Vintermann - Harald Korneliussen's weblog

But do not call him Kados! Call him the Beast of East Farimagsgade!

I have recently read "Idealister" by the danish author Hans Scherfig, at my wife's suggestion.

It's set in Denmark in the years before the second world war, and it's a brilliant satire on the politics, religions and ideologies of the time. The story centers around the owner of a printing press, Damaskus, who prints tracts, pamphlets and programs for a diverse crowd of more or less insane idealists. He rarely gets any pay, because he's very much an idealist himself (vegan, and believer in the health benefits of walking barefoot), and isn't very attentive to money. He and his surroundings are loosely linked to events in Scherfig's favourite little town, Frydenholm. There the old communist Rasmus has become a house owner and careful union leader, the new pastor starts up a youth group with clear parallels to hitlerjugend.

All groups, political, religious and generally idealistical, are portrayed sceptically. The communists betray their ideals, the conservatives become authoritarians, the church becomes national (for that reason alone every Dane should reread this book!) - but most of all, the pseudoscientists are criticized. There are two "wizards", the occultist Kados, who is an old fashioned gnostic, and Dr. Robert Riege, the sexual cosmologist. Riege has applied the dogmas of psychoanalysis to everything, concluding that "everything is suffused with sexuality, which one can also call energy or electricity or primal force". Their respective meetings with established science are hilarious. "Are we really in 1939?" asks one scientist after Kados has explained his Paracelsus-inspired attempts to create a salamander.

And that's what I ask myself too, but from a different angle: was it really that bad already then? Of course, they are caricatures, but the fact that Scherfig can portray them so pointedly shows that there has been something to take from. And how little the essence has changed from sexual-cosmologists to scientologists is interesting.

Scherfig links the diverse ideologies to nazism, which is constantly buzzing in the radios of the novel. The pseudoscientist supply grandiose anti-intellectualism, the consevatives and priests supply authoritarianism and discipline. What do the vegans and esperantists supply to the mixture? I don't know. Perhaps a cheerful resolve to ignore the realities of the world? Damaskus, who must be considered a representative of these innocent ideologies, has employed an ex-inmate called Jensen in his business. Although Jensen steals, Damaskus cannot mention the shrinking supply of lead types without hearing a long and pained speech from Jensen about the paranoid distrust and hostility a man recieves, even though he has paid his debt to society. Perhaps Scherfig believes naïveté is also a vital ingredient to totalitarianism, but I can't really see what's so bad about vegetarianism or esperanto.

Also, the communists are let off the hook to lightly. Perhaps not surprising, since Scherfig was a life-long member of the danish communist party, but disappointing none the less. Some of the excesses of Dr.Riege and his sexual-cosmologists could equally well be attributed to the communist variety of feminism, but that doesn't happen, of course, and there's no indication of crossover between crazy freudians and communists - on the contrary, it is the wife of the wealthy landowner Skjern-Svendsen who gets involved. Scherfig apparently believes this to be a bourgeouis phenomenon. He links anti-intellectualism to nazism, fair enough, but what about communism and pseudo-intellectualism?

I recommend the book, though. But it reminded me of Jens Bjørneboes "Under en hårdere himmel", which perhaps is a better book in many ways. Unfortunately, it seems that one is not translated. I found a presentation of it on Esther Murer's Bjørneboe site, but I can't say I agree with the conclusions (I think those two early books were his best. I suppose form matters less to me than to the reviewer)

Posted by vintermann at March 16, 2005 09:59 AM