avatarKristine Harper

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We All Carry Our Own Death Within Us

I wish there were more novels like this one

Photo by Matias North on Unsplash

“And that the death we carry within us, which Rilke compares to a fruit, grows inside us until ripe, and is in other words alive, belonging to life itself.”

I wish there were more novels like this one. Novels that take their time to explore all the facets of their characters and that paint aesthetically nourishing pictures with words, more beautiful than any photo or painting. Novels that dare to discuss big philosophical, metaphysical questions and allow for many different viewpoints to be explored and serve no concrete answers (because there are non).

Novels that leave you wondering about life and death, and that purify your mind and soul in a cathartic manner by overwhelming you with loss and grief from the safety of your reading chair. Novels that force you to pause your routines and consider if we all carry our own death within us…

I am talking about The Wolves of Eternity by Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard, the second book in Knausgaard’s recent trilogy.

Death is a predominant theme in The Wolves of Eternity. The death of a father, the death of a mother, research on undoing or concurring death, seeing a dead body for the first time, death as a precondition for life, the work as an undertaker, life after death, and the thought that each life, no matter how short, is completed.

And as mentioned, the thought that we all carry our death within us is explored. And that thought, honestly, took my breath away. Because it just made so much sense when I read it! Of course it also made no sense at all; it would imply a belief in fate or a predestined life that I don’t usually advocate.

But something about it is so scary and absurd and at the same time so immensely beautiful that it almost has to be the truth. The thought that our lives are somehow “thematic” and that the way we dye will fit that theme.

Furthermore, dreams and the idea that we in our dreams might experience glimpses of wisdom or insights into otherwise hidden parts of our existence is a predominant theme in the book. It is thus one of the main characters’, Syvert’s, dream that leads him to the finding of his deceased father’s love letters from a secret Russian lover (with whom he had a daughter).

And, when Syvert finally, towards the end of the novel, meets his Russian sister Alevtina, and shows her photos of their father, she is stunned. I have already seen him in my dreams! How is that even possible? she exclaims. The inherent knowledge that our dreams holds can create an underlying coherency in our lives.

Also, and this is classic Knausgaard and a great part about why his books mean so much to me, metaphysical discussions are predominant in The Wolves of Eternity.

Knausgaard insists on magic, or perhaps more correctly, he insists that there are things that we human beings cannot explain — and that that is ok. He lets his characters explore this thought in a beautiful, multi-facetted, non-cliché way that leaves you (the reader) with openings as well as conclusions, but never any black and white answers.

Like when Alevtina travels to Siberia to engage in scientific research on bio-semiotics and ends up alone in the wilderness eating wild mushrooms that lead her to a vision of interconnectivity that, literally (!), eliminates the borders between her and the natural surroundings.

The same theme is also predominant in his previous novel—the first book of the trilogy, The Morning Star. For example in shape of the scientist, who is researching the ability of trees to communicate through mycelium, or the mycorrhizal network, and who, at a dinner party, exclaims that this new area of research reveals that the forest is actually alive.

Whereto one of the guests, a priest quietly responds that our ancestors always knew that the forest is alive and that it communicates on a different wavelength. The only difference is that they never needed scientific proof for this.

Photo by Steven Kamenar on Unsplash

The profane, inexplicable aura or magic of our everyday surroundings is also sensitively and beautifully described (so beautiful in fact that this quote always brings tears to my eyes) in Knausgaard’s novel Spring (which is a part of his four season books):

“We come from far away, from terrifying beauty, for a newborn child who opens its eyes for the first time is like a star, is like a sun, but we live our lives amid pettiness and stupidity, in the world of burned hot dogs and wobbly camping tables. The great and terrifying beauty does not abandon us, it is there all the time, in everything that is always the same, in the sun and the stars, in the bonfire and the darkness, in the blue carpet of flowers beneath the tree. It is of no use to us, it is too big for us, but we can look at it, and we can bow before it.”

And, I will leave you with this quote actually. With the thought of the great and terrifyingly beautiful that is of no use to us, and with the sublimity of this anti-utilitarian through.

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