Mara Lee The Coordinates of Failure, or: ‘As If’ – a Sea of (Im)possibilities

What does failure reveal about literature and time? Mara Lee interprets Per Olov Enquist’s The Cartographers as a fracture: between personal crisis, societal upheaval, and the question of how “as if” becomes a survival strategy.

It is not too tenuous to claim that the Swedish literary modernity is one that is fraught with crises of creativity. It begins with alchemy, religious visions and literary mania in Strindberg. That he also happened to be the first Swedish author to fundamentally understand and respond to the market conditions taking shape within literature of the late nineteenth century doesn’t diminish the significance of crisis within his oeuvre.[1] With him a new authorial role emerged: the marginalised bohemian had to learn to coexist with a media-savvy, self-assured, performative literary subject.[2]

Less than a century later, author P.O. Enquist finds himself in an enormous apartment on the Champs Elysées in Paris. His alcoholism has resurfaced once again, and his writing has stagnated. This crisis is detailed in his autobiography Ett annat liv (Another Life), in which he refers to it as his ‘black years’.[3] But then he writes Kapten Nemos Bibliotek (Captain Nemo’s Library, 1991) which proves something of a turning point, establishing some of the most important pain-points of his collected works: the mother, debt, abandonment. Hence when Kartritarna (The Cartographers) is published in 1992, Enquist has emerged from his crisis – if only to step into another, perhaps even more severe. For this is a crisis that will shake all of society: the Swedish financial crisis of the nineties, the worst in the nation’s history since the Krueger Crash of 1932, and which also happens to coincide with the definitive dismantling of the so-called ‘People’s Home’ in Sweden.
Kartritarna is thus a book situated at both the beginning and the end of a crisis, simultaneously. It should therefore come as no surprise that this essay collection exhibits an almost manic preoccupation with presence, with points on a map. Where are we, really? From which position is this story being told? And, if one dares venture a few follow-up questions: How can one be situated at both beginning and end? How can one be present at two points simultaneously? What kind of world creates such (im)possibilities?

This essay seeks to explore some themes that illuminate how Enquist’s Kartritarna can be viewed as an inflection point not only for Enquist’s literary development, but also for Swedish literature as a whole. Touching upon creative failure as a phenomenon, I will endeavour to illustrate that the need for fantasy, or powers of the imagination, was more important than ever in the period that followed the modern era. The end of the eighties marked a break with the progressivism that had characterised the modern era, and the linear perceptions of time associated with such progress and progression had started to falter. In the ideological meltdown that followed, the groundwork was laid for counter-movements. Perhaps this is where the trope of failure emerges as a key figure in the thinking of the day.

Descartes’ Pineal Gland and the DNA of Failure

One of science’s most poetic failures is Descartes’ hypothesis that the pineal gland is the human organ that links body and soul, which he examines in The Passions of the Soul. In Cecilia Sjöholm’s essay ‘The Pineal Gland as a Communication Centre?’ she describes how this theory, despite representing a failure in both scientific and philosophical terms, nevertheless paved the way for an exploration of human emotions, not to mention the earliest stages of humanity’s psychological life.[4] For example, Descartes traces the origins of love to breastfeeding, identifying how the young infant experiences basic needs, which he calls ‘thoughts’. Sjöholm stresses that this ‘thinking foetus’ should not be perceived as a little cogito, but as ‘a bundle of love and hate, in which the physical and psychological are intertwined.’[5]
The philosopher’s quest to understand the link between body and soul was perhaps lost, but it led him to emotions, to their expression, purpose and origin. Sjöholm highlights how Descartes’ exploration of emotions, desires, urges and memories can be regarded as the embryo of psychoanalysis.
I personally know too little about Descartes and his life to speculate as to whether he was in a state of crisis, but Sjöholm’s analysis seems to imply an intense grappling with his hitherto achieved research findings, in particular his own dualism, that is to say the question of how body and soul can communicate and interact despite being ontologically separate. It is this grappling that leads him to the first stages of life; to its feelings, instincts and memories. Similarly, it is this grappling that sows the seeds of later theories on the subconscious, thereby enabling the following:
This desire can be traced in every literary endeavour. We are drawn to the shadows in our own prehistory, traversed by emotions that we cannot understand – that perhaps so much as lead us to our own undoing – but which are so strong that we nevertheless must follow them.

A Good Topic, or: to Grapple with the ‘Interesting’

Enquist had a good topic at hand when he decided to write about the socialist Norrland workers who emigrated to South America at a time when most of those leaving Sweden were migrating to the USA. His project foundered. He writes about this setback in the essay ‘The Meteorite Fragment’, an essay that is both fantastic and impossible. It has neither beginning nor end, and what it wants it never states in as many words. It does want something, but it is difficult to establish what. Still, there is a constant pressure to the text; every word is felt. One of the essay’s vectors links Gustaf af Geijerstam’s documentary journey through Stockholm’s impoverished working milieus to his own abortive project on the emigrants to Brazil. Another vector runs from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to the Västerbotten village in which Enquist himself grew up, before arriving at Enquist’s 1974 research expedition to Brazil to visit the sites to which the Brazil emigrants had moved. There he reaches way’s end. He finds a reality that failed to sustain the utopia. The author doesn’t reveal his feelings, neither to those he meets, to the descendants of the settlers, nor even to the reader. But I would wager that he felt an emptiness in his chest, one that was truly unpleasant, and that threatened at any moment to devolve into contempt.

Nothing turned out as expected. Such is the failed utopia’s mantra, and perhaps also that of the failed novel. None of this could have been predicted. But I believe that the problem is greater than that. I believe the problem is one of ‘interest’.

Literature is borne not by interest, but by passion – thus the creative crises. It is borne not by an interesting subject matter, but by necessity. Necessity in writing and literature can be interpreted in a range of ways. The most famous literary necessity is that of Aristotle, which he mentions several times in his On the Art of Poetry. This necessity relates to a work’s inner logic, often in conjunction with what is probable:
A similar logic also applies to characterisation:
This relies upon a kind of conformity to law, a logic capable of creating an inner coherence of such magnitude that the poet not only depicts, but is also capable of imagining, the impending, the future, in a manner that is both plausible and reasonable. The leap from this to his statement that poetry is more philosophical and elevated than history, albeit great, becomes perhaps more comprehensible in this light. For Aristotle, poetry is about what can happen within the realms of probability and necessity. It is general, while history speaks only to the specific, to what has actually happened. Thus literature should have a greater reach, a capacity to render in ways that can capture the universal.
This comparison is of course unfair and skewed, since literature and history serve different purposes. But what nevertheless seems relevant is his emphasis on the fact that the poet says what could have happened: the poet is situated, at least in part, in a space of the potential. This potential goes beyond what is interesting and good, for it is a space that must invoke necessity.
If the author refuses to heed that voice, failure is assured.
But that doesn’t mean one can’t fail all the same.

At Every Intersection: Crisis

I have no idea if Enquist’s decision to write about the Swedish workers who had emigrated to Brazil was motivated by necessity or interest. All I know is what he writes in ‘Meteoritskärvan’, in Kartritarna. If one is to approach this essay through a temporal and spatial framework, it appears to lie at the intersection of multiple different tendencies. But the one trope that seems to recur at each point of contact is that of crisis. This crisis trope is brought into relief from three key perspectives: firstly, from the standpoint of Swedish literary history mentioned previously – i.e. how Swedish modernity is framed by crises of creativity; secondly, from a standpoint of Enquist’s personal biography – i.e. Enquist’s re-emergence from his creative crisis, the publication of Kapten Nemos bibliotek having served as a kind of turning point, and his budding exploration of new themes such as debt, abandonment and the mother, all of which relevant to Kartritarna; and, finally, from the crisis taking place in Swedish society.

A few words on the latter, the great crisis to which the nineties gave rise. This is perhaps the most conspicuous, perhaps even the most significant of these crises with regard to the book as a whole. Because it relates to what I consider the most disruptive stratum, namely that of time, and what characterises the latter.

A Few Words on how Time Moved in the Early Nineties

What is it that distinguishes a time? How is the mood of an age forged? One way to approach historical eras is to observe the manner in which movements of time and space meet. For example, the Renaissance could be described in terms of lines that not only extend back in time, gathering knowledge and ideals from antiquity, but also move outwards in space, a movement that expands in its desire to discover the world. That is to say, during the Renaissance a backward-looking focus met with a global one, which ought to be characteristic of this era.
The Sweden of the early nineties, when Kartritarna was published, was one marked by crisis, reform and liquidation. Most strikingly, at one point the Riksbank raised interest rates to 500% to protect the value of the Swedish krona. This not only disrupted stability; it also established crisis as the status quo. In other words, crisis was no longer a blip in historical time, but its new tempo – a kind of temporalisation of uncertainty. It was also in 1990-91 that one of the most sweeping tax reforms in modern times was introduced, a reform based on new-liberal ideas of efficiency. The pace of change was fast, time hurtling forwards in an accelerated now. As mentioned, the ‘People’s Home’ – a concept that had previously borne a sense of continuity – appeared to buckle, shaking the belief in linear, stable development to its core. This also had repercussions for people’s belief in the future.
And space. The space changed. It appeared to narrow, drawn inwards towards the nation’s internal boundaries, the spread of the welfare state replaced by a new territorial grid. State companies and services were privatised; Televerket, the Swedish Telecommunications Agency, became Telia; the pharmacy monopoly was called into question; the Swedish State Railways were butchered; and the municipalisation of schooling shifted responsibility from the state to local councils. The state thus withdrew at least in part from its central position in the national space. That centre, drained of state authority, was to be filled with something else, something new, and membership of the ‘European Community’, with its open borders, was primed at full speed. In other words, what was formerly a stable space appeared to gain new contours that were both narrower and more permeable, though perhaps above all: wallpapered over with uncertainty.

This is a time and space in which utopia is no longer possible. Enquist’s Kartritarna should be read against this time period, almost as a reckoning. In the essay ‘Meteoritskärvan’ this confrontation is at its most pointed. Here Enquist grapples with the lost utopia, weaving it in with his own foundered book project. But the essay, too, moves in a new way, eschewing the well-trodden paths of both narrativity and linear time. It moves in circles, stutters, breaks off and steps back, only to leap forwards again. The pattern it follows is indiscernible. Although the book is not postmodern, its rhythms are dictated by a new disintegration. Though its voice is strong, it is one that doubts, hesitates, retracts.

In the midst of all this, in failure, crisis and disintegration, there is, however, an approach that the author can cling onto, namely: ‘As if’.

As If – a Sea of (Im)possibilities

As if, ‘the only hypothesis with which we can live,’ says Enquist in ‘Meteoritskärvan’. But one could also stress the precipice present in these words, the vertigo that ‘as if’ plants in one’s chest. ‘As if’ harbours both possibility and failure, continuation and fall. But ‘as if’ cannot be equated to a fantasy in the everyday sense; it is more active, more creative. Without endorsing the view on art or distinction between fantasy and imagination formulated by Iris Murdoch, it can nevertheless be illuminating to mention a few of the main characteristics that she proposes. Unlike fantasy, which Murdoch describes as self-centred, a cloud of phantasmatic daydreaming – see Emma Bovary – imagination is directed outwards, an intent to clearly see the reality beyond oneself. Imagination is associated with a conscious attention, one that can be understood as a kind of workshop in which we forge and shape our worldview. In Murdoch’s perspective, fantasy instead represents something that prevents us from engaging with the world, which in turn leads almost always to mediocrity, be that in art or in one’s personal character. Imagination, on the other hand, comprises an effort to confront reality. Not passively, but as part of a disciplined exercise.
I believe, however, that Enquist’s ‘As if’ can be defined neither as one nor the other. I believe that an author’s everyday is filled to the brim with both. You see, what is unique about the authorial ‘as if’ is that it is bonded with her life; it can scarcely be limited to the moments when she is at her desk. In between, the author stands, sits, walks, eats and dreams, ‘as if’. This is a mood that risks consuming her entire existence – especially when nothing comes out on paper, when the words refuse to stick. In those moments ‘as if’ retreats to other places. It roams the brain, invades the hypothalamus. The power of the imagination cannot be switched off. It is, so to say, part and parcel of the job description.

But what does Enquist mean to say when he serves up his ‘As if’? Is it not a matter of course for all authors?
Context is important. This sentence appears near the beginning of ‘Meteoritskärvan’, when Enquist is attempting to understand why things went the way they did. But what, exactly? Is he referring to the emigrant Swedish workers’ foundering Brazilian utopia? Or his own foundering book project about them? Is he alluding to Geijerstam’s failure to commit to paper what he saw during his documentary journey through Sweden? Or even so much as Sweden’s own foundering utopia?

What is most striking is perhaps the poem that Enquist cites first. This poem is probably written by Heisenberg – though he doesn’t mention him by name. It goes thus:
Enquist then remarks on the poem:
What does Enquist hold true here? It seems somewhat unclear, but I believe that he is interpreting the poem literally; that he reads it as an explanation – one derived from the laws of physics – for his failure. The one who is fleeing in the poem is thus the author’s research object (the emigrant, etc.), while the ‘you’ of the poem is the author himself. The poem reminds us that, in the world of physics, place and velocity do not exist simultaneously, and that we cannot capture both place and movement in one single, sharp image. It appears to say that we must choose our perspective. But then Enquist counters that with ‘As if’; an alternative to the limits of physical laws, and a way of surpassing them.
Perhaps one could call that a poetic reading of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Poetic, but possibly excessive – unnecessary, even, in plain terms. Because ‘As if,’ that is to say the only principle with which Enquist claims he can live, is already completely submerged in the poem, its very premise. Enquist need neither fight nor defend anything, for ‘As if’ was there the whole time, the fundamental condition of life, at least if one is prepared to fudge slightly with quantum mechanics. In the quantum universe, the impossible becomes possible – at least if one doesn’t look (or measure) all too closely. Schrödinger’s cat has proven this, being both living and dead until we open the box, or, in other words, observe it. With a shaky analogy a poetic particle can also find itself in several states at once, in superposition, until someone observes it, upon which it ‘chooses’ a state.
Enquist knows this, of course. He knows that writing is the actualisation of a certain possibility, and that, by observing that particular particle, that little meteorite fragment, its space and time and existence are to some extent crystallised. Before that it was a mere sea of potential presence. But Enquist turns around, acknowledges a certain fragment, a particle – and look! Now it exists.

The new discoveries of quantum mechanics presented such a technological leap that great swathes of literature and art still haven’t caught up with it. And that chasm doesn’t appear to have lessened. It cannot be claimed that the crisis that endured in Sweden of the early nineties is still ongoing. On the other hand, it appears to have transformed into something else, another kind of time that has very little to do with the linear historical progression of modernity. Instead of conceiving of time as a straight line from past to future, which would see the crisis as a closed chapter, one can instead discern a state in which the various developmental stages of crisis coexist (as a probability distribution). Much like how the wave function of quantum mechanics doesn’t collapse until it is observed, one can perhaps suppose that the true significance (and consequences) of the crisis of the nineties have not yet been resolved. And that they also diverge depending on who is doing the observing. To some extent this means we no longer find ourselves in a post-crisis state, but rather in a state of temporal non-coherence, in which all of the different temporalities of the crisis – pre-crisis, mid-trauma, and post-crisis – are constantly crossing in the present.
Perhaps this is why Enquist’s appeal seems so bold – ‘to go on measuring… as if it were possible’ – and more urgent than ever. For, in the world of quantum mechanics, ‘as if’ is the innermost fabric of reality. And what is at stake today is not simply an author’s fantasy or potential failure. No: to measure or not to measure has gone from stylish metaphor to sharp literality. This measurement is our little twinkling out into the deep; it is only when the world responds to us that something comes into being. It begins. So, what do you say? Would you like to take on the challenge? Shall we start measuring? How about now.