaking lyrical flights of passion and enraged sexual delusions, Hertervig's fixation on Helene ultimately leads her family to insist on his departure. Oppressed by vivid hallucinations and with nowhere to go, he drifts in a haunting limbo: between a bustling café where he endures the mockery of his sophisticated classmates, and the Winckelmann's apartment, which he desperately tries to re-enter. This profound state of dislodgement leads him inexorably into a full-blown state of madness.
Published here for the first time in a single English volume, Melancholy I-II is a major novel by Jon Fosse, hailed by Le Monde as 'the Beckett of the twenty-first century'. This powerful work offers an unforgettable and profound exploration of art, mental illness, obsession, and the fragile boundaries of reality.
‘[R]eading Fosse … what threatens to be heavy proves lightsome. You put on your boots to wade through the mud and find yourself floating along…. Searls is to Fosse what Anthea Bell is to W. G. Sebald, the best possible intermediary.’ Blake Morrison, London Review of Books
‘Fosse … has been compared to Ibsen and to Beckett, and it is easy to see his work as Ibsen stripped down to its emotional essentials. But it is much more. For one thing, it has a fierce poetic simplicity.’ Anita Gates, New York Times
‘He touches you so deeply when you read him, and when you have read one work you have to continue…. What is special with him is the closeness in his writing. It touches on the deepest feelings that you have – anxieties, insecurities, questions of life and death – such things that every human being actually confronts from the very beginning. In that sense I think he reaches very far and there is a sort of a universal impact of everything that he writes. And it doesn’t matter if it is drama, poetry or prose – it has the same kind of appeal to this basic humanness.’ Anders Olsson, Nobel committee
Physical info: 4.49 x 0.85 x 7.76 inches | 360 Pages | Paperback