Ambivalenssin ”arvoituksellinen sulo”

Hagar Olssonin Silkkimaalaus

• Pauliina Haasjoki Turun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74777

Abstract

The “mysterious sweetness” of ambivalence: Hagar Olsson’s Silkkimaalaus

Hagar Olsson’s Silkkimaalaus (Kinesisk utflykt, 1949) is a self-biographical, allegorical and poetic prose story with themes of ambivalence and a decidedly ambivalent structure. The story follows the Chinese legend of Chienniang who was so torn between a desire to follow her lover and obedience to her parents that she became two selves, one living with her husband and the other asleep in her father’s house. Olsson’s story builds the legend up into a complex picture of dualisms, conflicts, choices and failures to choose.

The narrator Hagar experiences the split and healing of self on a fantasy journey, where she encounters herself as Chienniang and figures and scenes from her past. There are several combinations of characters analogous to the legend. Hagar makes the choice most notably in relation to a young man, her first suitor, and to Ka, the female lover of her later life. Thus the theme of ambivalence includes the hetero/homosexual dualism and with it bisexuality.

The story moves both in time and in narrative space: the straightforward plot of the journey and the life story re-organized in memories is complicated with an emphatic spatial organization of the story. The narrator steps into visions, transcends narrative hierarchy and sees herself in framed stories presented as pictures. This structural ambivalence allows the thematic ambivalence to survive: the legend of Chienniang can not be reduced to any single conflict and solution, not even the question of bisexuality, but becomes an image of ambivalence itself and also for the intuitive, holistic understanding of humanity predominant in Olsson’s thinking in the late 40’s.