Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2008, Page 136

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PAPER BOATIN ROUGH WATERS
I have explained the Fortuna as the most
important heterotopia in the novel Barbara.
The ship casts a multi-faceted light over art
in particular and over modernity in general.
The movements of Fortuna are being trans-
mitted to Mr. Poul as a shaken and problem-
atic individual and from there to the insuffi-
ciency of language. The change is being
connected to modernity with its close link
between the shaken individual and a corre-
sponding crisis for language and meta-
physics. As art, Barbara is a sea narrative sim-
ilar to the nineteenth-century sea narrative,
which falls back upon itself in the attempt to
reflect on its floating and itinerant founda-
tion, thereby calling itself into question as a
form of representation (Casarino 2002:13).
In terms of modernity in general, the
ship is the heterotopia par excellence of
Western civilization, going as far back as the
Renaissance. The nineteenth-century sea
narrative produced the matrix of the crisis of
modernity. Such a matrix in these narratives
was above all materialized as the space of the
ship (ibid.).
The heterotopia in Barbara expresses a
dynamic understanding for this crisis in both
the interpretive space of art and in the space
of action of modernity. The interference be-
tween two worlds was the pivotal point in
Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen's life and writing. He
described himself as a "national hermaphro-
dite" (Matras 1941: 30) and his background
as a heterogeneous mixture of "old Faroese
peasant blood" and a "talented Copenhagen-
family" creating "a unique convergence in
the mind" (Elbrønd-Bek 1986: 56). In his
novel, Jacobsen attempted to include both of
his worlds. This could be done only in artis-
tic form, and he utilized his imagination of art
to celebrate hybridity.
References
Apelkvist, B. 1999. Dialogens existentiella rotter. Om
Bachtin och den moderna litteraturteorin.
Horisont 4. Arkmedia Vasa: 94-105. Stockholm.
Bakhtin, M. 2006. Rum, tid & historie. Kronotopens
former i europceisk litteratur. Translated by Harald
Hartvig Jepsen. Klim. Árhus.
Bakhtin, M. 1994. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics.
Translated and edited by Caryl Emerson. Minne-
sota: University of Minnesota Press.
Casarino, C. 2002. Modernity at Sea. Melville, Marx,
Conrad in Crisis. University of Minnesota Press.
Minnesota.
Elbrønd-Bek, B. 1986.Jørgen-FrantzJacobsen - mel-
lem tradition og modernitet In: Bogens Verden 2:
54-56.
Foucault, M. 1986. Of other Spaces. Translated by
Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16:22-27. John Hopkins
University Press. Baltimore.
Hellesnes, J. 2004. Illusjon. Oslo.
Jacobsen, J-F. 1939. Barbara. Copenhagen.
Joensen, L. 2000. Barbara and the Dano-Faroese Mo-
ment. Úthavsdagar. Oceaniske dage: 64-87. Tórs-
havn.
Matras, C. 1941.Jørgen-FrantzJacobsen. Cyldendals
Julebog: 30-40. Copenhagen.
Pratt, M-L. 1992. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and
Transculturation. London.
Notes
1 Lecture on Faroese literature by Malan Marners-
dóttir on Norðurbryggjuni in Copenhagen 2006.
According to Marnersdóttir41 out of 118 Faroese
novels in the period 1909-2006 are written in Dan-
ish.
2 The article is an extended version of a lecture held
at the 23. ICLA-Congress in Rio de Janeiro in 2007.
3 Foucault also mentiones other heterotopic sites as
cemeteries, mirrors, libraries, museums and places
of contemporary relaxation as cafes, cinemas, and
beaches. The actual background for reflecting on
heterotopia is the experience of a world becom-
ing still more simultaneous. We are in the epoch of
simultanity, Foucault says, and thus he underlines
heterotopia as a product of the increasing net-
workingand intersections ofall kind.