Fadern, sonen och berättaren. Minne och narrativitet hos Sven Delblanc

In 1991, a year before his death, Sven Delblanc published his highly acclaimed autobiography, Livets ax. At the centre of these childhood memories lies the author’s problematic relationship to his father. In view of the attention attracted by Livets ax, it is not surprising that biographical interpretations of Delblanc’s oeuvre have been predominant. It is evident that the writer’s difficult childhood affected him deeply, privately as well as artistically. This, however, does not mean that the dark father figures in his books should be read only, or even primarily, biographically. On the contrary, the figure of the father possesses a potential signification transcending the autobiographical and physical person. This thesis examines the figures of the Father and the Son in the work of Delblanc, in particular the complex relationship to the Narrator, the father of the fiction. The first chapter presents the theoretical framework, dealing with human memory from a classical (Aristotelian) perspective as well as a more contemporary, psychoanalytic one. In particular, the discussion examines the relationship between memory and narrativity, e.g. Delblanc’s diverse autobiographical strategies. The second chapter follows the father figure as a repetitive but richly varied motif from Delblanc’s first novel Eremitkräftan (1962) to the posthumous Agnar (1993). Chapter three deals with the son’s and the artist’s connection with the subordinate figures of the jester and the fool. The fourth and final chapter treats the motif of guilt and confession in Livets ax, a problem closely connected with the act of writing and narrating.