Island of the Doomed

Foreword: The Star of Myself

Foreword: The Star of Myself J. M. G. Le Clezio Here is undoubtedly one of the strangest novels of the twentieth century, written in haste and with passion , and which irresistibly evokes another book (not a novel, but where to draw the line?) published in the middle of the preceding century by a young man (of the same age, in fact) under the title Les Chants de Maldoror. In reality, very different books, one produced by the unbearable exile of a young Uruguayan in the most typically intellectual city of his time, the other by a militant in the anarchist movement that culminates in the rise of fascism and war. Yet, what one reads in these books is similar, even if Dagerman never mentions the writing of Isidore Ducasse: one finds in them the same resurgence, the same iconoclastic and torrential, uncontrolled, darkly jubilant will, the same self-destructive humor. What links these two books is the period, the extreme conformism of the bourgeoisie of the Second Empire for Ducasse, for Stig Dagerman the loathing of the right-thinking politically involved people, the self-satisfied militance during clashes between classes, and the birth of great vii humanitarian undertakings—all of which was negated by the cowardice of abandon in the Spanish civil war and by the obscenity of the dictatorships in the Soviet Union and Latin America. Another literary example of the spirit of the times would be the pessimistic and suicidal Juan Rulfo, author of one of the key novels of the twentieth century, Pedro Paramo, conceived in the violence of the counterrevolution in Mexico in the 1930s. But is Stig Dagerman only the product of an era? Island of the Doomed is his second novel, following closely on the heels of the literary success of The Snake, and it places him on the path of intellectual and moral solitude. It is—as will be all his novels—a text loaded with his own experiences, his rebellions, his failures, but (more than any of the others) consisting of curses and despair, articulating his rejection of all humanistic comfort. A purely anarchist novel? No doubt, since it denies all progress achieved through violence and shuts itself up in the closed universe of a small island, at once stalag, military camp, penal colony, and insane asylum. A piece lost in the imaginary republic of Velamesia, where there are no laws, no money, no armed police—in short, an anarchist paradise, except that "you kow-tow with the same unwilling willingness, let yourself be subjugated, feel this fatal sensation of impotent inferiority." Like the exile of Montevideo, Stig Dagerman is led to a rediscovery of all the elements that have obsessed his life—the crushing image of the father, Cronos, who tortures and devours his children, and the tyranny of the Boss, wielding an absurd and flexible authority in his reign over a servile population locked into a nightmarish decor on this island surrounded by viii a poisonous lagoon where—supreme punishment— prowls a great invisible exterminating fish. The only heroes on this island are the romantic Lucas Egmont from another century; Loel (who reminds of Palmer in Les Chants de Maldoror), angelic, devoted to sacrifice; the giant Tim Solider; or the lost aviator Boy Larus, who finds consolation only next to an erratic young Englishwoman. The hero is all those at the same time, obsessed by an invisible wound that eats at his body, like the fox in the Spartan fable. Stig Dagerman's imaginary is close to the Surrealists, except (and here again he reminds of Lautreamont) that chaos emerges from within the narrator, and no longer in his gaze on the external world. We are far removed from the absurd: on the contrary, for Egmont, war, organized crime, and treason are consequences of the unconsciousness of victims. "Living meant obeying and obeying meant never wanting anything, obeying meant receiving and passing on whatever couldn't be kept and letting whatever couldn't be passed on stay and form new wounds." Dead end. As is usually said, on an island there are no thieves, because where would they hide? In the end, the captain is condemned to death, and the hero to live as a living dead person in his dream world where pure cruelty (the free lions, the sawfish of the depths) triumphs. What we find astonishing and upsetting in Stig Dagerman's novel is the perfection...