The Iowa Review
Volume 13
Issue 2 Spring
1982
Review of "A Death of a Beekeeper" by Sven
Birkerts
Sven Birkerts
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Birkerts, Sven. "Review of "A Death of a Beekeeper" by Sven Birkerts." The Iowa Review 13.2 (1982): 153-157. Web.
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Article 31
Sven
Review
Birkerts
a
of
Beekeeper. Lars Gustafsson.
Directions,
1981, 162 pages. Trans
H.
lated by Janet K. SwafFar and Guntram
The Death
New
Weber.
I took
$5.95.
one
childhood,
own
my
mainly
personality,
my own youth up to the age of
and then varied it into five different
eighteen
lives, strengthening
one property
of my
it
in
another
here,
personality
weakening
a little more of a certain
by giving myself
re
a talent there. That
talent, subtracting
I call cracks
lives, what
five novels are an exper
iment with
the possible
lives of a certain
are a set of
organism.
They
premises.
sulted
in alternative
in the wall.
?Lars
The Death
one
available
Beckett's
which
of
a
Beekeeper
to date in
Company,
other novels
Gustafsson,
quoted
These
in the translator's
afterword
in a series of five novels,
the only
or
It is, like Max
Frisch 'sMontauk
is the fifth
English.
of those pared-down,
compressed
pieces beside
rest
I
furniture.
look like Biedermeier
hope that the
one
of the series?Mr. Gustafsson, Himself (1971), Woe (1973), The Family
Reunion (1975), and Sigismund (1977)?follows soon. If the quality of the
to that o? Beekeeper we would
have
other novels proves at all comparable
event has been
to say that a
in
the
last decade.
major
taking place
literary
a novel about aman who
is
Ivan
Death
like
of
Ilych,
Tolstoy's
Beekeeper,
is
It is, therefore, by virtue ofthat
time-honored
interdependence,
dying.
treatment
of Tolstoy's
and Gustafsson's
about living. The comparison
is a kind
of temperament
and
of object
lesson about the differences
to
works
the
of
his
Where
organ furiously
Tolstoy
pedals
sensibility.
that death is the big event, the grand horror,
the message
drive home
to the
turns his attention
its strategies
the reckoning,
Gustafsson
psyche,
to assimilate
it moves
the unknow
of refusal, the stages through which
more
is
because it is oblique,
He has
moving.
finally
depiction,
our
to
on
set out, as
make
hair stand
end.
did,
Tolstoy
a
consists
of'found'
notebooks.
of
They belong
Beekeeper
compilation
to Lars Lennart Westin
is 39, divorced,
who, we learn from the prelude,
retired from teaching. He lives in a hut on a rural peninsula
prematurely
able. His
not
153
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and makes
produce.
expect
might
little money
he requires by selling the honey his bees
we get from the author/editor
is the kind we
description
from an uninquisitive
neighbor.
what
The
a television
has a telephone,
Lans
Vestmanlands
Tidning. Since
set, and a subscription
his divorce
obtaining
He
had no notable
we
learn, with
What
follows
Then
an
now
abrupt
women.
with
relationships
switch
are the notes
to the
he has
tense:
of
he
left behind.
Left
behind:
for in this spring of 1975 in themiddle of the thaw he finds
out
not
that he will
live
to see
the fall. He
has
terminal
. . .
cancer.
is a
The fact is that Westin
here, to me inexplicable.
deception
tests because
of the kind. He has undergone
does not find out anything
but when
the results are mailed
of pains that he has been experiencing,
There
to open the letter. The whole
book revolves
around
an
own
to
in
with
his
unidentified
cope
process
attempt
private
intervention.
The re-formation
medical
of his psyche
fashion, without
to
in response
pain and doubt is the substance of the book.
disease in the most
indirect yet telling man
introduce
The journals
run
ner. Westin's
he finds the animal he cannot
away, and when
dog has
to him
he refuses
his
understand
considers
as
it behaves
it cannot
him. He
recognize
why
though
as an
all manner
of possibilities,
almost
adding,
afterthought:
is another
There
I can't
believe
That
some
explanation,
it.
all of a sudden
damnably
subtle
I have
fashion
of course,
taken
which
but
it is so crazy
on a different
only
the dog
smell
that
in
can per
ceive.
leaves it unopened
When
the hospital
report finally arrives, Westin
comes to a decision:
he
he will
and goes for a long walk. While
walking
as
a
treat
the situation
kind of Pascalian wager:
ignore the letter, he will
Either
have
154
bad. Or it says that I
says that it's nothing
to die. . . .The smartest
and am going
thing for
this letter
cancer
me would
to open
be not
if I don't
it, because
open
it, there
is still going to be some kind of hope.
aversion Westin
this calculated
With
signals
his determination
to die
us a
his own
of the contradictions
death. He also gives
perfect glimpse
turn face to face with
his refusal to
his speculative
character,
does not really believe
that he's not going
confront facts squarely. Westin
of his
tells us that?but
he knows
that the
journal
is
it will hover
the
his
freedom
mind
of
doubt
margin
requires:
precisely
it would
be transfixed by certainty.
and explore; otherwise
tone of his
to die?the
No
reversal
we
be more
could
our first
exchange
almost instantaneous
right,
from
'outside'
the one we go through as
of
the
lone beekeeper
for the
impression
into his skin. The journals are so forth
than
complete
absorption
so actual, that we take on the lineaments
of Westin's
personality
is so masterful
is that
about Gustafsson's
the first. What
writing
he can
accomplish
minimalist's
gift,
with
Combined
an economy
of means. He has the
to make
as a force.
the unstated
the ability
present
to
this is the composer's
instinct?he
knows when
this with
to fade, when
when
amplify,
texture of consciousness
without
Westin,
monitoring
it, sets down
such
to modulate.
He
ever
achieves
for
straining
his pain, denying
it, courting
a series of reflections.
These
accept
abstract speculation,
reminiscence,
a
up of accounts. His has
drawing
life, he admits as much. There were
a distant
one
marriage,
courtship,
the telling. Gustafsson
knows well
layers of varying
density
psyche,
ineluctable
laws of relativity. The
the credible
it.
it, pretending
take the form
to
of
in their sum,
fantasy, and constitute,
or
not been a very eventful
exciting
student days, a sober
idle, dissipated
love affair, a divorce. But it is all in
that there are layers and layers in the
that are governed
by
shifts and transformations,
the prece
and
substance
are what
detail over another,
the elisions
is
of memory
not
concerns
us.
It
is
its
the
that
Thus,
process,
fascinating.
objects,
can
one
career and wedded
mean
Westin
that
his
whole
life
report
day
dence
of one
less to him
than
the recovery
the book
through
Midway
pain subsides. Westin
of certain
there
images from his childhood.
is an interlude
during which
himself
begins teasing
be getting
may be over, that he might
constant
must
not
that
he
self-admonishment
worst
are
unbearably
means
to have
the
with
the thought
that the
his
well. His hesitation,
to
let himself
hope,
begin
come to understand
He has, simply,
poignant.
the gift of life, that it is a gift. In the end, when
what
it
the pain
155
Starts up again, he writes:
. . .
I have
pause.
Strangely
"I knew
the feeling
that
I had
that I have
only been granted
used it well."
a
Susan Sontag, in Illness As Metaphor, has argued vigorously
against the
of disease, cancer in
and mythification
against
mystification
particular,
that is, that disease can be said to derive from the character
the notion,
The Death of a Beekeeper does, in a sense, promote
the
of the individual.
the repressed life, unfulfilled
between
rela
equivalence
to face oneself
cancer is
and
and inability
directly,
suggested.
woman
Westin
has
the following
the
Ann,
passage.
brought
idea. The
latter
tionships,
Consider
to meet
in love with,
his wife. The unexpected
happens:
one
a
to
another
and develop
take
that
relationship
him. He writes,
excludes
parenthetically:
he has fallen
the
two women
finally
so
me my
last
they took from
(And I think that in doing
a
for
chance for achieving
clarity
independence,
achieving
for which
I had been
and my own dimensions,
about myself
all my
had pointed.
destined
life, toward which
everything
What
the two women
tion of reality,
succeeded
in blocking
was
an erup
of personality.)
the consequence
the cancer would
of such failures
That
be, eventually,
not assent
to. On
it
the other hand,
is an idea that Sontag would
to the theories
that Reich
of
had about the etiology
conforms
exactly
is not one that can
The dispute
I can only affirm that in Gustafsson's
and convincing.
well-imagined
the disease.
manner.
in a trivial
be engaged
is
book the connection
is not to be
and subtle texture of Westin's
dying
profound
a skillful
It has a tonal integrity,
in
manipulation
captured
paraphrase.
awareness
the complex
of tenses, and it depicts very truthfully
emerging
is that between
the
of one human being. The reader's final impression
The
he learns that an ambulance
first journal entry and the last (in which
a great
transformation
has been effected.
has been summoned)
psychic
The tools of language are not very useful with
respect to these processes
is not to be
character
of the change
in the
the precise
and
psyche
can say that the arrow has moved
from lesser to greater,
We
specified.
cannot say,
to acceptance. We
to inside, surface to
denial
outside
depth,
of
his
the
Westin
has
full
that
however,
meaning
experience.
grasped
to say that he has
accurate
It would
be more
be too facile.
That would
156
is that he did not begin to see earlier,
pathos
is
that
he
did
triumph
begin.
Westin
In one of the later
writes:
journal passages
begun
to see. The
but
the
I am of the opinion
that the soul is spherical
(if indeed it has
a
a
at
in which
faint light penetrates
any form
sphere,
all),
a little ways
the
rainbowlike
below
shimmer
o? the
just
sensations and reactions of consciousness
whirl
surface, where
about like soap bubbles, constantly
their color, but
changing
it's only a very little ways.
inside there are only feeble traces of light, approxi
Deeper
like
those in very great ocean depths, and then dark
mately
ness. Darkness,
But not a
It is Gustafsson's
darkness.
threatening
intent
to show how
at the same
not
dark. A motherly
time, what miraculous
a contradiction
but a tension
our constructed
vibrating within
near.
is perilously
slight
darkness.
the V
pirhouettes
of opposites,
selves while
really
it can
is, but to show,
is
perform. This
a tension
everything
that keeps us
that is Other
157