Hærværk

by Tom Kristensen

En intens psykologisk roman om den fallerede digter Ole Jastrau, der holder sig oppe ved at anmelde kunst i Dagbladet. Hans egen inspiration er brændt ud, og fornemmelsen af tomhed og desillusion taget til.Han indhentes af sin ungdom, da to forhenværende kommunistvenner, Sanders og Steffensen, dukker op i hans lejlighed og bliver vidne til Jastraus udpinte ægteskab. Den fascinerende brutale Steffensen stimulerer Jastraus begyndende drikkeri, og hærværket sætter i gang. Stykke for stykke drikker han sig fra ægteskab, barn, job - alt. Tom Kristensens klassiske undergangsfortælling bliver i denne nye udgave indledt med et forord af Jan Sonnergaard.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Danish, Denmark, Novels, 20th Century, Scandinavian Literature

571 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

For the Norwegian author by the same name, please see: Tom Kristensen

Tom Aage Kristensen was born in London in United Kingdom in 1893 to Danish parents. In his early childhood the family moved back to Denmark, more specifically Copenhagen, where Kristensen grew up.

Kristensen was a Danish poet, writer, and critic. He was a key figure in Danish literature in the interwar period (as well as later), and is considered one of the few Danish expressionist writers.

A path towards literature was being shaped early on, as he was named after the fictional character Uncle Tom from Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which was his mother's favorite book.

In 1919 Kristensen graduated with a major in Danish. After graduating he taught English for two years whilst writing his first works. In 1920 he debuted as a poet, when Fribytterdrømme (in English: "Freebooter Dreams") was published. The year after he made his debut as a novelist with Livets Arabesk (in English: "The Arabesque of Life"). Both works are characterized as expressionistic writings with strong influences from Nietzsche's thoughts on chaos and lack of accept of the passed-on systems of belief.

During the 1920's Kristensen travelled a lot within and outside of Europe. Travels to i.e. China, Japan and Spain resulted in published fictional depictions of his destinations.

Despite his many travels and writings thereof, his probably best known novel takes place in his own Copenhagen as well as in some of his own personal struggles:
In 1930 Hærværk (published in English in 1968 as Havoc) was published. The novel, considered by many to be Kristensen's greatest work, revolts around the life of alcoholized literary critic Ole Jastrau, whose life bears great resemblance to Tom Kristensen's own life at the time. The story depicts a self-destructive nihilistic soul determined to drink himself to death in a modern western capital. Kristensen's fascination with chaos and disaster once again shines through in his masterpiece.

A few years after the death of his third wife in 1943, he withdrew from the Danish capital, and moved to the small island Thurø in 1946 where he lived until his death in 1974.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Havoc should come with a health warning. Tom Kristensen's novel, about a thirty-something literary critic who loses himself in a maelstrom of drink, jazz, and sex is one of the most disturbing and absorbing accounts of self-destruction in modern European literature."

The above warning is from Morten Høi Jensen’s Introduction to the novel in the New York Review Books edition. I couldn’t think of more accurate words to describe what a reader is in store for with Havoc. Incidentally, the literal translation of the original Danish title Hærværk is vandalism, and that’s vandalism as a ravaging, sacking, smashing, wreckage, defacing and trashing. In other words, creating havoc.

I was initially drawn to this novel since one literary critic called it the Steppenwolf of Danish literature. Ah, the magic theater and a magic carpet ride in Copenhagen – irresistible. And similar to the connection between Hermann Hesse and wolf of the steppes Harry Haller, author Tom Kristensen (1893-1974) most definitely shares much with his protagonist Ole Jastrau – he published poetry and worked as a literary critic in Copenhagen, had rocky relations with women (Kristensen was married five times), and, most famously, was an excessive drinker.

The opening pages of Kristensen's Havoc (published in 1930) provide the frame: Ole Jastrau sits at his desk in his apartment down the street from Copenhagen’s Town Square Hall. There’s a stack of books waiting for his review. No question, Ole needs peace and quiet so he can do his job. But he has anything but peace and quiet: the telephone keeps ringing, the front doorbell keeps ringing and, since his wife Johanne is out shopping, Ole must deal with his nagging young son Oluf. Ahhhhh! Enough to drive a book reviewer crazy . . . or drive him to the bottle for a much needed drink.

The doorbell rings yet again. Standing in the hallway are none other than Ole’s old buddies Bernhard Sanders and Stefan Steffensen, Sanders a Communist agitator and Steffensen an antiestablishment poet, both men wanted by the police, both men wanting to hide out in Jastrau’s apartment. And since Jastrau invites his visitors in, he has just obliterated the prospect of spending the next hours writing book reviews.

As host, Ole Jastrau brings out a bottle of liquor to offer his guests a drink. And it is exactly at this juncture Tom Kristensen offers readers what will amount to a cantus furmus for the entire 500-page novel: “Already, now that he hugged the bottle close against his chest, he felt a warm sense of reassurance. It was as if he suddenly found himself at home – he who felt like a stranger everywhere, here among his own furniture, here with his own son, yes, even with the things he wrote.”

Havoc is intense, every single scene counts and provides its own distinctive sting as we witness Ole Jastrau’s slide into chaos. Thus, in this sense, we have a work of bleak existentialism. Perhaps Ole Jastrau would have felt a kinship with the father of existentialism who also spent his brief life writing in the city of Copenhagen – none other than nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. But, alas, Jastrau wasn’t given the opportunity as Kierkegaard's work and ideas were not rediscovered and brought to light throughout Europe until many years later.

One of the more intriguing parts of the novel is Ole’s ongoing conversations with Arne Vulum, a man of letters and reviewer of foreign literature, a critic known for not having read a single book of Danish fiction for at least five years. Vulum relates with pride the fact he no longer writes in Danish because his home language, like American English, has been infected with the barbarism of materialistic culture. In many ways, the Jastrau-Vulum connection highlights how, from a particular angle, a reading of Havoc can be taken as a denouncement of a society submerged and made soulless by omnipresent, moneygrubbing capitalism.

Since repetition a la Nietzsche’s eternal return is among the novel’s major themes, let me repeat, in a bar blaring with jazz, drinking and more drinking, alone in his apartment following the departure of Johanna and Oluf, drinking and more drinking, in the publisher’s office, roaming out on the street, in bed with a prostitute, each and every scene delivers its own unique existential sting.

One telling example: Ole and Johanna get dressed up to attend a formal party. In his tails and white tie Ole feels like a waiter – and in the daylight he has the sense all of this is a masquerade, even a carnival. Shapely, attractive Johanne puts on her black dress with bold yellow pattern. Swelling curves, full breasts, sexy legs, Ole sees Johanne as too provocative, an untamed creature having a come-on look. As much as Ole Jastrau yearns for the Dionysian frenzy of a swirling booze fueled chaos, the bourgeois in him recoils at the sight of his wife looking dangerous. Jarstau’s conflicted nature does indeed echo Harry Haller, thus I can see why Havoc is the Danish Steppenwolf.

After the party, a get-together that made Jastrau feel as if he was held in the clutches of the flames of hell, he and Johanna ride back in a cab. Jastrau says he can’t take it any longer. Johanna asks in a severe tone why he turned the photographs of his mother and son around at home. Jastrau reflects: “In his mind’s eye he saw himself as he had been there in the apartment – how, unable to rest because of dissipation an the whiskey in his system, he had paced back and forth through the rooms and suddenly felt himself tormented by the two faces, the photographs of his mother and his son, how he had had a feeling that they could see right through him, and then he had turned the pictures around.”

This two hundred pages in. The following three hundred pages rage on, spiraling down in an alcoholic burn. No wonder Morten Høi Jensen issued his warning. And no wonder Havoc has had a cult following ever since. Vandalism given literary form by one of the most articulate and sensitive souls writing in the first half of the twentieth century. Thank you New York Review Books for republishing. An overlooked classic deserving a wide modern audience.


Danish author Tom Kristensen

[Guille · Rating 3 out of 5]

”¡De profundis clamavi!”

La novela se lee con la sensación persistente del que está viendo una película de terror en la que el estúpido personaje, haciendo oídos sordos a todas nuestras advertencias, se va encaminando hacia la puerta con la intención de abrirla. ¡No la abras, no abras esa maldita puertaaaaaa¡, nos desgañitamos inútilmente: el personaje, obviamente, abre la puerta y… Bien, pues así nos las tenemos que ver, aunque sin sombra alguna de la intensidad que ponemos ante el tipo de la puerta, durante más de seiscientas páginas con Ole Jastrau, un pobre hombre con una juventud políticamente rebelde y con ínfulas de poeta que a su mediana edad se ve encerrado en una vida burguesa y acomodada que lo va secando poco a poco mientras él se va mojando en alcohol de mucho en mucho. De nada sirve que nos desgañitemos mentalmente, Ole Jastrau va tomando en cada momento la opción que justamente más le perjudica, aunque quizá sea también la única opción que puede soportar, la que le acerca un poquito más a la devastación buscada.

”¡Oh, allí no había vacío! ¡Vida! ¡Vida!... Sumérgete en whisky y cree en tus amigos.”

Nada se le puede decir a Jastrau, no serían más que “voces desde la orilla mientras él pasa flotando a la deriva”. Su familia, su trabajo, su vida entera, la que siente como una traición a todos sus principios, se va escabullendo poco a poco en una lenta espiral degradante alrededor del desagüe que, como un agujero negro, terminará por atraerlo y absorberlo sin mucha resistencia por su parte. Jastrau es de esas personas que arrojan sobre sus espaldas todas las culpas de la humanidad y por las que, como la figura de Jesucristo con la cual se identifica a menudo, no descansará hasta obtener su castigo.

“Sí, beber hasta perder el juicio tenía algo de religioso. La sensación de vacío se desvanecía. El espacio se colmaba de un yo ruidoso, balbuciente y borracho, todo el espacio.”

El atractivo de ese fondo del pozo al que se dirige activamente radica en el sentimiento de invulnerabilidad, no tener ya nada que temer, y, sobre todo, no tener que ceder más para mantener esa vida burguesa que desprecia tan intensamente y para la que no encuentra alternativa posible más allá del próximo vaso de whisky.

“Nunca he visto una anémona azul… necesito sacarme de la cabeza esta asquerosa anémona azul, la muy maldita.”

Todo esto suena muy bien, al menos para un lector como yo. Hasta tiene alguna que otra pincelada de humor:

“—La vida es la mayor canallada con la que me he topado, qué vergüenza que Goethe jamás escribiera una palabra al respecto.
—Sí, es para volverse loco… La cantidad de cosas que Goethe no escribió.”

Y sin embargo, a pesar de todo ese interesante camino hacia la devastación personal, uno lee las seiscientas cincuenta páginas con una aburrida indiferencia. El estilo de Kristensen es frío, su ritmo, lento, las escenas, repetitivas (quizás un homenaje al eterno retorno de Nietzsche, citado en la novela) … En fin, otro libro en el que la letra es estupenda pero la música no es capaz de resaltarla como convendría.

“Hay que construir un lenguaje nuevo… El lenguaje es una furcia, sí, señor. El ser humano jamás debería haberse liado con ella. No debería haber aprendido a hablar, no. Eso ha destruido la vida… esas estúpidas palabras cierran el camino hacia el infinito”

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Behold the man. But wasn’t it a lie to maintain that he had sought for the spiritual? He with his Mongoloid features? The infinitude and intractability of the soul?

Anyway what had come of it?

A ruined marriage and a lost job. Here he was. Brawling and broken window panes. Tawdry seduction and infidelity. Ridiculous conversion and a home gone up in flames. Hallucinations and havoc. And Ecce Homo! Was it a man who stood here? And whiskey, whiskey, whiskey!

I have longed for shipwrecks,
For havoc and sudden death.”

Ole “Jazz” Jastrau has a respectable job writing book reviews for the newspaper Dagbladet. He has an apartment, a wife, a child, and all the books he could possibly read. He has the same dissatisfaction that all people have, wondering if this is it. Is this all? These are mild concerns, but then two communist friends shove their way into the apartment, on the run from the police, and in the course of their discourse with Jazz, they shove wedges and crowbars into the cracks of his insecurities and make them into yawning chasms of all consuming rebellion.

He begins to drink too much.

His wife and child move out.

The books, his livelihood, piled about his apartment are oppressing him with their demands to be read. ”It was impossible to escape one’s fate. There lay the stack of review copies---waiting, waiting.” There are many of us reviewers who have suffered from a cacophony of imploring overtures, not only from new books and their anxious authors, but also the books from the past that still haunt us with their beseeching appeals for our attention.

”Yes, of course. He was going to resign. It was like peeling a whole layer of opinions from himself. He no longer wanted a steady job as a producer of opinions. Infinity---was that not what he was seeking? He wanted to be an infinite person, one who was initiated into the mysteries.”

Jazz is railing, in his own fashion, at the shape of the world. He doesn’t see what he gains from being a productive member of it, except increasing levels of responsibility and a growing distance from what makes life real.

Whiskey seems to be the quickest way to go to the dogs. If he becomes a drunken lout, little will be expected of him. He can focus on reaching the divine, which frankly, whatever that is becomes more and more muddled in his mind. Whiskey induced philosophical hallucinations of Jesus and Nietzsche lead to an ill-fated attempt by Jazz to convert to Catholicism.

Giving up the religion of economics to clutch at faith? Leaping from one blazing inferno into yet another?

In the introduction, Morten Høi Jensen sums up the novel perfectly. ”Havoc should come with a health warning. Tom Kristensen’s novel, about a thirty-something literary critic who loses himself in a maelstrom of drink, jazz, and sex, is one of the most disturbing and absorbing accounts of self-destruction in modern European language.”

There is music. ”This feeling was tempered somewhat, as it was by the jazz from the worn and scratchy records on the phonograph.”

There is drink, of which Tom Kristensen has firsthand knowledge. ”On more than one occasion, his nighttime exploits landed him in a cell at the local police station, where it was joked that Kristensen didn’t have enough blood in his alcohol content.”---Morten Høi Jensen

There is sex and the accompanying worry of disease. A woman by the name of Black Else keeps showing up, and despite warnings from his friend Vuldum that she is diseased, Jazz can not stay away from her. By attempting to avoid her, he just keeps finding her. After an unwise assignation, he sees her as a vision caught against the backdrop of a fire from across the street. ”...fiery shadows, bloody shadows. The naked female body floated upright but obliquely through purple waves, arms outstretched above its head. A greenish darkness lurking in the shadowy armpits. Black Else! Her breasts became so full in the reflections of the red light flickering on the yellow skin. Feminine curves. Just then a tongue of flame shot up across the way and ignited another curtain--an elongated feminine arm, a demanding feminine body, supple, alluring, devouring. A raging fire. Yes---a woman.”

There is seduction. Not by Jazz, but of Jazz by a married woman named Luise Kryger. ”The neck of the pajama top had fallen aside, and in the glow from the pink fabric one of her breasts, which had come to view, shone with a fresh and youthful charm, and the dark nipple caught his glance and fascinated him by its disproportionate size, so large was the brown aureola surrounding it.”

That dark nipple is going to cause Jazz all sorts of irritations with the unwanted attentions of her cuckold husband, who keeps trying to usher him out of town with a cluster of Øre notes.

There is also the heady backdrop of Copenhagen pollution. ”Standing beneath this wide-open expanse they both instinctively drew a deep breath of cool evening air, seasoned with gasoline and perfume and the fetid odor of many people, to which was added the acrid aroma of metal and coal smoke from the subterranean railway---a slightly intoxicating draught of poisonous liqueurs that the big city had to offer in spring.”

This book has never been out of print in Denmark since it was published in 1930. There is a good reason for this, because the concerns of Jazz are the same concerns of the modern age. As society demands more from us for less in return, and we become aware of the true shambles our belief in the system has made for us, the urge to drop out becomes more and more appealing. There is a cautionary tale mingled with the booze, slutty encounters, and the “deviant” music that going to the dogs creates just as much anxiety as being a productive member of society. Hedonism certainly has some attractions, but the cost proved too high for Jastrau and, in the end, to be equally dissatisfying. Perhaps we all should do some unpeeling, but at a moderate speed so we don’t find ourselves face down in a gutter with a mangy critter licking our sweaty, whiskey swollen faces.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visithttp://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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[Tony]

The short bio in the front of this book says, "Kristensen lived a notoriously dissolute life." So, write about what you know, right?

The protagonist is Ole Jastrau, a book reviewer for a Danish newspaper, circa 1930. He's married with child. He's paid well enough. He says he loves his son. His wife is not a shrew, even saying the immortal words to him: I wish you always had a hangover. But enough is enough (maybe it was the prostitute), and his wife leaves with son and Jastrau can continue with his dissolution.

Yet, Jastrau is never alone. And, oddly, never truly despised.

His friends all call him Jazz, and there is a Jazz theme running through the novel. Well, Jazz music plays and the author repeats little phrases, thinking perhaps that that is Jazz. But recurring themes and phrases are not unique to Jazz. It's through repetition that one gets to know hell.

Ah. Religion. So, maybe there's a Christ motif. And, yes, Jastrau says be good to each other. And in case we missed that, the author says, you know, like Jesus Christ. His drunken romances are likened to Jesus and the fallen women. Even one of the four parts of the book is called Ecce homo. For chrissakes.

But then he tries to break into a church, unsuccessfully, and in perfect character, says: I know a bar that's never closed.

So, perhaps, my allegorical friends, Jastrau is someone else.

A friend says to him, "Life is the damnedest filthy mess I've ever come up against, and it's amazing that Goethe never said so in one syllable."

That's an amazing sentence, by the way, and we weren't even talking about Goethe. The reader does a double-, triple-take. The reader stops in mid-conversation because Goethe did say so . . . in one syllable. That guy. Jastrau is sober or drunk enough to reply, "Yes, all the things Goethe didn't say are enough to drive you crazy."

Now, a little known fact is that lead guitarists in a rock band, American football quarterbacks, and book reviewers always get the girl. Jastrau, for all his dissolution, had a way with women.

"Oh, by the way," Fru Kryger said, squeezing his arm, "the other day you wrote about a contemporary Irish book, didn't you? About Odysseus, I think it was."

Jastrau tells her that a little thing like her might not be able to carry Ulysses but he lends it to her anyhow, with a warning: It takes a series of directions to get through it.

There's a few other references to a pallid whale, but by then I was only looking for soundbites.

There were those gems popping up in a series of conversations in bars. Like a cool solo, a bit of artistry, in an extended boring Jazz piece. But it's Jazz, not truth, I seek in drunken revelry.

I don't want to hear the truth at my table. . . . It isn't housebroken.

[João Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riiiiing, Riiiiing... Hello, Ole Jastrau speaking. Ole Jastrau, the critic? Yes, that's me. Who's calling? João Reis. Who? João Reis. Never heard the name. That makes sense, as I was born 55 years after this book was first published. You were? Good for you, pal. And what do you want? Well, taking into account how things work, I want to have a word with you about my next novel. You see... Oh, I see indeed. You're pulling a HC Stefani on me? You can say so, yes, Jazz. Don't call me Jazz, prick. You're the prick, asshole. You're the asshole, you piece of shit. And you're a damm drunkard. Who, me? I just drink a glass or two. No, no, you keep hitting the bottle. By the way, I live quite near the port wine cellars, you know. Want to take a sip? Hmm, that would be great. And can I also borrow a couple of kroner from you? Ole, Ole, in 2020's Copenhagen a couple of kroner won't get you booze. Whatever, just loan me some more. Let's go to the dogs together. Sorry, I don't drink.

Writers, boozers, poets, journalists, whores, critics, art. Ole Jastrau, ecce homo.

Havoc, a fabulous, fun novel by Tom Kristensen in which some episodes don't really add up and whose ending is pretty much obvious since the beginning (the fire is quite predictable and too convenient as he insists on talking about that fire insurance policy throughout the book, and having that lascivious woman as his neighbour and dweller of the flat in front of his is rather silly), but which is proof that a book is more than all its parts considered separately.
A great read, a powerful character-driven novel. I surely recommend it. Read it!
Translated by Carl Malmberg.

[Raya راية · Rating 4 out of 5]

"في زماننا قد يُولَد قدّيسٌ واحدٌ كلَ مئة عام، بينما يو لدُ آثمو ن كلَ ثانية، نحن لسنا قلّة ".
- توم كريستينسن

تتناول رواية "هدم" للروائي توم كريستينسن حياة شاعر وصحفي معروف يعمل في أكبر الصحف الدنماركية، يعيش حياة مستقرة، بدَخل ثابت، وعائلة وأطفال، وشقَّة راقية، قرّر فجأة أن يهدمَ حياته. هذا القرار، كما سوف نرى، يتجاوزُ طابعَ التمرد الشخصي إلى اضطرابات مرحلة زمنية كاملة.

تدورُ أحداثُ الرواية في فترة من تاريخ الدنمارك، جرى فيها الكثيرُ من المتغيرات سياسياً واقتصادياً واجتماعياً، وهي الفترة ما بين الحربَيْن التي تناولها الأدبُ الأوروبي بتوسع. عُدّت الرواية وثيقةً لما أُطلق عليه جيلَ ما بين الحربَيْن الضائع، وظهرت انعكاساته واضحةً عبرَ فصول الرواية متمثّلةً في استعراض دقيق ممتع لإيقاع المدينة، ونبضها، في مرحلة أواخر العشرينيات.

تُعد الرواية من الأعمال الكلاسيكية الرائعة للأدب الدنماركي، فهي فضلاً عن
التفاصيل الدقيقة التي تُقدّمُها عن حالة البطل، تتناول بتحليل عميق الشّكَّ الذي
يصيبُ الإنسانَ في بحثه عن الحقيقة، معنى وجوده وأهمّيّته. ما معنى الدّين ودوره؟
هل تختلفُ الكاثوليكية في نظرتها إلى الإنسان؟ وما الذي يُقرّب الإنسان من المسيح؟
هل هو سُكْره وانسحابه؟ أم إيمانه الديني؟

...

[Lars Jerlach · Rating 5 out of 5]

To paraphrase the Norwegian Nobel Prize Winner Knut Hamson as he wrote in a letter to Tom Kristensen after having read Hærværk: "Over the past one and a half days I have been living with Jastrau and the other characters, but now that it's over, I am sitting here missing them so much that it hurts. It seems so empty now that it's finished......a stroke of genius and a masterpiece".

[Rick Harsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books like Havoc make me realize I'm a lousy book reviewer. A good reviewer would write a few paragraphs alluding to various facets of the book and its time and then provide a lengthy summary and follow with some brilliant insights. Me? I read the book knowing I was lucky to have it recommended and am engaged and know by page 100 it is a great book and start thinking too much of what I want to say in a review and the more I think of it the less I understand how to review the book.
I begin to think of comparisons...Dostoevsky for Copenhagen in the 1920s? The book was published in 1930. It isn't postmodern. It's rather old-fashioned. Do I think of Knut Hamsun's Mysteries because that, too, was Nordic and the protagonist was unmoored? Should I consider it proto-existentialist for the absurd and inexplicable behavior of Ole Jastrau, our hero who goes to the dogs? Does the book fall into that most jejune of all categories, modernist? Actually, yes. Yes, I think, in that it is very much a book of a man in a large city during a time of absurd freedoms and clearly random yet bullying expectations. Ole more or less has it made at age 35, being the literary editor of what appears to be the most significant daily newspaper in Denmark, and he is not even required to work every day. But he is not satisfied, and it is never made clear why. He needs to go to the dogs. Is it freedom he seeks? Not necessarily, not explicitly stated. So it must be meaning. Yet throughout the year or so the book's action most conversations, most action, is of obscure motivation. The need to go to the dogs, though, somehow is passed by Kristensen through Jastrau to the reader. Reviewers should be definitive. So here: this is a book intended to make the reader want to go to the dogs. The conflict is rather simple: going to the dogs requires dissolution in the form of drinking, drinking requires money, which you run out of when you go to the dogs. "A thinking brain was a painful affliction." Yeah, I get that. My brain thinks I need to drink, but then it cautions me about the consequences, which make want to drink even more...when I think about it.
The inevitable Kjaer pulled one of his own teeth, got the whole thing out in one blackish, nerve-trailing piece. To Jastrau: "It looks like my lawyer." One of the delights of this novel is that you never know what anyone is going to say. It's a floating world, a portrait of a floating world. "A fish in sunlit water. Sharp outlines of buildings and traffic. Somewhere inside his brain a cocktail glowed." Often Kristensen uses ship imagery. Jastrau often imagines he's at sea. Ceilings in the morning are disturbing. "I have longed for shipwrecks, havoc and violent death" is the most famous bit from the book, apparently...
I want badly to get drunk.

[Nizar · Rating 4 out of 5]

هذه رواية بطيئة، ستعلمك أن تتذوق الأدب على مهل. ذكرتني كثيرًا هذه الرواية بالمقولة التالية: الجوع هو أمهر الطباخين، بذلك عمد توم كريستينسن على طبخ هذه الرواية بشكل بطيئ جدًا. فهو منذ البداية يعلمك بأن بين يديك نص أدبي يحترم، يحضر على نار هادئة.

تكمن قوة هذه الرواية في الوصف، يصف كريستينسن المشاهد بشكل عظيم، ليبلغ منتهى العظمة التي تجعل النص الأدبي أغنى من الحقيقة، أو أكثر حقيقة من الحقيقة نفسها.

هي قصة ياستراو، ناقد أدبي وأب لطفل، يعمل في صحيفة دنماركية ذائعة الصيت. حياة مستقرة مثالية، بناء مشيد متين، يتعرض - باختياره - ومن حادثة بسيطة جدًا للهدم. لنقرأ بعدها حياة سكير، مهمل، مهدوم.
هذه الرواية والتي تعتبر من كلاسيكيات الأدب الدنماركي، وصفت بأنها سيرة كريستينسن الذاتية ولكنها كانت متمثلة بياستراو. ��بما من هنا اكتسبت الرواية هذا العمق الغريب في شخوصها وخصوصًا شخصية البطل ياستراو.

رواية تحلق بك في رحلة المعنى، وما وراءه. رواية خطرة، مرهقة، تستنزف كل ذرة في دماغك، وكل قطرة في دمك.

طوال ممارستي لفعل القراءة، كنت أقف كثيرًا، رواية صعبة، كأن كريستينسن يحاول إجهادنا كما أجهد هو نفسه، ويشغل عقلنا كما كان عقله على الدوام مشغولًا. كأنه يريد للقارئ أن يصبح من شخصيات القصة. الرواية ستترك طعمًا لا ينسى، ولكن إقرأ هذه الرواية حين تكون مستعدًا لتذوق طبق أدبي دسم، مطهو على نار هادئة. وتذكر بأن الوقت هو طبق البناء الرئيسي، وأن الهدم سريع جدًا لا يعنيه الوقت أبدًا.

أسمحوا لي رجاء أن أعيد إعجابي بالنص والحوار، واسمحوا لي أن اختم المراجعة كما يلي:
"أحيانًا يثير هذا العالم اشمئزازي، لكوني مساهمًا في تطوره المشوه، وهذا الشعور قد استفحل بي تمامًا، وهو ما دفعني ��لى الانسحاب."

[Rebecka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was something of a book! Despite the events it depicts being altogether tragic, it's a quite cheerful story. A rather tough and dense read, but definitely worth it.

[AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sometimes a person is overcome by disgust at being an active participant in this world’s perverted affairs. I have been assailed so strongly by this feeling that I am withdrawing from the scene.”



And that is what we witness here. Plain and simple. And addiction. The feeling is sad, addiction is sad, but they are both very real. These facts make the story sad, and the author too, because only someone who is truly intimate with these things can write about them so effectively. That’s about all I’m going to say about this one, because a lot of it hits uncomfortably close to home for me.

[Kevin Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oof. What a down spiral of a man. What a book!

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I can never forget Jesus among the whores. The more I drink and dissipate, the closer He is to me. He is resurrected inside me in the midst of all this havoc."

More like 3.5 stars.
Touted as the pinnacle of 20th century Danish literature, this is a slow-burn of a novel and if you're seeking its central conceits--alcoholism, syphilis, and collapsing marriages--you'll need to get through about 200 pages before the proverbial lort hits the fan. It's also less experimental than the back-cover blurbs suggest, comparing it to Ulysses of all things. Whatever. It is its own bird, the story of a dithering, withering thirty-something literary critic who ruins his marriage and drinks more than you feel comfortable reading about. The terrible dive into ruin--"going to the dogs" as hero Jastrau calls it--is the axis of the novel and much of the action revolves around bar-hopping and a fascinating mix of divey fellow alcoholics and scum. Jastrau hangs out with communist and syphilitics and tries not to ponder his murky future.
Be patient with this one. I think folks will like it if they give it a chance especially if you like shit bleak and hopeless!

[Mathias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fantastisk sprog, men selve fortællingen tabte mig undervejs efter 2-300 siders druk og forfald.

[Mientras Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

fantástico

[مريم المنصوري · Rating 4 out of 5]

ليكن الهدم يا أصدقائي هدفاً فلسفياً، ليكن الهدم بابا يوصلنا إلى ماوراء المعنى، كما قال ياستراو، الرجل الذي ذهب بعيداً في سبيل البحث عن الحقيقة!.

"أنحني قدر استطاعتي
ليبدو العالم كبيرا"

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Was it there that he belonged - down at the lowest level of existence where things were so nice? Did he want to go to the dogs? He wanted to - yes, he had to. The thought gave him a wholesome feeling - a sense of liberation. Then he could reveal himself as the person he was, get on intimate terms with himself.” p212

Tom Kristensen’s Havoc is a descent into the abyss. It’s like a drunken orgy of annihilation as we witness the slow, intentional yet fatalistic metamorphosis of Ole Jastrau. It’s a profound and insightful interrogation of change in human behaviour that doesn’t always have a rational explanation yet is indicative of something inherent below the surface.

“But he lifted his glass with its foaming head and drank, and felt a melancholy tranquility come over him. “I want to be at ease with myself” he said, “and observe what comes to the surface from deep down inside me.” p389

Jastrau is such an intriguing character. Fully human with every insecurity evident as he seeks, perhaps unwittingly to establish his identity in a world grappling in the inbetween two world wars. Dissatisfaction, political misalignment, anti-establishmentarianism, revolt against the bourgeois, journalistic opiates, unrequited artistic and poetic tendencies all meld together to form an incredible chrysalis of transformation for him.

It’s kind of like a descent that is truly intentional yet one that happens incidentally. That’s the aspect that truly intrigued me. Jastrau’s life transforms irrevocably - is it for the better or the worse? It’s kind of obvious yet it’s not. “…and I’m also interested in how one constructs a real world - finds reality.” p156

The character of Stefan Steffensen is interesting. He seems like the other side of Jastrau or perhaps the mirror image of Jastrau in many ways. There’s a kind of love/hate relationship between them and we see and feel the push/pull of change.

Kristensen has indeed painted a portrait of havoc and disorder. Its annihilation and entropy all mixed into the human soul. There’s a little bit of havoc inside all of us I would think. It’s just whether this havoc receives the expression it is seeking.

[Michael Kuehn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Havoc: A relentless, slow-motion descent … to oblivion. Although written in the early decades of the last century, Havoc manages to accurately capture today's existential angst, the spiritual wandering of man adrift in a century of modernism, lost values, relativism and indifferentism, without anchor to the real, with no sense of the ineffable, of the infinite. Except for the anachronistic political references, this reads like today.

Ole Jastrau, “Jazz” to his drinking buddies, reviews books for a local newspaper and lives a comfortable bourgeois existence with his wife and young son. There was a price to pay, however, and that was to forgo life as a true artist, as a poet. Instead he now finds himself bored with marriage, with his nine-to-five pedestrian job writing for a paper more concerned with shmoozing self-important politicians than artistic integrity. He is trapped, and he knows it. Sound familiar? Author Kristensen captures the “aimless, dull, regulated, homogeneous society of questionable values” – then as now – and it is all downhill for Ole Jastrau. The ending is a bit opaque and has prompted some discussion, which I won't engage in here. Good novel. Worth reading.

I enjoy novels of self-destruction – says something about me, I suppose.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing... Some of the best prose I've ever read, and an incredibly captivating exploration of the depths and darkness of the human soul. Ecce Homo!

[Torben Husum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anmeldelsen indeholder muligvis mindre spoilers.

“Frygt sjælen og dyrk den ikke
For den ligner en last.”

Tom Kristensens ”Hærværk” er Danmarks måske mest berømte undergangsroman. Vi følger den fallerede anmelder og digter, Ole Jastrau, ned i dybet. Hvorfor drikker Ole? Det bliver ikke slået fast med absolut sikkerhed i bogen og er som så meget andet, inklusiv den åbne slutning, åben for fortolkning og diskussion. Siden sin fødsel har bogen været udsat for en mængde radikale fortolkninger og subjektive diskurser, som bogens forfatter hverken har be- eller afkræftet. Den minder i sit opgør med det borgerlige samfund og livsmoral om værker som ”Steppeulven” og ”Sol og måne” af Hermann Hesse, selvom disse er af senere dato. Min personlige fortolkning er, at Ole Jastrau drikker, fordi hans forfatter- og digterevne er gevaldigt undertrykt af behovet for normalitet og borgerlig livssikkerhed. Hans kreative drifter kan dog ikke undertrykkes og fører til, at han drikker sig fra det hele, kanaliserer så at sige sin kreativitet over i drikfældigheden i stedet for poesien. Men til trods for dette sjælelige og kreative fordærv er poesien der hele vejen igennem, både i forfatterens maleriske beskrivelser, men bestemt også hos Jastrau selv, der gerne forsøger at udkrystallisere sine livsomstændigheder i lyriske vendinger og faste slogans, som alle kunne sælge tusindvis af t-shirts i vor tids postmoderne hipster- og bohememiljø.

”Peter Boyesen hilser alle glade drenge!”

Slutningen er præcis som den skal være her – åben. Hvordan går det Jastrau til slut? Hvordan går det alle kreative mennesker, der ikke lytter til deres sjæl og indre drift mod skabelse? Kan du ikke af egen erfaring besvare dette spørgsmål, er det ikke Tom Kristensens job at fortælle dig det.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Booze takes more than it is capable of giving and we turn order into confusion as we seek the infinite divine while only illusions surround us as we pretend to participate in the eternal recurrence of the same. Jastrau knows that life is a comedy as we think about it, and it is a tragedy when we actually are forced to experience it. Jastrau is no different than most of us, but he just acts on his desires. The ultimate question is always 'why not suicide', and Jastrau existentially responds to Camus' Myth of Sisyphus by reasonably slowly drinking himself to death.

I don't see the story has negative or a downer, but it just describes life as it really is not as one wished it should be. I'm glad that highballs and cocktails have gone out of fashion.

[Leonardo Holberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

En mand har mistet sin sjæl. Kaotisk eksistens. Have været et kæmpeværk hvis det var en brite der havde udgivet den

[Niels Paridon · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the first 300 pages or so, I realized that I genuinely didn’t want this book to end. So I took a break from it of several months, and tonight, I finally finished it.

Hands down, one of the greatest reading experiences I’ve ever had. Published in 1930, and written in a very informal, spoken language that gives the reader a real sense of how Danes spoke and interacted about 100 years ago. So tragic, yet so funny, such a breezy read, so entertaining. There’s a very good reason this was on every bookshelf of my parents’ generation.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just a little bit boring. It feels almost like blasphemy writing this knowing that it is one of the most highly rated Danish novels of all time, and as a former Danish teacher I should know. But give me his poems anytime, they are much better, and come to think of it there is actually one in this novel which is highly recommendable....

[Julie Rasmine Larsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hærværk er og bliver et mesterVÆRK uden lige. Jeg var helt tosset med denne nøgleroman, dette gennembrud i dansk litteratur. Ole Jastraus selvdestruktive rejse gennem de mørke Københavnske gader og stræder. Mindblowing. Den kan og skal helt klart læses igen.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Havoc [1930/1968] – ★★★★1/2

With a razor-sharp prose, Kristensen paints a vivid picture of an ordinary man on a swift ride to hell.

Franz Kafka wrote: “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” If we take this definition of a book then Kristensen’s Havoc comes out on top. Havoc is now considered a classic of Danish literature and, accordingly to one author, “one of the best novels to ever come out of Scandinavia”. The main character here is Ole Jastrau, a thirty-something literary critic living with his wife and small child in Copenhagen, Denmark, a city that is going through some kind of a political upheaval. Disillusioned with his work and desperately searching for meaning in his day-to-day existence, Jastrau starts to slowly succumb to the rhetoric of his eccentric friends (Catholics, communists and poets) and also to the only thing that starts to make sense in his life – alcohol. Jastrau sees his apartment being taken over by others, his addiction to the popular Bar des Artistes growing daily and his faithfulness to the core moral principles of life crumbling before his eyes. Will there be a limit to Jastrau’s “fall” and humiliation? Can there be hope amidst all the boundless despair?

The book is set in bleak and murky Copenhagen, probably of the late 1920s. A perfectly ordinary family man Ole Jastrau is seemingly devoted to his wife and child and works for one “hypocritical” newspaper Dagbladet. In his position of a literary critic he leads a hectic lifestyle as, apart from his family duties, he needs to meet strict deadlines and read a hundred or so books every few months. One day, though, a knock on his door and the entrance of two figures of Copenhagen’s underbelly – communist Sanders and poet Steffensen, first give Jastrau a pause and then settle him comfortably into a slow train-wreck. Their destination? Havoc, i.e. “going to the dogs”. Very soon, the main character is torn between his respectable life (family) and the temptations of a seedier lifestyle (friends), often caught in the crossfire between the two. In some sense, Kristensen’s Havoc foreshadows Richard Yates’s middle-class disillusionment with life and lives of quiet desperation in Revolutionary Road [1961] (“the empty hopelessness and the hopeless emptiness” of existence), as well as the male angst against rules of a post-industrial society in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club [1996].

Poet Steffensen in particular becomes Jastrau’s dark and mysterious alter ego, his “evil spirit”, who both repels and intrigues Jastrau and gives him an idea that the meaning of life can be found in high concepts, poetry and at the bottom of a glass. Jastrau is converted into a man preoccupied with the matters of “the soul”: “A big man! As if that were what he wanted. What did that have to do with the infinitude of the soul, the real meaning of things, a man’s true self?” [Kristensen/Malmberg, Gyldendal 1930/68: 320]. At another point, Jastrau proclaims: “I turn out to be a simple, ordinary man who has made a slight attempt to plumb the depths of the soul and find the meaning of absolute freedom” [Kristensen/Malmberg, Gyldendal 1930/68: 460]. Jastrau’s work colleagues are no better, and religious Vuldum and conservative Kryger also drag Jastrau in different directors, trying to show him “the way”. Here, Tom Kristensen is interested in these questions – Are we just the sum of others? Do other people’s personalities and our intimate relations with them really play such a big role in shaping who we are? What is the limit of other people’s “bad” influence on us? Can we escape the inevitable?

Havoc is an unflinching account of alcoholism. The author shows the destructive power of a drink over Jastrau’s personal and professional lives, which, incidentally, also made me think of such films about alcoholism as Leaving Las Vegas [1995], When a Man Loves a Woman [1994] and Flight [2012]. It is curious to observe how shyly alcohol first “creeps in” in the story, for example when Jastrau’s brother-in-law is bragging about his wine-cellar or when Jastrau’s colleague is spotted with a beer in the middle of the day, but then is slowly taking full control of the story’s talks, scenes and characters. Jastrau is on a roller-coaster ride, going through extreme “highs” and extreme “lows”. While being “comforted” by a drink, he also inevitably tastes shame, guilt and humiliation, all part and parcel of his new alcoholic lifestyle: “…now that he hugged the bottle close against his chest, he felt a warm sense of reassurance. It was as if he suddenly found himself at home…” [Kristensen/Malmberg, Gyldendal 1930/68: 25]. “When he was drunk he did not feel unproductive. Intoxication was the stuff of which poems were made…”[Gyldendal 1930/68: 277]. However, Jastrau also recognises that he suffers from “a sickness of the soul” [1930/68: 223] and starts living in a hallucinatory, almost imaginary world: “The present, actuality, reality was so inconstant” [1930/68: 233]; “Disorder and chaos. Persistently they forced themselves into his consciousness, and persistently he had to combat them, hold them down” [1930/68: 218]. Jastrau soon comes to grips with the ultimate punishment for wanting an hour of oblivion.

While the Danish society will be merciless with those who try “to step over certain lines”, it also seems that Denmark is a country that is far from being indifferent to diversions involving a drink and Havoc’s characters more than agree: “Is it any wonder that people get drunk in a town like this?…”Or perhaps the city is this way because we’re all stewed half the time. The History of Denmark is one big binge. Our fatherland has a red nose” [Kristensen/Malmberg, Gyldendal 1930/68: 155]. Thomas Vinterberg’s Academy Award-winning film Another Round [2020] has recently testified to the country’s unusual relationship with alcohol and its notorious drinking culture.

🍾Translated from the Danish by Carl Malmberg, Havoc is a dark existential novel about a man balancing on the edge of abyss. It may be an overlong novel, but it is still an entrancing portrayal of a man in crisis, a man “fallen from grace”.

[Mira Madsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmm jaja. Forfald, fortabt. Stakkels mand, der drikker og opløses. Kvinder og whiskey. Lidt for lang. Vorherre bevares. Tak skæbne for at sproget var så godt

[Humberto Vela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vaya sorpresa que me llevé con la novela de Tom Kristensen, un autor que me era total, completa y absolutamente desconocido, cuya novela, “Devastación”, publicada originalmente en 1968 y editada en español por Errata natura 50 años después, me sumergió en un reto lector, del cual emergí saturado, colmado de sensaciones encontradas, después de atravesar por diversos estados, que pasaban de la conmoción al asombro, sacudido con tanta fuerza, que me obligaba a poner toda mi concentración en la lectura.

“Devastación” me la encontré arrinconada entre cientos de libros en la sección de Literatura Universal. Tomo único, lo compré más por curiosidad que por otras razones, y no de primer impulso. Cuando lo vi, lo saqué del estante, medio leí la sinopsis, lo dejé y seguí recorriendo la librería. Media hora después, ya en la fila para pagar, inquieto con lo que no llevaba en las manos, me salí, crucé la librería y regresé por ella. De vez en cuando mis intuiciones son muy afortunadas.

Autor danés nacido en Londres, Tom Kristensen (1893-1974) fue poeta, novelista, crítico literario y periodista. Es una de las principales figuras literarias danesas de la generación posterior a la Primera Guerra Mundial. Además de “Devastación”, su novela más reconocida, publicó tres libros de poesía y numerosos textos autobiográficos o de viajes.

Diez días me llevó su lectura. Normalmente una novela de 650 páginas me toma la mitad de ese tiempo. Pero “Devastación” no es una novela fácil. Es más, a ratos me incomodaba y la tenía que dejar. Pero créeme: ni por asomo era por fastidio, cansancio, aburrimiento. Pausaba la lectura, pero ansiaba regresar a ella.

La historia de la auto degradación de Ole Jastrau, un crítico literario en sus treinta, que trabajaba en uno de los diarios más importantes de Dinamarca me tenía atrapado, subyugado, pero a la vez, anhelando un poco de sosiego. Testimoniar su descenso a los infiernos, rehén del alcohol; atestiguar su caída gradual pero inexorable, su desamparo, su decadencia, no me resultaba fácil de digerir.

Nos encontramos en Copenhague, en los años 20 del siglo pasado. Ole, casado y con un hijo, vive una vida aburguesada y rutinaria de clase media reseñando libros para el periódico Dagbladet, hasta que una noche, un viejo conocido del ambiente nocturno y un joven desarrapado, hijo de un reconocido poeta, irrumpen en su casa en busca de refugio, pues la policía los busca por cuestiones políticas.

La extraña, rara, muy chocante influencia que el joven, poeta como su padre, ejerce sobre Ole, lo conduce a cuestionarse el sentido de su vida, considerándola vacía y sin incentivos; a objetar su monotonía, a sacar a flote su insatisfacción con su vida matrimonial, a mostrar su amargura, su desencanto; y palpas la maestría de Kristensen para crear esa ambientación, esa atmósfera, entre bohemia y decadente que arrastra a Ole, y a nosotros junto con él, hacia la destrucción de su vida.

Insisto: lectura incómoda, extraña. Por momentos me identificaba con el protagonista, para inmediatamente después considerar sus reacciones como inmaduras, por no decir francamente inverosímiles. ¿Sería debido a mi absoluta ignorancia sobre Dinamarca y la cultura danesa? ¿Brecha generacional, además de cultural? Ese vacío emocional de Ole, ese intenso y acusado deseo de hundirse, de destruir su vida matrimonial, familiar, profesional me provocaba sensaciones ininteligibles.

Relatada con una prosa medida, seca, producto, creo, de una excepcional traducción; con un narrador distante, muy frío, que prefería mostrar más que explicar o resumir, lo que ralentizaba el ritmo del relato, utilizando los diálogos y las acciones, evitando reflexionar sobre las razones, dejándonos a los lectores la tarea de ponderar, especular, meditar, deducir, comprender, adivinar las causas, motivos y sin razones del proceso autodestructivo de Ole Jastrau, “Devastación” es, aunque cueste su lectura, una gran novela.

Sé que habrá lectores que podrán considerarla cruda, lenta, cansada, excesiva en el número de páginas, inverosímil e incomprensible las acciones y reacciones de los personajes, y no soy nadie para contradecirlos ni desmentirlos. A mí, a pesar de lo que me costó su lectura, me fascinó. Cruda, inquietante, molesta, retadora, “Devastación” me supuso un gran descubrimiento.

Retrato de una cultura y una época desconocida, su lectura me confrontó con muchos de mis demonios, pues funcionó a manera de espejo y lo que vi, pudo disgustarme. “Devastación” es, sin duda, una novela sobresaliente, notable, realmente relevante. ¡Te leo!

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

måske er genren psykologisk roman bare ikke for mig men hold op hvor var den kedelig....en mand der går i hundene af egen fri vilje er ikke noget der får mig til læse åndeløst i flere timer. det var virkelig en kamp at komme igennem den bog! selve sproget var dog godt og den var ret velskrevet, men som sagt ødelagde handlingen (eller mangel på samme) det for mig.

[Caroline Garred · Rating 5 out of 5]

En genistreg, et mesterværk.
Ole Jastrau på Bar des Artistes.
Hærværk er meget mere end en fulderoman.