The House in the Dark

by Tarjei Vesaas

Part allegory, part fable, The House In The Dark was written in secret during the German occupation of Norway, and gives a stirring picture of how a society struggled to stay united under the strain of being watched by their invaders. Unusual in Vesaas's oeuvre in that it depicts events in wider society, The House In The Dark is nevertheless as powerful and rewarding as any novel by him

Genres: Fiction, Scandinavian Literature, Novels, War, Classics

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Tarjei Vesaas was a Norwegian poet and novelist. Written in Nynorsk, his work is characterized by simple, terse, and symbolic prose. His stories often cover simple rural people that undergo a severe psychological drama and who according to critics are described with immense psychological insight. Commonly dealing with themes such as death, guilt, angst, and other deep and intractable human emotions, the Norwegian natural landscape is a prevalent feature in his works. His debut was in 1923 with Children of Humans (Menneskebonn), but he had his breakthrough in 1934 with The Great Cycle (Det store spelet). His mastery of the nynorsk language, landsmål (see Norwegian language), has contributed to its acceptance as a medium of world class literature.

Reviews

[BJ Lillis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The House in the Dark is a claustrophobic allegory of the German occupation of Norway, set in a sprawling old house-that-is-not-a-house. Written in the winter and spring of 1945, when Vesaas finished the manuscript, he made a solid zinc box and buried it in the trees by a lake near his home, showing his wife—who would later tell the story—the place, so that she could “find it again if he himself were gone when the time came to have it published.”

Vesaas is one of my favorite writers. On finishing The House in the Dark, I’ve now read all of his novels available in English (though that makes less than half of his oeuvre). Vesaas has an amazing capacity to breathe life into symbolic narratives, to make me believe in characters obviously conceived as types or ciphers. So here—at first this book, with its dark cracking house, its shining arrows, its faceless, abstracted characters, felt almost unbearably contrived. And yet, at some point I found myself caring for these people, found myself believing in this absurd house and its impossible architecture.

I thought this might be a fitting read for our moment, and it was, in a way. We are still a long way from occupied Europe, thank God. But the questions of resistance and complicity that centrally concern Vesaas loom large in my own imagination these dark winter months. Still, I had a great deal of trouble bringing myself to pick the book up on any given evening. And I’m not sure, in the end, if Vesaas had anything to say to me. If reading this book brought anything to my life. I think perhaps not. Nonetheless—an extraordinary literary artifact.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written during the waning months of WWII, this is a paranoid wartime allegory reflecting the experiences of Norwegian citizens during the Russian occupation of their country. It’s a rather smothering, oppressive text, but perhaps that is the point. I found it overly abstract to start, but my interest picked up more as I approached the halfway mark. It contains similarities to Blanchot’s Aminadab, published three years earlier, though this novel is not as opaque. Overall, I thought the book was too long and excessive in its ruminations for the messages it was communicating (i.e., it was scary and difficult to live in Russian-occupied Norway, even more so for those actively involved in the resistance). It’s probable this would have felt a lot more powerful to read at the time it was published, but as a work with lasting universal applicability I don’t think it’s that effective. However, the thematic material is also not what I look for in a Vesaas novel, so my own personal disappointment certainly played a role in my response.

[Nate D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disambiguation: This is a review for Cat Lover by Wendy Owen, which has been obliterated from Goodreads due to apparently sharing an isbn(?!) with Tarjei Vesaas' completely unrelated and vastly superior The House in the Dark. The only point in common is that they were both published by Peter Owen, who was, yes, Wendy's husband.

See my actual House in the Dark review here.
More evidence of weird isbn conflation here.

Actual review of Cat Lover here:

Overwhelmingly ordinary. The back blurb suggested that these were strange stories, giving me a certain degree of Weird hope, but they're only theoretically strange in pretty pedestrian and predictable ways. I mean, of course the cat hoarding older lady put her dead husband into the freezer to feed the cats. Cats here, in general, are used in pretty obvious ways, proxy children and lovers. And when the stories don't go for uninteresting twists, they just unspool in a kind of aimless semi-realism that doesn't offer much insight. On one story, the ordinariness actually totally worked, "Bedtime Story". Because in universal disillusioning experiences, the often utterly ordinary form of the disillusionment is effective insult to injury. But aside from that... I didn't hate it my any means, it just turned out that this volume is as utterly forgettable as its forgotteness (as all of Owen's works, apparently) here on goodreads suggests.

So why was I reading this? Earlier explanation of the annoying route this took into my hands:

So I'd been wanting to read Tarjei Vesaas' house in the dark ever since I read the synopsis, but it was apparently relentlessly out of print. Then, a few weeks back, a reasonably cheap used copy popped up on Amazon and I snapped it up. The book that arrived, however, was The Cat Lover, a book of stories by publisher Peter Owen's (then newly ex-) wife, Wendy. Which seems to be even more obscure. And apparently in permanent conflation with House in the Dark, as seen in the inclusion of a misspelled Vesaas as an author, and the cover image of his novel (this must have come from amazon, and must explain how the wrong book came to be in my hands, I suppose). At some point I'll have to go in and fix this entry here on goodreads, but for now I'm just going to leave the full weirdness of this up there.

Oh, and I guess I will read this book at some point. Strange stories from the 70s by the wife of Anna Kavan's publisher? Fine, okay, I'm curious.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in urgency and under threat in Nazi-occupied Norway at the end of WWII, Vesaas' earlier novel at first seems a surrealizing of the context of its composition, a claustrophobic adventure set in an enormous house shuttered against unending dark brought on by interlopers who have imposed a fascist rule. However, the strange and myth-like setting and general narrative terms seem designed most of all to make the specific general, to add a more universal allegorical/symbolic framework to what is otherwise an all to real and focused account of the psychological and ethical concerns of life in an occupied country. Of the necessity, risks, and subtle and difficult considerations of resistance. Though this is inherently more intense than other Vesaas given its time, it still bears all the marks of his usual empathy towards his characters (even when, as here, they fall at every gradation of the moral continuum), and of the tricky importance of coming to terms with what is past. I've been hunting for this one for ages, and it was very worth it. Vesaas certainly developed as a writer in the 18 years between this and The Ice Palace, but he never again wrote anything with this same kind of dark determination.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shit, damn: I had zero idea that Vesaas wrote anything so completely outside of his later spectral naturalist mode. Color me fucking fabulous: I absolutely adored this. Vesaas was one of an elect true greats, I’m convinced, and to get this whatsit-SciFi-allegorical field-painting IN SITU of a German occupied Norway? Just…it shouldn’t work this well, but holy it does. It’s almost Star Wars, except, um, it’s actually great. Not a bit of outer space, but all very full of those terrible glittering powers expressed against expanses of a different tableau of black. Um, sure.

[Odile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 1945, just after the war, Huset i mørkret [The House in the Dark] is generally considered to be an allegory about that very same war: a tale of occupied Norway and its inhabitants. At the same time, the book transcends the boundaries of 'mere' allegory, becoming a work of higher abstraction that is relevant to many different situations of occupation and war.

The entire book takes place within the walls of the dark house, where people live in rooms and sometimes meander through murky corridors lit by shining golden arrows. The arrows all point toward the centre of the house, where its brain is located. The inhabitants are of many different kinds, from collaborators, underground fighters and innocent children.

This work is a typical though early expression of the style that would make Vesaas such a great writer. His settings contain a level of abstraction and poetry that serve to put universal feelings and themes in a splendid new light. In this book, these themes include treachery, resistance and the question of what is moral in a space occupied by an outside force.

Personally, I think Vesaas his style works most powerfully in his later novels, where nature and mysticism play a bigger role. However, Huset i mørkret applies this style quite well, and is an impressive and highly recommended piece of 'war literature'.

[Julie Bang · Rating 5 out of 5]

All handling i boka er satt i ett og samme hus, ingen er noensinne utenfor huset. Huset er stort og mørkt med mystiske ganger og dører. Rundt om i gangene glider det en vogn som tar mennesker og fører dem til midten. I midten finner man høye murer som skjuler ondskapen på innsiden. Historien tar for seg ulike karakterer i huset, blant annet Stig som er leder for en motstandsgruppe, men også mannen i midten som styrer ondskapen. Språket i romanen er lyrisk fortetta, og ingenting sies direkte. Måtte flere ganger lese tidligere kapitler ettersom jeg fikk vite mer. Man må jobbe med boka for å få en forståelse, samtidig som man kanskje ikke vil forstå alt.

Ofte blir boken trukket fram som et bilde på Norge under 2.VK, men det er først og fremst en skildring av menneskesinnet og hva som driver oss til å gjøre som vi gjør. Andre bøker jeg har lest av Vesaas har jeg slitt med å komme meg gjennom, men denne klarte jeg ikke legge fra meg. Felte til og med en tåre eller to…..Stig<3

[Piotr · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Coś napiszę jutro: bo to nie jest książka, obok której można przejść obojętnie...)

I bądź tu mądry jak słowo się rzekło.
To wymierna strata, że ta książka nie ukazała się po polsku wcześniej. Chociaż wszystkie te nasze odwilże tyle trwały, że żaden tłumacz nie skończyłby pracy. Czy może zaistnieć teraz, gdy czas dla niej najlepszy od wydania (2011)?
Mroczna, surowa alegoria zniewolenia, życia w totalitarnym systemie, świadomego oporu, bezwolnej kolaboracji, podłości i szlachetności w takim natężeniu, jakie mogą pojawiać się tylko w takich czasach.
Książka miejscami wybitna, miejscami jednak nużąca; niestety: pod koniec daje się to we znaki.
Ale... to książka napisana ostatniej wojennej zimy (1944/45), to niezwykłe świadectwo i proroctwo, wciąż aktualna przestroga. To nie jest zwykła książka.

[Ine-Othilie Been · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utrolig gode skildringer av mennesker og deres indre tanker, følelser og konflikter idet de står i en vanskelig og utrygg livssituasjon. Her må man lete i det som blir sagt, for å danne sammenhenger og sette enkelthendelser inn i den større helheten. Noen ganger må man kanskje også akseptere at ikke alt kan, eller trenger, å bli forstått?

[Michał · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dla wielbicieli Kafki bardzo wskazana.

[Ann Myhre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeg sier som andre har sagt, heftig nynorsk. Og skjønner ikke hvordan denne boka kan oversettes i det hele tatt, den må leses på originalspråket.

Fortellingen er egentlig veldig kjedelig, og kunne vært en kjapp novelle: Det fins en helt, motstandsmannen Stig, det fins et knippe karakterer rundt ham som viser størrelsen hans, og det fins en navnløs skurk, pilpusseren, som forgår i egen selvforakt etter å ha angitt Stig til menneskene med makt til å ta liv. Det fins også en annen slags helt, Peter, som nesten på kristent vis plukker opp og redder barna til skurken fra et samfunn som dømmer. Det fins også andre slags skurker, skurker i betydning "they dont rise to the occasion". Han som ikke ønsker ansvaret det er i å velge side. Han som ikke tør når ansvaret legges på bordet. Mennesker, med andre ord.

Selve bildet, huset, fungerer ikke i det hele tatt, og det ser ut til at Vesaas på et eller annet tidspunkt bare slapp hele den ideen og gikk over til det han virkelig kan, skrive om mennesker, særlig menn, i et språk som ... ja, siden jeg ikke eier det språket sjøl er det vanskelig å omtale det. Jeg brukte veldig lang tid på denne boka fordi språket er så fantastisk, og ikke ligner noe annet. Jeg er takknemlig som kan få lese denne boka på originalspråket.

Boka må leses. Ikke som krigsroman. Ikke fordi den er så moderne eller tidsriktig, men for å lære mer om menneske-sinnet.

Jeg kjøpte boka brukt i en gjenbruksbutikk i Stavanger. Det er for øvrig et par skrivefeil i boka, noe som gjør den enda mer sjarmerende.

[Klissia]

Uma obra abstrata e claustrofóbica sobre a resistência norueguesa contra o regime nazista, uma maneira criativa e fabulesca de retratar a realidade. Porém senti falta do lirismo da escrita de suas obras anteriores, mas é compreensível ,este aqui é um escritor em encontro com os perigos da realidade ao seu redor. O mundo natural aqui é o homem, mas não há coisas belas a se descrever...

[Nora Lindi · Rating 3 out of 5]

God beskrivelse av hvordan det føltes å bo i Norge under 2.verdenskrig, men skjønte ikke så mye mer enn det. Heffftig nynorsk.

[Mari Klevgård · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ikke akkurat lettlest. Var nær ved å gi meg flere ganger, men valgte å fullføre og glad for det. Jeg skjønte vel (forhåpentligvis) hovedessensen og det var bra!!

[Yancy Craft · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is masterfully written, but don't get into it if you are looking for a plot driven novel. It has one, but that is not what is engaging.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.75 stars.
"But somewhere far, far away stars are striding across the wide plains of the sky" (21).
"Then he is suddenly frightened by an icy thought: Perhaps this night thy soul shall be required of thee" (22).
"...a satisfied in his heart: Look how human he is! That's how we are when we don't show off and try to be different and superior and condemn others' (25).
"How stupid people are!
"I'll never know how to take them" (26).
"His hands treasure the memory of her body" (27).
"Stig is gnawed by shame" (41).
"A face savage with tension, and death-dealing hands" (92).
"He has a tall stack of truths so he had better take out a couple of them" (102).
"Some things stand beneath the trembling pressure, others give way. Here something of value between two people has fallen to pieces" (104).
*The scene involving those comfortable, uncurious, uninvolved citizens is eerie and terrifying (in the best way those sensations can be transcribed).

[PerkyWallflower]

Only because of school related stuff.. I have no idea if I will enjoy this book or not. We'll see.

[Lenča Krmíčková · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doporučuju všem, co mají rádi Orwellovo 1984