1. Bjørneboe's second, after Jonas in 1955. Back
2. Steiner had been the head of the German Theosophical Society from 1902 until 1912, when his more Christian leanings impelled him to form his own Anthroposophical Society. He lectured frequently in Norway, especially in the 1910s. Back
3. Inge S. Kristiansen contends that Bjerke's book on Goethe's color theory and his continuing interest in the occult indicate that he, like Bjørneboe, was never able completely to split from the astral plane of Steiner's thoughts (14). Back
4. As Fredrik Wandrup points out, Bjørneboe's early inspirations included some of painting's great colorists: van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne. Bjørneboe mentions the influence of Cézanne as late as Kruttårnet (Powderhouse, 1969), the second part of the Moment of Freedom trilogy: "Our whole world looked different after Paul Cézanne had painted it." (185, E172) . Back
5. Bjørneboe taught for 6 years, from 1951 to 1957, at the Ny skole, a Steiner-inspired school in Oslo (during this time he composed a number of important essays, many of them pedagogical in nature). Back
6. "Jens Bjørneboe om mangt og meget" (Aftenposten 28 November 1959). Back
7. The novel's closing sentence is Elice's comment: "You realize, Sem . . . that you are the first red-headed Tangstad who has had a son!" (183). Back
8. Note that in Moment of Freedom the light of the sun is described as containing all colors within it: "flaming sunlight filled with all colors" (184, E176). Back
9. Grünewald's painting also influenced a number of German Expressionists, among them Oskar Kokoschka and Max Beckmann. Back
10. In Kvinnesyn og mannsrole i fire romaner av Jens Bjørneboe, Ottil Tharaldsen argues that Bjørneboe's view of the artist is weighted toward the male: only male members of the Tangstad family have red hair, Elice is described as a weak painter ("a typical girl's drawing"), and even the painter Åsta Evjeland lives in the shadow of her dead lover, "the mad, the furious Vågum." Back
11. The fairy-tale element of this set-up, along with Sem's absent parents (one dead, one caught in the grip of the aunts' sickly spell) is undeniable. When Sem finally abandons his stifling environment for art school in Oslo, Bjørneboe writes: "His humiliating time at school and at home with the women was a time of imprisonment and exile, such as princes must often endure and suffer. And when the head was cut off the ass, he did not die; it was only the spell falling from a bewitched prince." (79). Back
12. Note that after Sem, as an adult, awakens from a drunken binge, "he had almost no memory of the previous days; only one thing or another surfaced again as pictures within him, certain decisive moments that had become fixed in his subconscious" (156). In Moment of Freedom consciousness is described as "a continuous web of pictures" (108, E105). Back
13. Cf. Strindberg's distant white boats and Italian villas in scene 8 of Ett drömspel. Back
14. These images of dark red cities play a prominent role in the Praiano chapters of Moment of Freedom where they are associated with childhood. Back
15. Bjørneboe also shares with Blixen the connection between longing and destiny. In Bjørneboe, Yngvild Risdal Otnes observes that Sem's "svart sorg" reflects "the strong faith in destiny expressed in the book. Large sections of it are dominated by a belief in a definite, unshakable pattern of life, a destiny that cannot be altered." (32). Back
16. Like Kandinsky, Itten's interest in the inherent musicality of color was a lifelong project. Note, too, Matisse's comment in "Notes of a Painter": "From the relationships I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition" (40). Back
17. The scene leads to one of Bjørneboe's main contentions throughout his writing. When Grünewald notices that the narrator has an unfinished painting among his work, he chides him to finish it. The narrator says he had planned to finish it tomorrow. "He stood still for a moment and then said, 'But what if you died tonight! What would people think of you?'" (186, E178). The narrator "felt angst,"not because of Grünewald's admonishment, but because the painter thrusts a palette knife (for applying color) into his hand and tells him: "Do it now! . . . You hold freedom in your hand, but you are afraid to seize it" (186, E178). Back
18. In an article in Dagbladet (25 October 1955) in which he discusses Goethe's views on reincarnation, Bjørneboe states that "Goethe's commitment to reincarnation builds on his perception that everything in nature was ordered and meaningful, that development was a natural result, and that the eternal human- individual, "entelechie", as he calls it, was a necessary part of the spiritual evolution that must answer to the physical." (Kristiansen 196). Back
19. In Moment of Freedom the narrator describes drawing "croquis" upon his arrival in Sweden (79, E79). Sigrid Hjérten (Grünewald's wife) relates that in her first meeting with Matisse he told her: "The important thing is to draw, draw croquis, croquis and more croquis" (Goldman 48). Back
20. Cf. H. C. Branner's "Om lidt er vi borte" (1939), when the young man returns home to his wife and gazes into her eyes: "Her eyes were quite close to his, but he did not recognize them again, and it was no use for him to try to see what color and expression they had, because they changed color and expression while he looked into them." (141). Back
WORKS CITED
Bjørneboe, Jens. Blåmann. Oslo: Pax, 1974.
——. Frihetens øyeblikk: Heiligenberg- manuskriptet. Oslo: Gyldendal, 1993. (Moment of Freedom. Trans. Esther Greenleaf Mürer. Chester Springs, PA: Dufour, 1999.)
——. "I skyggen af Firenze." Samlede essays: Epistler. Oslo: Gyldendal, 1996. 47-53.
——. Jonas. Oslo: Den norske Bokklubben, 1972.
——. Kruttårnet. Oslo: Gyldendal, 1986. (Powderhouse. Trans. Esther Greenleaf Mürer. Chester Springs, PA: Dufour, 2000.)
——. "Litteratur og virkelighet." (Literature and reality) Utvalgte essays. Oslo: Pax, 1989.
——. "Myten og fuglen." Samlede essays: Pedagogikk. Oslo: Gyldendal, 1996. 98-104.
——. "Jens Bjørneboe om magt og meget." Aftenposten. 28 November 1959.
Blixen, Karen. Vinter-Eventyr. Copenhagen, Gyldendal, 1942.
Branner, H. C. "Om lidt er vi borte." Om lidt er vi borte & To minutters stilhed. Copenhagen: Gyldendals Bogklub, 1969. 129-41.
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Flam, Jack, ed. Matisse on Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Gage, John. Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.
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Itten, Johannes. The Art of Color. Trans. Ernst van Haagen. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1973.
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——. Metafysikk eller selvmord. Otta: J. W. Capellens Forlag, 1996.
Steiner, Rudolf. Åndserkjennelse og kulturfornyelse: Foredrag i Norge 1921. Oslo: Antropos Forlag, 1994.
——. Color. Blauvelt, New York: Garber Communications, 1992.
Straume, Eilif. "Jens Bjørneboe — kjetter 1970 Mellomgenerasjonen i norsk litteratur." Aftenposten. 13 May 1970.
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Wandrup, Fredrik. Jens Bjørneboe: Mannen, myten og kunsten. Oslo: Gyldendal, 1986.