Hauntological Form in Jon Fosse’s Septology I–VII

1. Introduction: Hauntological Form

Hauntology has had a significantly broad field of application, ever since Jacques Derrida coined the term in the 1990s. This has been its strength and its weakness. Academics especially tend to be allergic to what appears to be universally applicable concepts. However, in so far as history as such is unavoidable in many subjects within the humanities, hauntology itself can be regarded as a phenomenon that haunts historiology in whatever form we understand it. Apart from Derrida, names such as Francis Fukuyama (provocation with ‘the end of history’), W.G. Sebald, Laura Grace Ford and Mark Fisher come up as forerunners and/or developers of the idea (Coverley, 2020, pp. 197–299). Without doubt, the concept of repetition is intimately interwoven with hauntology. These phenomena—in elaborate symbiosis—describe a modern cultural condition where society struggles to imagine novel futures—and according to Fisher, who is the most prominent theorist behind that idea—this has resulted in an endless loop of 20th-century ideas, styles, and media (particularly within popular culture). Fisher has claimed that hauntology implies that the present is haunted by ‘lost futures’—the progressive trajectories and utopian possibilities that earlier phases promised but never were able to accomplish: “[T]hose whose expectations were formed in an earlier era are more likely to be startled by the sheer persistence of recognisable forms” (Fisher, 2014, p. 7). Instead of mustering the capacity to creatively move into the future, contemporary culture is haunted by the past and easily opts for a rehashing of bygone cultural expressions and already established forms.

Such cultural stalemate can generally be detected as repetition, fuelled by digital technology and the logic of late capitalism, or in Fisher’s theoretical terms ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher, 2022). This type of repetition may seem to be merely a stylistic preference, but it can also be argued to be an instinctive defence mechanism, which basically implies that the rapid acceleration of technology generates an impression of progress, while in fact the reworked forms are already quite familiar. As Derrida stated, quoting Hamlet: “The time is out of joint,” which essentially means: “Time is le temps, but also l’histoire, and it is le monde, time, history, world” (Derrida, 1994, pp. 18, 19). This could hypothetically entail that the linear progression of history collapses into an eternal present always consisting of recycled material. The auditory and visual textures of hauntological art explicitly stage this tension through deliberately modified mediums. Musicians and artists, for instance, frequently employ tape hiss, vinyl crackle, and distorted analogue static to make the medium itself feel ghostly and ‘out of time’ (Fisher, 2014, pp. 8–10). These artifacts of repetition serve as reminders of the fact that we are trapped in an archival loop that cannot escape the haunting of its own history. Ultimately, repetition in hauntology is the sonic and visual shape of a culture unable to orient itself toward futurity, forced instead to endlessly put the ghosts of the past on repeat. In addition to these examples, we can further acknowledge—beyond Fisher’s philosophy since it grows stronger after Fisher’s publications—that the younger generations begin to get tired of the digital world altogether and start looking back to predigital alternatives (analogue photography, CDs and DVDs, vinyl records, analogue hand cameras, tape recorders etc.).

Within the field of videogames, James Sweeting has created what he calls ‘hauntological form’ partly covering the cultural phenomenon outlined above. As such, the concept is tailored for the market forces that mould the world of videogames: Significant amounts of money are invested in the development phase, which makes the developers cautious about too much novelty. It is economically hazardous to alienate the gamers completely, which makes the developers look carefully at the past and earlier forms and patterns (Sweeting, 2024, p. 34). This type of hauntological form cannot be transferred directly to the sphere of literature. When I adopt the concept of ‘hauntological form,’ I will regard it mainly as an outcome of Jon Fosse’s idiosyncratic style of writing in order to outline exactly how this literary form can be conceived as hauntological in several of its concrete structural features. Since the creation of literature always implies some kind of temporal form or an ordering of time, hauntology is very hard to avoid on a stylistic and/or narratological level. In Fosse’s masterpiece Septology I–VII, we can uncover an advanced hauntological form or style as utilised by the artist. As shall be argued below, this style cannot be reduced to merely a type of cognition or narrating. It is more than that, since it suggests the concrete existence of a lifeworld and simultaneously reflects upon that very same lifeworld.¹ Lola Seaton makes a similar remark: “The text not only evokes a world but itself constitutes one […]” (Seaton, 2023, p. 45). Moreover, Fosse’s writing highlights how hauntology works as a carefully developed literary form. Philosophically speaking, there is no other—for instance more ‘scientific’—access to the world. Cutting edge physics, for instance, suggests that the present, the past, and the future all exist side by side as the block universe, which obviously is counter intuitive (Al-Khalili, 2026, pp. 116–30). There are also branches of physics that claim that the present does not objectively exist. These are just examples of competing conceptualisations of the world and Fosse’s constitution is faithful to experience if nothing else. Fosse’s narration harbours several aspects of hauntology, and these will be summarised and exemplified in the coming subsections, but first I will provide a slightly more detailed theoretical framework. The obvious difference between Fosse’s project and Fisher’s rather pessimistic sketch of contemporary cultural stagnation, as outlined above, is that Fosse’s art contains hauntology as well as being itself structured by it and it is strongly focused on finding ways out of various types of destructive hauntings. In a way, Fosse presents literary form as a type of literary therapy. Septology confirms the strength of hauntology while simultaneously staging hope and faith as antidotes to existential paralysis.

As mentioned, Sweeting pursues hauntological form when mapping out the very specific forces surrounding the production of videogames. Mainly, he focuses on the difficulty to have courage and ability to imagine novelty or a more radical version of the future, that is, Sweeting essentially reveals why this production is stuck in hampering hauntological restraints. However, there is one passage that may function as a theoretical path into an analysis of Fosse’s writing as well.

What is being argued is that hauntological form is a fusion of Derrida’s and Fisher’s interpretations. Agreeing with Fisher that the future is difficult to find, especially when the past has become a core point of reference, but also acknowledge Derrida’s insights that the past can impact the present which in turn can alter the future. Hauntological form can be understood as when contemporary form is intrinsically haunted by the past. But also acts as a solution to the cultural malaise, that instead of wallowing in the lack of novelty, embraces the presence of the past to provide an opportunity for something different. (Sweeting, 2024, p. 35)

This definition can be applied to Fosse with some minor revisions. What signifies Fosse’s style is a wave-like movement of repetition that has been compared to the “rhythm of the rosary” (Margalit, 2021). Moreover, Margalit describes her overall reader experience as: “the effect was haunting and cumulative” (Margalit, 2021). Firstly, if we desire to maintain the distinction between form and content, Septology can be said to be hauntological in both respects mentioned by Sweeting in a distinctly complementary way. The narration is repetitive and the concrete mimetic content comments repetitively on this very repetition, which raises the motif to a thematic level that may function “as a solution to the cultural malaise,” at least as an opening for hopeful possibilities within the narrative. Secondly, Fosse’s tale is so skilfully constructed that it often, especially on the character level, maintains two possible parallel readings. Asle’s friend Asle appears as a version of the protagonist—judging from the descriptive passages they have identical physical appearances—but he simultaneously functions as a separate character in the narrative. One can read the twin-Asle as the version of the future that may have been Asle the protagonist’s life had he not quit his own excessive drinking, which constitutes an obvious hauntological component. Thirdly, repetition in Septology depicts and performs addiction as well as hauntological aspects of trauma and ways of overcoming such hauntology. This applies to Asle’s suicidal drinking and Asle the protagonist’s way of coping with the hauntology of the premature loss of his wife Ales and his overcoming of his own alcohol addiction. Fourthly, the protagonist is haunted by images, and he claims that he must paint them out of himself, out of his mind and body. It is as if these images must be exteriorised to leave the experiential and hauntological loops of his lifeworld. Fifthly, the repetition of prayer and its repetitive performance function as a shield against possibly harmful traumatic hauntology and helps release an energy to move forward into the future, while being essentially reconciled with the past. This illustrates that the hardest form of forgiveness is to be able to forgive oneself and to be reconciled with one’s own ghosts and demons. All these aspects shall be analysed in separate sections below. The overarching claim is that Fosse has developed a hauntological literary form that strives to uncover a ‘realist’ depiction of the structure of a certain lifeworld, even if this lifeworld is made up of ghosts or characters with very ambiguous (hau)ontological status. Hauntology makes up a temporal form (a rhythm) that may reach beyond literature per se, as suggested by Caroline Levine in her work on an ontologically extended conception of forms (Levine, 2015).

The basic hauntological definitions may be derived from Derrida and Fisher, which overlap and extend Sweeting’s construal of these theorists. Derrida obviously forwards the idea of a primordial hauntology in Specters of Marx:

[I]f this important frontier is being displaced, it is because the medium in which it is instituted, namely, the medium of the media themselves (news, the press, telecommunications, techno-tele-discursivity, techno-tele-iconicity, that which in general assures and determines the spacing of public space, the very possibility of the res publica and the phenomenality of the political), this element itself is neither living nor dead, present nor absent: it spectralizes. It does not belong to ontology, to the discourse on the Being of beings, or to the essence of life or death. It requires, then, what we call, to save time and space rather than just to make up a word, hauntology. We will take this category to be irreducible, and first of all to everything it makes possible: ontology, theology, positive or negative onto-theology.

(Derrida, 1994, pp. 50–51)

Insofar as literature can be said to inhabit a space within the public sphere, time and narrative—as brought together by Paul Ricoeur—must consider hauntology as a ‘real’ and potent force (Ricoeur, 1984–1990). In Fosse’s work we can study how life itself may be said to spectralise. We shall here pursue the ontological and existential aspects rather than the political ones. However, the existence of the general political force of hauntology may be confirmed by a quick glance at current global geopolitics, most clearly in Russia, so there is no question about the political pertinence of the concept. In my reading here, however, the existential dimension is more strongly stressed.

Mark Fisher’s contribution is conceptualised as being immersed in anxiety for the future entailing a persistent clinging to the past. That type of mind-set verges on other concepts such as pastiche and nostalgia. However, Fisher defines two aspects of hauntology that are highly relevant in the analysis of phenomena in Fosse’s work.

[W]e can provisionally distinguish two directions in hauntology. The first refers to that which is (in actuality is) no longer, but which remains effective as a virtuality (the traumatic ‘compulsion to repeat’, a fatal pattern). The second sense of hauntology refers to that which (in actuality) has not yet happened, but which is already effective in the virtual (an attractor, an anticipation shaping current behaviour). The ‘spectre of communism’ that Marx and Engels had warned of in the first lines of the Communist Manifesto was this kind of ghost: a virtuality whose threatened coming was already playing a part in undermining the present state of things.

(Fisher, 2014, p. 19)

Narration in Septology sweeps through certain situations and a few minds at work in parallel. It cannot be labelled as ‘stream of consciousness’ pure and simple; it is rather thinking and speaking that shifts focus by means of free indirect speech. The prose flows without full stops but with commas, indentations, and line breaks as the organising typography. The stream moves seamlessly between Asle the protagonist, Åsleik, and Asle the severely alcoholic twin character, and it also visits childhood memories and some other characters on the way or mainly reports what they say and how that is interpreted mainly by Asle the protagonist. In the following sub-sections, I shall analyse aspects of the hauntology as it is made manifest through dominant formal phenomena in Fosse’s Septology.

2. Monotonous Repetition as Lifeworld

The protagonist lives in a very small village called Dylgja in the coastal areas of Norway close to Bjørgvin, which is now known as Bergen, Norway’s second largest city. He paints almost in the manner resembling compulsive behaviour. This is one of the earliest insights into life as repetition and/or compulsion, in fact, the phenomenon is clearly reminiscent of the tedious rhythm in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and parts of the rhythm found in Marcel Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.² Asle lives alone in a house on the countryside and he has one close neighbour, Åsleik, who helps him with chores around the house from time to time. In exchange the protagonist buys groceries on his trips into Bjørgvin, which is the nearest larger conurbation. Åsleik and Asle seem to return to similar discussions on the same or similar topics repeatedly:

• Yes you’ve told me that before, I say
• Yes well is there anything I haven’t told you before? he says
• Good point, I say (Fosse, 2023, p. 75)
• Åsleik says that we’ve talked about this a lot before and we’ll probably talk about it a lot more (Fosse, 2023, p. 82)
• I think that Åsleik has said this so many times (Fosse, 2023, p. 83)
• and I think now he’s about to start saying what he usually says (Fosse, 2023, p. 86)
• I think that this too, like everything else, is something I’ve heard Åsleik say so many times before (Fosse, 2023, p. 89)

Adopting Levine’s broader thinking about form and rhythm, we realise that these repetitions have an ordering effect on the temporality of the narrative. As Levine argues, poetic meter has been regarded as a form of imprisonment “like prisons and schools, arrange and control their material” (Levine, 2015, p. 74). Furthermore, “poetic rhythms do not carry the same material force, or coerce the same bodies, [but] they do afford the imposition of a temporal order” (Levine, 2015, p. 74). As such an order is building up in Septology, we gradually comprehend that it is repetitive and hauntological in terms of micro and macro aspects of form. In addition, the more institutional form here, in Levine’s sense, depends on the fact that the characters are single and live on the countryside. This means that practical circumstances and most certainly mutual loneliness push them into each other’s social spheres, whether they want to or not. This can obviously be seen as a double-edged sword. The social form provides calm and security, but in terms of social imprisonment, it imposes a rather tedious repetition of thoughts and topics of conversation. The characters are haunted by their own and each other’s thoughts and the circular or spiral-like form of this monotonous thinking. This is prose, so it does not have a strict poetic meter, as in Levine’s central examples, but the repetition is so consistently wrought that no reader can ignore this rhythm. The frequently used ‘he said’, ‘I said’, ‘I think’ etc., contribute to the sense of rhythm, which also aligns with Levine’s idea that perhaps literature should be parsed in terms of music rather than as a visual analogy (Levine, 2015, p. 52). But since the protagonist (and his twin) are painters, there is without doubt a visual contrapuntal aspect of the musical rhythm. I shall return to this potential formal clash below.

In these early parts of the Septology, the reader is learning the form of the narrative and the hauntological forms that need to be grasped. This could be construed as a rather simplistic aspect of the form, but it is still a necessary step towards more elaborate qualities of Fosse’s highly philosophical work. Another temporal form that makes itself known in these early parts is the times of the year, and particularly Christmas. The social patterns structuring this temporal space are that Åsleik takes his boat to his sister Guro to spend Christmas eve and he always asks Asle if he wants to come along, but Asle always says no. In exchange for the services done by Åsleik around Asle’s house, he gets to choose one of Asle’s paintings and he always gives it to his sister as a Christmas gift. This is an example of what Levine sees as layered rhythms. The twist, which the reader is not aware of at this point, is that this year Asle follows Åsleik to the sister (Fosse, 2023, p. 254). The more markedly hauntological aspect of these everyday events is that the future seems so heavily steeped in habit that it is foreseeable in every respect. But the slight change in habitual patterns is central to the overall shape of hauntology in Septology. This can also be seen in Asle the protagonist’s break from excessive drinking, which has completely changed his life. Asle the twin mirrors the horrible life that could have been. It is a form of haunting of pain, virtually functioning as a phantom limb for the protagonist.

The seamless flow of the prose intermittently makes the reader doubt if what Asle sees is something he truly perceives or some memory that he visualises, or perhaps a blend of these two possibilities, which would be an extreme form of hauntology. An especially sharp example of this is the couple he sees or thinks he sees on the playground on his way home from Bjørgvin, and again on his way back to Bjørgvin to check in on Asle the alcoholic. This couple bears obvious traits of himself as a young man together with his girlfriend Ales, who he misses so much and who constitutes the loss that haunts Asle in a harrowing way. The repetitive form here also develops into a motif that illustrates repetition as such. The girl or young woman first sits on a swing, going back and forth, like waves, and when they move over to the see-saw and go up and down the form is made explicit: “Like breathing, he says […] And like heartbeats, she says […] Like waves, she says” (Fosse, 2023, p. 38). The form of habit is also the form of hauntology in terms of phases of the past that return like waves continuously shaping the malleable present. Apart from illustrating the realistic boredom of everyday habitual repetition, this form itself begins to create something larger, something resembling a mantra or a prayer. That detail will be very important when we begin to discern a more complete understanding of the hauntological structure of the whole collection of novels.

3. Asle and Asle: The Dark Side of Addiction

The most hurting and uncomfortable sequence of the early part of Septology is Asle the twin waking up on his sofa with severe abstinence. He is shaking so violently that he seems to be incapable of doing anything at all but shake, and later Asle the protagonist sees “that it seems to come in waves, the shaking moves through him like a wave and then he’s still again” (Fosse, 2023, p. 113). He repetitively thinks that he must either go out into the sea and disappear or go into the kitchen to get something strong to drink just to stop the shaking. In a terribly painful set of passages, spanning several pages, the hauntology of addiction is summarised in a specific prose rhythm. Asle needs to drink more to function normally, which he later describes to the other Asle: “[T]hat he drinks to get back to normal, to not shake, yes, to be normal the way other people are, he says and I say yes” (Fosse, 2023, p. 112). But the repetition of that drinking is what will keep up the unbearable repetition of shaking, angst, and further drinking leading in a straight Golgotha path towards physical decay and eventually death. This draws attention to addiction repetition as being similar in form to trauma repetition.³ It is as if the pain is sought in a destructive hauntological pattern or rhythm, which is difficult, or for some even impossible to break.

The partly chemically induced hauntology of addiction still falls into the rhythm of the lifeworld. The desire to eradicate the past metamorphoses into the hellish compulsory repetition of self-inflicted pain, agony, and destruction. Moreover, the contrast with the protagonist who quit drinking further accentuates the destructive force of addictive repetition. The sober Asle’s sometimes rather tedious and dull repetitive life is still preferrable to Asle the alcoholic’s hell on earth. This is an aspect of the whole narrative that indicates the intrusion of the visual in the musical rhythm of the accomplished lifeworld. Asle does not really know why he suddenly feels that he must return to Bjørgvin to try to find Asle the addict. He thinks that it was some mute voice that made him drive back all the way in the snow and dark of the evening. Later, Asle reflects that it must have been some divine intervention: “[A]nd I think that this was an act of God, it was God’s doing that I drove into Bjørgvin again, just think if I hadn’t done that, think if Asle had stayed lying there in front of 5, The Lane, he’d have frozen to death” (Fosse, 2023, p. 112). Even if this is a construction in hindsight, the fact is still obvious that something made Asle go back to Bjørgvin. If we call it conscience or empathy, we get a secular version, but that does not matter much. This incident can still be seen through a hauntological lens of meaning. Asle is haunted by the fuzzy idea that he should have checked in on Asle. It is a case of empathy, revealing that hauntology does not solely deal with negative forces. What draws it towards the visual are all the contemplations of the strange painting of two crossing lines that Asle has made in the morning of the very same day. The painted cross inevitably depicts the intersection between the two lines. The crossing of the lines can, among other things, be seen as the event of intervention, or as the overcoming of death in a more strictly Christian context. I shall return to the symbolism of the cross in another section below.

The strongly negative aspect of Asle the alcoholic is that things have already rolled deterministically or fatally out of control. The force of addictive repetition has already damaged Asle beyond physical recovery. What aspect of hauntology apart from alcohol that drives this destruction is not made completely clear in the narrative of the whole collection. However, there are suggestions along the way, such as potentially traumatic childhood experiences. And in regarding the two Asles’ parallel lives, we can see that a major hauntological theme is about how to deal with suffering as an unavoidable part of any life lived. Taking the Namesake to The Alehouse, Asle reflects on the lonely men sitting there, each and every one alone at their own solitary tables: “I look around at the other people in The Alehouse sitting with their beer and tobacco in front of them like a fragile line of defence against the world, clinging to their cigarettes, their pints, as they sit there, and the sea inside them is large, whether stormy or calm” (Fosse, 2023, p. 118). Such a coping with life comes close to one of Fisher’s construals of hauntology, namely that the repetitive rhythm of the past creates a form of habitual security that holds at bay the threatening future as well as the painful past. With the beer and the tobacco, the people can remain in their self-made prison, which feels safer than being imprisoned by some alien force that they cannot control. Addiction creates a false sense of control. At least the pain and suffering have the same form from day to day.

The more concrete suffering from trauma is hauntologically complex in the collection. If we see the Asles as doppelgängers, we must allow that the childhood memories are shared even though they are channelled through the sober Asle as the narrator and prime interpreter of the events, whenever such textual elaboration is available. Consequently, there cannot exist any hardcore determinism or predestination, since one Asle found ways of handling the detrimental hauntology while the other Asle succumbs to it. The sequence that perhaps is the best candidate for contributing to a harmful haunting is the encounter with The Bald Man. In the original text, the name is ‘Skallen,’ which has different connotations than the English The Bald Man. ‘Skallen’ pulls cognition towards ‘dödskallen,’ which is a skull, a death’s head. This seemingly miniscule difference may indicate that a stronger hauntology and trauma should be tied to this incident, but admittedly and obviously quite deliberately, it is suffused in ambiguity and hermeneutic confusion, adding to the overall spectralising force of hauntological features of the narrative.

and The Bald Man says that if Asle comes home with him he has both soft drinks and hot chocolate, if not today then maybe some other day, he says and Asle doesn’t say anything and then The Bald Man turns off the country road and drives up a driveway and he stops the car and turns off the engine […] and then The Bald Man puts his hand on Asle’s leg and then puts his hand on his fly and unzips his fly and takes his penis in his hand and moves his hand up and down on Asle’s penis and it tickles and Asle pushes his hand away and he hears The Bald Man breathing as if he’s out of breath and Asle turns and turns and looks at The Bald Man and sees that he’s pulling up and down on his own penis, and The Bald Man’s penis is big and long like a stick and Asle looks straight ahead again and he hears The Bald Man groan and then The Bald Man puts his right hand on the steering wheel too and he looks straight ahead and again The Bald Man says that Asle mustn’t tell anyone that he’s been on a drive with him, he says […] (Fosse, 2023, pp. 273–74)

4. Haunting Images

The images that come to Asle are often painful and full of ghosts, and “[p]ainting, for Asle, is a kind of exorcism” (Griffiths, 2023, p. 51). Painting is part of a spectralising force throughout the narrative. The St Andrew’s Cross that Asle has painted returns as a motif throughout Septology. One can conclude that the visualised cross haunts all the major events in the collection. The ritualised way out of the haunting images has for Asle become his semi-compulsory production of oil on canvas paintings. He can paint the images out of himself and thereby break the claustrophobic sense of unhinged repetition and haunting. A clear example is when Asle remembers childhood experiences, while also upholding the possibility that the Asle—in third person in the memory below—is the twin-Asle, but this is not clear and this ambiguity pertains to many characters and situations in Septology (for example, Guro, Åsleik’s sister, and Guro/Silje living on 5, The Lane, and Asle’s miasmal memories accompanying her appearance, and the fiddler, who is the two obviously different Guros’ ex-husbands who seem to be identical). In the following image, memory, loss, and eventually the present merge in a temporal layering making manifest the palimpsest that hauntology has the power to bestow.

[F]rom that cloud of shimmering yellow he sees himself sitting there in the car with his bleeding hand because Asle slipped on the ice and smashed the juice bottle and a piece of glass cut the artery in his wrist, and Asle feels very weak, and he is in the shimmering cloud glinting shining transparent yellow dust and he’s not scared, he feels something like happiness, like a great peace, no, there’s no word for what and how he feels, how he’s seeing, Asle thinks and I look at the picture there in front of me and Ales is stroking my back, up and down, and I see Asle sitting there in the car with his bleeding hand and Ales rubs and rubs my back and it’s so soothing and good to feel her hands, I think and I see Asle sitting there with a bleeding hand and I don’t want to think about that any more, it’s better to put it in my pictures as best I can, I think, and it’s in the painting with the two crossing lines too, I think and then I realize that Ales has taken her hand off me and she’s gone and I just stand there and look at the picture even though it’s cold in the room and I should light a fire in the stove […] (Fosse, 2023, pp. 292–93)

Asle here describes how he can channel some of the suffering into his pictures. In other situations, he claims that a good painting must have some dark light in it: “[A] good picture needs something bad in it in order to shine the way it should, it needs darkness in it” (Fosse, 2023, p. 105). Paintings without the dark light are necessarily bland and insignificant. The ghost of Ales appears here, momentarily offering soothing feelings, but for the most part the loss of Ales is the major haunting of Asle the protagonist’s life. This is the type of suffering that could provoke the deceptive escape into the partly artificial hauntology of addiction.

As the incarnation of the intersection of the cross, Asle the protagonist has managed to avoid that path. Asle the twin has not had that strength, and he eventually drowns in his own inner sea, to extend the metaphor that Asle the narrator uses on another occasion. The haunting images need not be particularly dramatic in any way. It can be a situation that somehow has a captivating aura of an inexplicable kind. In a markedly everyday type of situation, it is as if the present swells into a photographic plate inside Asle’s mind and he realises that it will become one of those images he has to paint to get rid of, or at least to get rid of some part of it.

[A]nd I see Åsleik from behind, standing in the doorway with the two bags and I know deep inside that I will never forget this exact moment, this exact flash, yes, a flash is what it is, because there’s light in it, coming to it, or coming from it, there where I see Åsleik in the doorway with his back to me, his bent shoulders, that almost bald head with a ring of long grey hair below the bald spot, and I can see his long grey beard, I think he’s hardly ever cut his beard since he started growing one as a teenager, I think, and then those two plastic shopping bags weighing him down, one on each side, making his shoulders round, it’s like he’s framed by the doorway, and even though it’s dark and there’s no outside light on and there’s just a little light coming out from the light in the hall I can see him as a shape, as a shape with its own light, that’s how I see him, and it’s probably the light of his angel, I think, […] and it’s always been this way, these glimpses of this or that thing that lodge inside me and never leave my head again, never, they lodge there as pictures and stay there and I can never get rid of them, so they have to be painted away, yes, that’s how it is, that’s how I am, I think, but this light, this flash is part of Åsleik the person too, I think […]

(Fosse, 2023, p.67)

Here the intersection of the cross becomes an important visual form again. It somehow interrupts the musical rhythm of repetition. The image slices time in Asle’s perception. Just after this sequence, he asks Åsleik why he stopped so long on his way through the door, but Åsleik replies that he did not. For Asle this is some kind of hole in the flux of time, releasing the present from hauntological repetition and imprisonment. What Asle has painted is a St Andrew’s Cross or a saltire, which is in form closer to a more typical Protestant type of cross, that is, an empty cross, which emphasises the resurrection. However, the most common Christian cross is the crux immissa or the Latin Cross, often with Christ on the cross, stressing suffering more strongly. This cross would also more clearly highlight the vertical intervention of the horizontal. Åsleik carrying plastic supermarket bags into the house incorporates the horizontal everyday run of the mill, while the vertical in the flash above is the divine, which in this case is immediately connected to art and creativity. The St Andrew’s Cross mainly emphasises the suffering of the saint, who is said to have chosen the crux decussata to show his inferiority to Christ. However, it still lies rather close to the symbology of the crux immissa. In terms of temporal ordering and hauntology, Fosse’s form here reveals what lies at the heart of the whole Septology. Without faith in such an intervention, one may end up in Fisher’s dead end of depression—whether on a narratological plane or on the analysis of broader cultural patterns does not matter—and as concerns Fisher himself, he sadly chose one of the alternatives Asle the alcoholic contemplates—to go out into the sea and disappear—that is to end one’s own suffering.⁴ As I have suggested above, this is the same cul-de-sac as the hauntology of addiction and of trauma. Another important detail in the Åsleik image above is that the light comes from the image itself and in addition to that, the light also emanates from Åsleik the person. The intersection unites the everyday, art, and the divine or the spiritual. It also ties together the suffering of the saint and the suffering of Christ, which could mean the suffering of anyone, for instance Åsleik.

In terms of hauntology, Asle already from the very start of the 667 pages long Septology contemplates this essential intersection. The central idea is that art can implement such seemingly simplistic cognition, which then has a monumental consequence. Something is miraculously suddenly finished. The full stop that never appears in the flowing prose is there already from the very first sentences. The beautiful colour of the intersection points directly into the power of the divine. That is why the painting is finished. Ironically this is the painting that Åsleik eventually selects to give to his sister as the yearly Christmas gift, which deeply annoys Asle.

And I see myself standing and looking at the picture with the two lines that cross in the middle, one purple line, one brown line, it’s a painting wider than it is high and I see that I’ve painted the lines slowly, the paint is thick, two long wide lines, and they’ve dripped, where the brown line and purple line cross the colours blend beautifully and drip and I’m thinking this isn’t a picture but suddenly the picture is the way it’s supposed to be, it’s done, there’s nothing more to do on it, I think, it’s time to put it away, I don’t want to stand here at the easel any more, I don’t want to look at it any more, I think […]

(Fosse, 2023, p. 13)

Similar to Saulus becoming Paulus, the new name means everything, and everything is said and done.

5. The Repetition of Prayer

All the instalments of Septology begin with a macro-anaphora with the contemplation of the painted St Andrew’s Cross and end with a macro-epistrophe of a prayer. The repetitions are not identical, but still, they emphasise the hauntological structure even more strongly as the eternal return of the similar. Jamie Davies suggests that prayer in Septology illustrates the impotentiality of Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy (Agamben, 1999). Davies argues that Asle incarnates the exhausted figure whose prayer “is merely a useless use of impotential” (Davies, 2026, p. 101). In turn, this circumstance draws attention to “language’s taking-place in its radical poetic event” (Davies, 2026, p. 101). The hauntological reading does not really come into a full conflict with Davies’s emphasis of poiesis, but other ethical implications become cumbersome. The textual facts tell us that Asle is exhausted, perhaps even “exhausted beyond being” (Davies, 2026, p. 102). But Asle cannot sleep despite of the physical and mental exhaustion. Moreover, the prayer is for Asle the addict, the one caught up in the horrible loops of hauntological repetition.

[T]hen I fold my hands and I make the sign of the cross and I say to myself Pater noster Qui es in cælis Sanctifictetur nomen tuum Adveniat regnum tuum and I stay laying down and I say to myself Our Father Who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name Thy kingdom come and I think God’s kingdom does need to come, but it already has come, I feel it, whenever I feel or realize how close God is, yes, he is all around me like a field, or maybe it’s his angel, my angel, that I feel? I think and may God protect him, may God protect Asle, let Asle get better again, I think and then I think that it won’t be long until before I too come to God, to God’s kingdom, I think and then I breathe in deeply and I say inside myself Kyrie and then I breathe out slowly and I say eleison and then I breathe in deeply and I say Christe and then I breathe out slowly and I say eleison and I say that over and over and then I just lie there quietly and stare straight ahead into empty space and at first I don’t see anything and I just feel how tired I am and then I see a canvas there on an easel and I see two lines there that cross each other and then I hear Åsleik say St Andrew’s Cross, he says it with his provincial pride, St Andrew’s Cross, and suddenly I feel an aversion to the whole picture, there’s nothing more to do with that picture, just get rid of it, be done with it, because it’s done, despite it being so unfinished it’s done, it’s finished […]

(Fosse, 2023, p. 164)

The repetition of prayer obviously has several functions. It can become a soothing counter-weight to the harmful hauntological repetition that appears as trauma and addiction. The potential meditative effect gradually centres the prayer on the praying person in a form of kenosis. Margalit ends up in a similar description of the overall form: “I hesitate to compare the experience of reading these works to the act of meditation. But that is the closest I can come […]” (Margalit, 2021). If we follow Søren Kierkegaard here, the whole purpose is to alter the praying individual rather than somehow attempting to affect the divine will, which would be futile (Kierkegaard, 2009).⁵ Davies tries to push the phenomenon of prayer in Septology towards poiesis pure and simple. This rhetorical move has several problems.

Fosse’s collection repeatedly stresses the importance of faith and work. Not really work in terms of collecting ethical points on the way to heaven but rather work on oneself within oneself (kenosis), to overcome the massive power of negative hauntology, mainly manifested in the forms of depression, trauma, and addiction. That type of work involves art and religion in Fosse’s literary construal. The creative and religious work seeks to replace one form of repetition with another more hopeful version. Davies wants to force Asle’s potential exhaustion towards Jean-Luc Nancy’s idea of sleep (Nancy, 2009). But that endeavour fits the overall hauntological structure of Septology very poorly. It rather illustrates the attempt at using a literary work to make a philosophical point—that may very well be interesting as an argument in itself—but which is too separated from the overall impact of the literary discourse at hand. Asle the protagonist repeatedly stresses the hard work needed to get out of addiction, “It was hard to break the habit of drinking,” the continuous work required to exteriorise and exorcise inner repetitive loops in the making of paintings, “it’s like I have a huge collection of pictures stored in my head, of pictures I can’t forget, and like I’m trying to get rid of them by painting them,” and the repeated prayer to focus and calm down and be reconciled with the loss of Ales and to listen to the silence in which God can be heard (Fosse, 2023, p. 117, p. 86). Seaton, for instance, emphasises that “Fosse has described writing as an ‘act of listening’” (Seaton, 2023, p. 45).

Each instalment in Septology begins with an almost neurotic fixation with the crux decussata. The repetitive form of the whole of Fosse’s work is mirrored in shorter sequences of repetition. The pendulum moves between what is harmful and what saves. Strictly speaking, the prayer prepares a clearing for the silence in which God can be heard. I dare state that this applies to both Kierkegaard and Fosse. As stated by Mac Loftin: “The church is faithful if it heeds the lesson of the cross and ‘consents to the presence of the absence of God’” (Loftin, 2023, p. 74). The St Andrew’s Cross incarnates art, God, and the suffering humans. Specifically, in Septology, the cross becomes Asle the addict’s suffering, merging with God and the creation of art.

I see that the two lines are Asle lying on his sofa unable to think anything except one single thought, the only thing he can think is that now he needs to get up and then he’ll go down to the sea and then out into the water and then he’ll wade out into the sea and the waves will wash over him and he’ll just be gone, gone forever, because the pain now is unbearable, the suffering, yes, the despair, whatever you’d call it, yes, the pain was so unbearable and heavy that he couldn’t even lift a hand, and plus he was shaking so much, his hands, his whole body was shaking, so he had to stand up, had to get himself something to drink, at least that, first I’ll have a little drink and then I’ll go down to the sea, wade out into the sea, Asle thinks, lying there on his sofa, thinking, and at the same time I was standing there in my living room or studio or whatever you’d call it and painting him as two lines of paint, one purple, one brown, I think […]

(Fosse, 2023, p. 200)

6. Concluding Remarks

As we have seen, Septology is immersed in hauntology on various levels. It is obvious that hauntology should be regarded as the foremost and fundamental structuring concept of the whole collection. Hauntology as such pulls together the central strands of the narration and by its appearing as a Janus face, we can trace both harmful and hopeful versions of repetition. In construing the literary world as a lifeworld, the writing will always be more than merely poiesis. Hauntological form connects well-known psycho-social phenomena that concomitantly have a very long religious and philosophical tradition and history. Repetition has several functions: as tedium and monotony, as the horror of addiction and trauma, as the meditation of prayer, and as providing ways out of harmful forms of hauntology. We can at this point conclude that Fosse’s Septology is a hauntological work through and through. The tiresome repetitive structure constitutes an overall hauntological atmosphere, as if the feet of the characters are stuck in the bog of the past. The duality of the lives of the two versions of Asle indicates a parallel existence that mirrors a life that could have been for both paths, from both perspectives, that is, the road taken and the road not taken fully preserved. This is an exceptional hauntological feature. In the repetitive patterns of addiction and trauma we witness the harmful aspects of hauntology that Fisher has referred to as “the compulsion to repeat” (Fisher, 2014, p. 19). The haunting images pertaining to Asle’s impulse to paint also constitute a hauntological attribute, intimately tied to an active strategy of remedy utilised by the protagonist. Lastly, the meditative repetition of prayer becomes a shield towards the grim existential hauntology of eternally returning suffering, pain, grief, and loss. Septology identifies the disease, but it also provides potential solutions in its own constitution as a work of art.