Jon Fosse won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature. His acceptance speech, A Silent Language, reflects his fiercely individual voice as a writer. Below are a number of striking direct quotes from Jon Fosse's speech along with my own observations.
“In a way it was as if the fear took my language from me, and that I had to take it back, so to speak. And if I were to do that, it couldn’t be on other people’s terms, but on my own.”
I recall some years back a minister said that it isn't such a bad thing for a young person to pull away from the religion they were exposed to growing up, to go through a period of agnosticism or even atheism, since, if they return to religion, their belief will be their own and not someone else's. I have the sense Jon Fosse went through the same thing with language – after his traumatic boyhood experience of being asked to read aloud in class (he ran out of the classroom, telling the teacher he was sick), when he finally reclaimed language, the words were his words, uniquely his words.
“I started to write my own texts, short poems, short stories....In a way I found a place inside myself that was just mine, and from that place I could write what was just mine.”
The key for Jon Fosse is what is his alone: his specific angle in looking at things, his distinctive way of being in the world, and his particular use of language. This can be a lesson for us all. If we aspire to write, an excellent first step would be to minimize watching television and exposing ourselves to mass culture. If you want to discover what is uniquely yours, you need to escape the constant pressure to think like everyone else.
“One thing is certain, I have never written to express myself, as they say, but rather to get away from myself.”
In light of Jon Fosse saying he found a place inside himself that was just his, what does he mean here by getting away from himself? I strongly suspect Jon Fosse is talking about getting away from his social persona, that is, the man who interacts with others throughout the day. Rather, he's writing from his spiritual depth, in a similar way to the Rhineland mystics: Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and Jan Van Ruusbroec.
“You hear the silence. And as it has been said, it is only in the silence that you can hear God’s voice.”
I imagine Jon Fosse spending hours alone in silence at his writing desk every single day in his small rural house along the coast of Norway. As a lifelong practitioner of meditation, I have an especial appreciation for Jon's words. One of the curses of our modern world: many people are stripped of their ability to appreciate the beauty of silence and solitude. Indeed, in many respects, silence and solitude have become the dreaded enemy.
“And the act of writing is to me to listen: when I write I never prepare, I don’t plan anything, I proceed by listening.”
There are many legitimate and highly effective ways to write. A number of accomplished writers, William Boyd comes immediately to mind, spend months constructing an elaborate outline (including a detailed description for each character), prior to actually setting out to write their novel. Not so for Jon Fosse. He prepares nothing; rather, Jon listens intently. And as Jon says, “Something else, perhaps a bit strange, is when I write, at a certain point I always get a feeling that the text has already been written, is out there somewhere, not inside me, and I just need to write it down before the text disappears.” Curiously, two other outstanding contemporary authors have reported a similar experience when writing their novels: Zoran Živković from Serbia and Mircea Cărtărescu from Romania.
“If I didn’t listen to the bad reviews, I also wouldn’t let success influence me, I would hold fast to my writing, hold on to, hang on to what I had created.”
Jon's words can serve as an example for all aspiring creative writers. Critics and reviewers can praise or criticize your writing, but above all else, the most important and glorious thing is to maintain your vision as a writer. Do not veer from what inspires you to write and how you write it.
Link to Jon Fosse's speech - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lit...
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