The holy life
The holy life (original title: Bannlyst ) is a novel by the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf . The novel was published in 1918 and deals with the fate of a man who is shunned and ostracized by people because he is said to have eaten human flesh in an emergency situation with starvation in mind. Bannlyst is a committed anti-war novel: by equating war with cannibalism , Selma Lagerlöf expresses the utmost disgust for war. War is denounced as a crime against the fifth commandment , "the commandment to love one's neighbor and the key to all others". The original title means, literally translated, “ostracized” and is deliberately ambiguous: on the one hand it refers to the fate of the main character, on the other hand it also refers to the war, which in the author's opinion must be ostracized.
action
The novel is set in Sweden in the period before and after the outbreak of the First World War . Young Sven Elversson, who recently returned from a North Pole expedition, lives in Bohuslän on the west coast . The pastor Edvard Rhånge announced in a sermon that Sven Elversson ate the meat of a deceased comrade on the polar expedition to save himself from starvation. In doing so, he not only expels Sven Elversson from the church, but also causes him to be despised and avoided by all people from now on. Whatever good Sven Elversson does, people's disgust for him is stronger.
Sven Elversson falls in love with Sigrun Rhånge, the pastor's beautiful young wife. She is unhappy in her marriage because her husband is pathologically jealous and makes her life hell. Edvard Rhånge is a descendant of the previous owners of the Hånger farm in Dalsland , his name is an anagram of the farm. Hånger's men have been cursed ever since the owner of the farm once murdered a priest out of jealousy.
In order to get away from Sigrun, Sven Elversson buys the dilapidated Hånger farm and looks after people in need here. Sigrun leaves her husband and ends up on Hånger by chance. After a while she wants to return to her husband, but at that moment she realizes that she loves Sven Elversson. Edvard Rhånge overheard a conversation between Sven and Sigrun and found out about their love. Furious with jealousy, he wants to kill Sven. But then a thought saves him: He - Edvard Rhånge - once expelled Sven from the church because he had attacked a dead man. Now Edvard wants to attack a living person, which is far worse. Edvard abandons his plan and lets Sigrun stay with Sven. At that moment the curse that lay upon the people of Hånger is gone.
With the outbreak of the First World War, the rest of the people also see Sven with different eyes: In view of what is done to people living in war, Sven's wrongdoing seems less serious to them. After the Battle of the Skagerrak , dead sailors are driven along the coast. Sven helps to provide them with a dignified burial, thus paying off his guilt for having acted wrongly on a dead person. At the funeral of the seamen, Edvard Rhånge gave a speech: The horrors of the war made people only really aware of the sanctity of life. And therefore only now can you really appreciate the merits Sven Elversson has earned with his practiced charity. For that reason alone, one has to regret the way he has been treated. In addition, a document found on a dead English seaman proved that Sven Elversson did not eat any of the human flesh; The others would only have persuaded him to do that afterwards. But through Sven Elversson you got to know the power of disgust. Now it is everyone's job to instill in people an ineradicable disgust for war so that people never wage war again.
Overwhelmed by his luck, Sven collapses and dies soon after. Finally, Edvard and Sigrun also get back together.
meaning
Disgust for war has been with Selma Lagerlöf for a long time. In Gosta Berling there is the story of a former soldier who with what he experienced in the war, not finished is. In the story Romarblod in Osynliga länkar , Selma Lagerlöf tells of a Roman woman who deliberately injures her fiancé so that he cannot go to war.
When the First World War broke out in 1914 , it was a shock for Selma Lagerlöf. At the same time, she felt - since the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909 had increasingly become a public figure - she felt pressured to take a stand. From the papers left behind, we know that Selma Lagerlöf suffered writer's block for the first time in this situation. But eventually she wrote the novel Bannlyst , her great pacifist creed.
Bannlyst is usually described as less successful or even unsuccessful. The reason given is that the plot is constructed and complicated and that the tendency of the novel appears in inartistic directness. In fact, Selma Legerlöf expresses her concerns openly and directly here, while in other works she conveys her message more discreetly and in a parable form. On the other hand, Bannlyst has all the characteristics of Selma Lagerlöf's mature works: a dense, concentrated prose, haunting psychological character drawings, an exciting plot and a cleverly composed structure of the entire book. The almost expressionist imagery is almost new, for example when a cat on the wall in front of the church embodies disgust, or when the rotten fence post that recurs as a leitmotif on Hånger for the curse, which in turn is only an image for the - ultimately leading to war - Willingness to use violence is, stands.
Quote
For vad vet vi? Om några år så kan minnet av detta krigets care also skövling and smärta vara glömda, also när nya menniskor kommer, så can de åter med kampglada sense gå ut till strid. Men på oss kommer det nu än få vämjelsen inmängd i mankosinnet och almost fed up, så att intet tal om era och bragd can mera tränga bort den. ("Because what do we know? In a few years the memory of the suffering and the devastation and the pain of this war may be forgotten, and when new people come, they can go to war again with a bellicose spirit. But now it's up to us us to instill in people the disgust of war and to fix it in such a way that no talk of honor and heroism can suppress it. ”- from the chapter Talet om livets helighet ).
literature
- Vivi Edström, Selma Lagerlöf , Stockholm 1991