The ancient kingdom's young writing school

Literary Review, Spring, 2004 by Thomas E. Kennedy

One remarkable fact about the Danish Writers School is its youth. The 1000-year-old Kingdom of Denmark established a Royal Academy of Fine Art for painting in 1754, a Royal Academy of Music in 1867, and its Theater School dates back to the 1700s, but there was no officially recognized Danish Writers School until 1996. Of course, there were circles and salons associated with particular publications and movements, but not until the mid-1980s had the late Danish poet Poul Borum begun to pave the way to a formal system of education for writers.

At present, the school is housed in two small rooms in the Danish Writers Union in Copenhagen. I am met at the door by the school's Rector, Hans Otto Jorgensen, who offers his hand. It is rough and strong as a farmer's, which was his occupation until he was 35. Rector Jorgensen--Hans Otto, that is; Danes are informal--explains the school's late start in terms not foreign to the American experience: initial resistance from conservative academics and from some established authors who insist proudly, and perhaps defensively, "I never needed to take a course in writing." Even such a leading cultural light as Klaus Rifbjerg--who in stature and production might be described as a Danish equivalent to Updike--has been heard to protest the "intellectualizing and academicizing" of the writer's craft and art.

Hans Otto Jorgensen's background can hardly be faulted as such; his formal education is in agriculture, though from the age of sixteen, his ambition was to write. He loves the land--more especially, he loves cows; after his first novel was published in 1989, he supported himself while he wrote the next few by caring for the cows of a dairy-farmer neighbor who wanted free time to hunt. Following his late start--which he attributes to a slow maturity--Hans Otto made up for lost time, publishing 15 books in as many years--novels, collections of stories and poems, plays, even a children's book. Initially invited as a guest lecturer to the Writers School, he was offered its leadership when Rector Niels Frank withdrew to have time for his own writing. Hans Otto acknowledges his predecessor's decision with a wry smile; in the 18 months he has been Rector, he has not had time to write anything unrelated to the school.

Another of the familiar objections to formalized education of writers--"You can't teach inspiration, you can't teach talent."--is neatly parried in the school's statutory objectives: to educate the student's talent as a writer. That education is at once broad and deep. The aim is to acquaint the student with the craft and art of creating fiction and poetry, but also with the compositional processes of the other arts--painting, music, and theater. The latter objective is pursued via a cooperation with the academies of art and music and the Danish National School of Theater. In fact, the school will soon be moving from its current cramped quarters to a much roomier suite at the Academy of Fine Arts.

One of the charges made by critics and publishers against the school was that it furthered "small" literature--a pejorative category akin to what Anthony Burgess once called "Class 1 literature," literature that focuses equally on form and content. In Denmark, the term refers to literature that doesn't sell so well as the lighter genres, but also that doesn't have an epochal embrace, the fictional summarizing of an era and its generations, which is so popular. The school and its writers are detached from the market; emphasis is on the writer's sovereignty. Out of about 200 applicants, 6-8 are accepted for admission to the school each year.

The focus is on language and on the premise that it is not the writer's duty to entertain or come to the reader; rather it is the reader who must come to the writing. Hans Otto further emphasizes the importance of writers not allowing themselves to become their own censors.

In Denmark, the current Minister of Culture has called for a closer cooperation between literature and industry--which Hans Otto Jorgensen cites as all the more reason that literature not place itself in the service of the state or of market forces, that it take its starting point anywhere else but from the "useful." Neither does he see Danish literature as a protector of the Danish language or cultural heritage. Here one thinks of Joyce's statement that one of a writer's prime duties must be "to insult the national vanity."

Of interest from the American viewpoint is the fact that the debate about such matters is conducted in the daily press; the general public listens and participates. But Denmark is also a country where mass circulation newspapers such as Politiken and Information have been known to review issues of journals like The Literary Review, Frank, and Cimarron Review. When has the New York Times Book Review ever deigned even to in-brief such journals, with the exception of the Paris Review?

Attention at the school is also focused on philosophy, esthetics and linguistics as well as to nurturing the students' understanding of themselves as writers in a world beyond the language and borders of Denmark and its five million inhabitants.