A very sad and painful piece of work, a heart-rending invocation of the nineteenth-century Norwegian artist and landscape painter Lars Hertervig, named 'Melancholia' (in Norwegian) after the nineteenth-century medical term for the particular form of mental illness that he was inflicted with.
Melancholy I starts with its setting in the afternoon hours in late autumn in DÜSSELDORF, 1853. The major action takes place here, when through the course of a single day the artist descends into madness and total mental breakdown. During the few hours in the afternoon of a late autumn day, overcome by anxieties and self-doubt, and his love for his landlady's daughter, Lars shuttles between a cafe and his landlady's apartment. The instances of Hertervig in the cafe where he has to endure utter mockery and mortification at the hands of his more sophisticated but less talented classmates are some of the most painful and hallucinatory passages of literature I have ever read. It makes for a disturbing and excruciating read for most parts of it, where human nature is probably revealed in its most vile aspects, and certain aspects of human nature which one will wonder at the extent of wickedness and dastardliness that it can contain as to take pleasure in the misery and humiliation of a fellow human being.
"I look at Alfred. And now I really have to go, because Alfred said you are sitting and waiting for me and so I have to come to you, because you can’t just sit and wait for me. Now I really have to go to you.
Have to go to her now, Alfred says.
And I do have to go to you, because now you’re waiting for me. And now I’ve walked in between the rows of painters who can’t paint and now I’m standing in the middle of a tight circle of painters who can’t paint, between my two suitcases, I’m standing, and now I’ll really go to you. Now I’ll come to you. I kept walking further into Malkasten, between rows of painters who can’t paint. Because way in the back of the bar you are waiting for me. I’m going to my girlfriend. And I stand in the circle of painters who can’t paint, and all the glazed red eyes look at me and I look at the one standing next to Alfred. And I see Tidemann’s face. It’s Tidemann standing there next to Alfred! I see Tidemann’s face. And I look down. Because his whole face is grinning. It’s Tidemann standing next to Alfred and his whole face is grinning. Tidemann, I saw Tidemann! there, next to Alfred, in the circle of glazed red eyes, I saw Tidemann. And Tidemann, he can paint. And me, I am standing in the middle of the circle of painters, and new painters keep coming, outside the first circle another circle forms of Swedish painters, Danish, Danish, German painters, another circle is forming outside the first circle. And painters who can paint are standing in the circle around me too, because Tidemann is there, and Gude is there. And the outer circle gets bigger and bigger. I am standing inside two circles of painters, painters from all over the world, and the circles are tight, the painters are standing close together, shoulder to shoulder, in a circle, in the inner circle are the Norwegian painters who were sitting at the round table, but Gude is there too, and Tidemann, and they all look at me, with glazed red eyes, and then, outside the innermost circle, another circle has started to form, where Norwegian, Danish, and German painters are standing. I am in the middle of the circles. And where did all these painters come from? All the painters are standing in circles around me and they don’t say a word, they just stand there, they look at me. And the painters are all alike, with glazed red eyes, with glasses and cigarettes in their hands. And all the painters they look at me. I am in the middle of circles of painters from Norway and all over the world. And I look at Alfred, and Alfred looks at me, from where he is standing next to Tidemann, in a tight circle of painters where Gude is standing too. I look at Alfred. And now it’s quiet. When I arrived there was loud laughter. But now it’s quiet in Malkasten. And why is it so quiet? Is it because I’m going to see Helene again? Is that why, because I’m going to see Helene, is that why it’s so quiet now? And is it because I’m going to see Helene now that all the painters who can’t paint, and also the ones who can paint, are standing in circles around me and looking at me, quietly, with glazed red eyes? And why isn’t anyone laughing? Why isn’t anyone talking? When I stood outside the door there was loud laughter inside Malkasten. Why is it so quiet now? And why do I have to stand here, between my two suitcases, inside these circles of painters? I look at Alfred. And what does Alfred want with me?"
The second part of <i>Melancholy I</i> shifts the scene to three years later in Gaustad Asylum on a Christmas Eve morning of 1856. Here we get to see the artist at the height of his madness. The insanity of his enraged sexual delusions following his descent into madness would be hard going for most readers, and probably accounts for some of the more disturbing and shocking passages in the book.
"…..I lie in the thick darkness of the ward and I look at the seagulls and I can’t think about Helene, or about Gina, or about Anna, or about any woman, I can’t think about them because they’re all whores and I can’t think about them, I can’t think about any of them, I can’t even think about you again my darling Helene, but I will come back to you, to you my darling darling Helene, someday, I know it, Helene, I will come back to you, believe me, I’ll come, if only you wait for me, my darling Helene, then I will come back to you and I can’t think about you, not even about you my darling Helene, I can’t, I can’t think such thoughts no matter what and if I am not going to think I’ll just look at and listen to the seagulls. Now I can’t see the seagulls any more and I have to see the seagulls. Now the seagulls are gone. Now the seagulls need to come back. If the seagulls don’t come back I’ll have to put my hand down between my legs, touch it down between my legs, as Doctor Sandberg puts it, if I don’t see the seagulls soon I’ll have to touch myself a little down between my legs and I can’t put my hand down between my legs, touch it down between my legs, as Doctor Sandberg puts it, and I have to touch myself just a little down between my legs, just feel around a little, because no one will notice, not Doctor Sandberg, the one who told me when I came here that I can’t touch myself down there between my legs, if I knew what he meant, he said, and I said that I didn’t know what he meant and then Doctor Sandberg laughed good and long and he said that’s good, that’s how everyone should be, that would be best. Doctor Sandberg said, good, good, Doctor Sandberg said, that’s fine not to know what he meant, that’s good. But I have to touch myself a little down between my legs…."
The third, and final half of <i>Melancholy I</i> is in retrospect, almost a century and a half later, and from the point of view of a veteran but unsuccessful writer in his mid-thirties. The setting is ÅSANE, evening, late autumn, in 1991 and the writer's name is Vidme, and we get to see him walk through the pouring rain to keep an appointment with a pastor of a Norwegian church. As the part unfolds we get to know that this writer Vidme has a sudden epiphany on witnessing one of the works of the late painter Hertervig, and it was an experience that compelled him to start a new novel-an act that somehow reveals to him a sort of 'glimmer of the divine'. So before he writes out a single word of the newly contemplated novel he rushes ahead for an appointment with a pastor, only to find that things did not turn out as he had expected them to.
"Vidme walks through the rain. Today he thought he could start writing a new novel, but it didn’t get off the ground. Today Vidme was supposed to start a new novel which was supposed to have something to do with the painter Lars Hertervig’s pictures, and he had come to that decision, namely that this novel should have something to do with the painter Lars Hertervig’s pictures, back when he ducked in, quite by chance, because of a heavy rainstorm, from the streets of Oslo into the National Gallery, it was a rainy morning in Oslo and Vidme walked through the halls of the National Gallery and then he caught sight of a picture that drew him in and then Vidme stood there and looked at a picture by the painter Lars Hertervig, a picture called From Borgøya, and Vidme the writer stayed standing in front of this picture, sometime in the late 1980s, Vidme the writer stood in front of a picture by Lars Hertervig the painter, and then and there on a rainy morning in Oslo Vidme the writer had the greatest experience of his life. Yes, that’s what he thought. The greatest experience of his life. And if he were to describe it he could only say that he got goose bumps and got teary-eyed and then he heard footsteps, heard people coming, maybe people who wanted to look at this picture too, in front of which Vidme the writer was standing with tears in his eyes, and then he could no longer stand there with tears in his eyes and look at the blue sky that Lars Hertervig had painted and that now hung in the National Gallery in Oslo. He had to wipe his eyes and pull himself together. That morning, when Vidme came in from the street, left his bag in the cloakroom, and went inside, that morning something happened to Vidme. He doesn’t fully understand what happened, but Vidme thinks it’s probably because he is related to the painter Lars Hertervig, and that’s why he stood there in front of a picture that Hertervig had painted and he had what he calls the greatest experience of his life."
Fosse had originally published the first three parts or chapters of this book as Melancholy (in Norwegian: Melancholia) in 1995; he later felt, in his words, that he needed to add an outside perspective on Lars Hertervig, though not one as distant as Vidme’s, to finish telling Hertervig’s story. He published Melancholia II in 1996, and since 1997 the books have been published in Norwegian in one volume, as Melancholia I–II. Taken in its entirety <i>Melancholy II</i> is a moving and sad depiction of the infirmities of old age from the point of view of Oline, who is here the fictional sister of Hertervig. The setting is STAVANGER, early autumn in 1902, shortly after Hertervig's death. The whole narrative of this last part takes place over the course of a single day of fishing and one where she witnesses the death of her younger brother who lives separately from her. It also marks the first time Fosse uses his mature technique of having a character’s (here Oline's) thoughts slip into and out of different time frames
"Oline thinks and she lifts the door hook off of its catch and Oline pushes the door open and she goes into the outhouse and she sits down up on the edge of the seat, and then she sits there, on the edge of the seat, then Oline sits there on the edge of the seat and she pushes the door shut and she latches it with the hook and there, next to the hook, hangs the picture Lars made, a horse, not painted any better than she could have painted it herself, she thinks, and then those brown hills, those too she could have probably painted herself, if she’d tried, but still there’s something about that picture, because Lars painted it, that’s why there’s something special about it, but there’s sort of something even more, Oline thinks, no doubt about it, there’s something in that picture, and she has to go again, has to sit here and wait, then she has to go down to the sea again to get fish, because she needs to eat after all, Oline thinks and she pulls up her skirts, she half stands up and she pulls down her underpants and then Oline sits over the hole and she looks at the horse Lars painted and the horse is really Lars himself, she thinks, but the horse is her too, it clearly is, Oline thinks, because they’re both like horses really, Oline thinks, and Lars, he was a really skittish horse, Lars who ran and hid whenever people came and knocked on Father’s door and I knocked and Father opened the door and I walk into the hallway and then I see Lars come out of the living room and he doesn’t look at me, he just runs past me, runs right by me with his face turned away and he runs up the stairs and Father looks at me and he shakes his head."
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