Linn Ullmann, a Norwegian author, has come up with a new book titled Time for the Eyes to Adjust. An award winning novelist, she says, “Art is about realization and within realization you always find comfort. This is true for all art. Great art can sometimes manage to make people realise something…” Ullmann does not feel writing creates only an esoteric illusion, she is very down to earth as she says, “I think the duty of the artist is to write about power and expose power…but the form this should take will vary…the most hard hitting political novels are not necessarily the ones that say so…but the artist has the responsibility to be critical of power. There is nothing worse than an artist who sucks up to power, whether it is within music or literature or visual arts. An artist should use his or her tool to see through power structures in society. But this can be done in many different ways.”
Ullmann, however, does not feel that the artist should speak out because he or she is called upon to, but it should be a delicately worded opinion that builds into their work. The artist has to be alert to it in his or her thoughts. But power is much larger in dimension as she visualizes it. She says, “I think that several of my books are about power structures. Power is embodied within language. Who is dead or alive? Who has the right to take a life?...” Ullmann refers to one of her books titled The Cold Song and says, “There it is about who has the power to say what exists and what doesn’t. What is worthless and what has value? The person who is telling the story is often the one who has the power. The person who says, “This is our story…” , is the one who has the power.” Ullmann defines good literature as, “In all good literature there is something which you can recognize. But for literature to be really good you need the opposite too. You need the element of unfamiliarity.
If you constantly recognise yourself and your emotions in literature, then it becomes a mirror. It needs to go beyond that. My biggest reading experiences have given me the feeling that the text is looking right at me and that I see myself in it. But they have also given me the feeling,” Wow I don’t get any of this!”.
Grandmother’s guidance
How did I get here? This book really confounds me! I have to concentrate and understand this….If literature can bring about both recognition and that which lies beyond recognition then its is truly excellent.”
Ullmann’s grandmother was a bookseller. Ullmann says her grandmother laid great emphasis on speaking a language correctly, on being well read and reading all genres of writing. She was the one who sent her books constantly. My parents,” says Ullmann travelled a lot and I often found myself lonely. Literature was a place where I could recognise things which I thought were felt only by me. I remember that as being really comforting. …”
