Moment of Freedom

Jens Bjorneboe is the greatest failed novelist of the twentiethcentury. His masterwork is considered the trilogy roughly called"the History of Bestiality"--roughly, because the title actuallybelongs to a twelve-volume project of his autobiographicalnarrator, which is unfinished. The trilogy therefore does notpresent such a history itself, but rather the experiences ofthat profoundly disturbed character, along with his morbidreflections, painful memories and alarming dreams, plusrecitations of horrible happenings drawn from his grislyresearch. Not one of the novels is without structural flaws, buteach communicates a rage against cruelty and brutality with aforce that is rare in fictional literature.MOMENT OF FREEDOM (1966) is the first of the three novels and isvirtually formless. It seems that the author cannot master hismaterial--the whole history of man's inhumanity to man--with acalm analysis or fit it into a standard artistic structure, butrather recoils in pain, retreats into dismal reflections,indulges in sarcastic tirades, describes petty officials andderanged villagers as monsters, relives the atrocities of theNazis and Communists, remembers himself wading through blood andmost of all intoxicates himself, all without any apparent order.The effect is disorienting, but at the same time invigorating,since it brings an electric awareness of being caught up insomething horrifyingly real. Here is someone violentlydisturbed, speaking straight from the heart, grabbing you likea bloodied, but eloquent victim of an attack. You can't expecthis urgent report to be neat and tidy.You must simply follow the narrator-guide, the lowly "Servant ofJustice" of the mythical Swiss town of Heiligenberg, a man soburdened by a mind-numbing past that he can't remember his ownname, as he records the filthy injustices of the court,denounces the sanctimonious townsmen with his drinking buddiesat an inn called "Zum Henker" ("Go to Hell"), or wanders throughbleak memories and unidentifiable towns. Don't try to keep trackof the time, or where you are going, or whether the landscape isreal or hallucinatory. After the journey you can go back andretrace your steps, read critical studies, then some things willfall into place, but not all.One pointer I will give is that the "moment of freedom" is notan episode or a single event, but more like a category--anopportunity for truth and contact with reality that is mostoften missed. Bjorneboe relates it to the bullfighting "momentof truth" before the sword goes through the bull's shoulderblades. His thought is that freedom is not a relief or aliberation from duty (there is a frightening scene of murderersbreaking out of prison), but rather an insight that bringscommitment and love for another. To deny it is to deny theresponsibility of being human, to commit a sin against the HolyGhost and therefore to negate "the meaning of the earth and ofthe starry heavens: individuation--coming into being."Bjorneboe believes that in the momen

Somewhere in this book Bjorneboe wrote: "Within 10 years my knowledge of the world will be so big that it must lead to self-destruction." Exactly 10 years later, he committed suicide. A remarkable fact that shows which atmosphere this novel breathes. It is a semi-autobiographical story about absolute freedom and absolute loneliness - two sides of one coin. About depression, about 20th century Europe and about the bestiality of mankind. Despite its pitch-black vision on humanity, it is also a very funny book. A masterpiece in irony and cynism!