A struggle not to scream

Norway doesn’t have a world-class philosopher (Kierkegaard was Danish). Karl Ove Knausgaard declared at the end of his previous book that he is no longer a writer, and it looks as though he’s moving in to fill that space. A very modern space: a selfie space. Nietzsche observed that all philosophy is autobiography, and Knausgaard certainly qualifies, having written 4,000 pages of a multi-volume autobiography called My Struggle.

Now he has given us a book on Edvard Munch, the Norwegian artist best known for painting ‘The Scream’. Munch wrote an almost Knausgaardian number of autobiographical pages in his private journals while recording the outer reality of his life in hundreds of self-portraits. Both men operate on the principle that scrupulous self-examination is the only way of arriving at some sort of universal truth.

My art is self-confession. Through it I seek to clarify my relationship with the world. This could also be called egotism. However, I have always thought and felt that my art might help others to clarify their own search for truth.

Who wrote that? Munch or Knausgaard?

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Douglas Murray

Why were the Abedis here in the first place?

With Knausgaard’s book on Munch, we enter the realm of biography written by the doppelgänger. These two handsome, brilliant, wildly solitary, introverted Norwegians feel compelled to bare their souls publicly in their art while neurotically guarding their personal privacy. Ibsen was the same.

The self-effacement of the artist seems to be vital to the psyche of the creative Norwegian giant. What he produces for public consumption really is the tiny tip of the massive submerged iceberg, the bit of the self that he’s prepared to show us.

So Much Longing in So Little Space was first published two years ago in Norwegian. Now it’s translated in time for the current exhibition at the British Museum, curated by Giulia Bartrum (Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, until 21 July).