To Örebro University

In the 1920s Tage Aurell travelled widely in several European countries, and he lived and studied in Paris during this era of high modernism. At the end of the decade he decided to go back to Sweden, where he and his wife settled in the village of Mangskog. From this rural perspective he began to write his taciturn stories, often emanating from memories or relating to incidents he heard in the neighbourhood.

   Aurell is a prose writer with a very special idiom. In short fiction and novellas he gives vivid pictures of ordinary people in the provinces, living their lives mostly in dull circumstances – longing, loving, suffering. In this study I will describe, through detailed textual analyses, how he writes; my aim is to give an account of his narrative techniques and his personal style.

   In the first three chapters I give a short overview of important influences such as dramatic or lyrical techniques, ordinary oral language and impressionistic prose of Jonas Lie and Herman Bang. I argue that Aurell’s prose is not just a representation of reality, but an aesthetic construct including a great variety of fragments or building-blocks. It is a kind of laconic, stylized prose by an author who rejects detailed commentary or analyses. He is not a story-teller in the usual sense of the word, but rather a constructor organizing his material.

   The following chapters are devoted to analyses of particular works. Aurell’s first novella, Tybergs Tenement (Tybergs gård, 1932), has no plot on the macro level, but consists of several ”small stories” with an episodic structure of a kind. I examine the ways in which he creates pictures of individuals and collectives in the tenement, and compare this art with well-known Nordic novels about collective entities with common goals.

   Martina is a very laconic story about a vicar who has fallen in love with one of his confirmation candidates. It is a tragic story about loneliness, tough love and people’s expectations. This specific ”narration of silence” is analysed in detail, and so is the use of many minor characters who reflect the grace and difficulties of love. Intertextual relations and humorous or ironic passages are considered important contributions to the narration.

   The short story ”The Assistant Pastor” (“Vice pastor”) is an I-narration. In this chapter I analyse Aurell’s frequent use of irony in the story. Although not presented as an evil character, the first person narrator does not act in accordance with the text’s norms, so he must be regarded as an unreliable narrator. The reader can perhaps recognize the character’s lack of courage and his unability to choose, but dissociates himself from his opinions.

   ”Whitsunbride” (”Pingstbrud”) is perhaps the most well-known of Aurell’s short stories. In this chapter I describe his narrative technique, especially how he gives an illusion of wholeness through fragmentary parts of scenes and stylized descriptions. I also pay attention to rhytmic and acoustic effects in the text.

  In a chapter about the two experimental short stories ”Gatepost” (”Grindstolpe”) and ”The Old Highway” (”Gamla landsvägen”) my aim is to show how the fragmentation of a narrative text implies the creation of new forms. ”The Old Highway” is a piece comparable with modernist poetry. I show the resemblance with Guillaume Apollinaire’s poem ”Lundi Rue Christine”, and propose that Aurell looks at his rural village through the lens of modernism.

  In the last part of the study I shortly address questions about fact and fiction in literature. The aim is to show how Aurell’s laconic style can be used even in other kinds of texts than narrative fiction. Four texts are analysed, two factual and two fictional, and I show how the author makes use of narrative forms, mostly used in fiction, even in his factual texts. This can be done without transforming them into fiction. Artfulness in texts is not the same as fictionality.