Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2008, Page 135

PAPER BOAT IN ROUGH WATERS
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1939: 23). He however, distinguishes himself
from the Danish bourgeois on the Faroes by
being 'in tune with the people' (ibid.: 50).
Heyde represents the interference of hetero-
topia between two worlds. The district
recorder is the novel's learned, wise character
and appears on the scene in the scholarly
discussions with Mr. Poul. He is Mr. Poul's
counsellor in existential matters. The district
recorder gives advice in a context where the
meaning in wisdom and advice can no
longer protect against anxiety and upheaval.
The advice he offers is not a completely
formed foundation, but a wisdom of uncer-
tainty. The district recorder believes that
everything is illusion and vanity, including
the wisdom he derives from books. The dis-
tance to the bookish learning can also be
read as a discrete thematization of the novel
itself as an imperfect form compared with
life, incarnated in Barbara. Even an authori-
tative expression such as literature and wis-
dom is thus not sufficient to confront those
powers that govern human life and the
world. The district recorder admits that he
uses wisdom to protect himself against life.
He hereby emphasizes the limited perspec-
tive of his wisdom - and of every standpoint
and thereby all art - in relation to the un-
limited and unpredictable reality. But the
district recorder nevertheless has a sharp eye
for human vanity, which he believes is the
foundational driving force in the human
being.
The wisdom, while inadequate, is acute
enough to reveal shortcomings in the rea-
son-governed world. The district recorder’s
wisdom is practical, dynamic and does not
allow itself to be controlled by an abstract,
rule-based reason. The district recorder
struggles for progress in terms of new fishing
experiments and agricultural improvements,
but his real passion is to bring ideas about
the meaning of life and human edification
into the new world. It is an attempt to con-
sole oneself to the modern by bringing in the
undercurrent of contemplation into the
main current of Enlightenment. The district
recorder removes himself partly from the En-
lightenment era for which he himself is
spokesman. In this way the entire Western
civilization is seen from the outside. Accord-
ing to Enlightenment philosophy, it was nat-
ural science that was especially suited to pro-
vide explanations that were free of prejudice,
and a non-illusory orientation of reality
(Hellesnes 2004: 91). But in the novel, these
explanations are not sufficient. The district
recorder has a sense for the grandeur of Bar-
bara's illusion-filled world and for the loss
when the glow that is Barbara begins to dim.
It is not his longing back in time, but a criti-
cal commentary to that part of the Enlight-
enment era which regarded the illusion and
imagination to be a false view of things. The
district recorder is a symbolic figure of a
meaningful, inhabited modernity that func-
tions as a correction to more rationalistic
versions of modernity.
The wisdom of the district recorder is
beyond or somewhere in between fixity and
change, and in the end it is an image of the
privilege of a spiritual retirement underlined
in the words that a philosopher never is to-
tally shipwrecked (Jacobsen 1939:139). As a
member of a Dano-Faroese family he incar-
nates the notion of heterotopia e.g. the sense
of interference in a contact zone. He repre-
sents place without place and thus a world
beyond binarism.