Axel Jensen

Infobox Person
name = Axel Jensen


image_size = 200px
caption = Axel Jensen by the piano. Photo: Robert E. Haraldsen
birth_name = Axel Buchardt Jensen
birth_date = birth date|1932|02|12
birth_place = Trondheim, Norway
death_date = death date and age|2003|02|13|1932|02|12
death_place = Ålefjær, Kristiansand, Norway
death_cause = Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
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nationality = Norwegian
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spouse = Marianne (1958-?) Pratibha (1974-2003)
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Axel Buchardt Jensen (February 12, 1932 – February 13, 2003) was a Norwegian author. From 1957 until 2002 he published both fiction and non-fiction texts which include novels, poems, essays, a biography, manuscripts for cartoons and animated films.

Biography

Jensen was born in Trondheim. He first made his debut as a novelist in Oslo in 1955 with the novel "Dyretemmerens kors" (1955), but later he burned the entire storage of books.

In the 50's he and his girlfriend then,in 1958cite web|url=http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/marianne2006.html|title=Leonard Cohen Site - Interview with Marianne|accessdate=2008-02-12|date=2005|author=Kari Hesthamar] wife, Marianne (later renamed Marianne Ihlen), lived on the Greek island of Hydra. Jensen was a close friend of the Canadian musician and poet Leonard Cohen. Jensen had a relationship with Cohen's girlfriend Lena. Marianne and Cohen lived a couple of years on Hydra after the break between Axel Jensen and his wife. There is widespread belief that the character Lorenzo in the novel "Joacim" (1961) is modeled after Cohen, but Jensen also told Cohen that Lorenzo was modeled after the Swedish novelist Göran Tunström.

After some time, Jensen returned to Norway and settled in Fredrikstad. There, Noel Cobb, an English poet and student of psychology, came to interview him. Soon he became sexually involved with Lena. Axel then left Fredrikstad and went to live in London.

Jensen suffered from a severe depression after the break-up with Lena. But in London he met the psychiatrist R. D. Laing and received therapy from him. After recovering, Jensen worked as an assistant at the institution Kingsley Hall. Laing was a close friend the rest of his life.

While attending an environmental conference in Stockholm in 1972, Axel met Pratibha, whom he married in India. After returning to Sweden the couple lived in Vaxholm outside Stockholm where they bought an old freighter, built in 1905, which they renamed Shanti Devi. The ship was named after Pratibha's mother and means "The Goddess of Peace".

After restoring the ship with the help of good friends and its former crew, they finally set course for England in 1984. But due to a storm at sea they sought harbor in Oslo after a hazardous journey.

When Axel Jensen arrived in Oslo, he met his old friend, the writer Olav Angell. Together they wanted to transform Oslo into a city renowned for happenings on the scene of international literature. The plan was soon put into action, and Jensen became the front figure in a project which later developed into the Oslo International Poetry Festival, OIPF, occurring in 1985 and 1986.

On the 10th of August 1990 Shanti Devi set course for its final destination in Ålefjær outside Kristiansand. There Axel and Pratibha settled in a hundred year old school-house, and some years later they sold their old ship.

In the last ten years of his life, Axel Jensen was severely disabled from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS. He gradually became paralyzed, losing all his motor-coordination abilities. Later, using a breathing-aid, he could neither write nor speak. During this period, he also led a tough campaign against what he termed "the health machinery" for the right to be nursed in his own home. Jensen wrote several essays and articles on this subject. Before the public health service provided the help he needed, private funding to pay for nursing was arranged by his close friends, including Leonard Cohen. His wife also used all of her available energy to nurse her husband until he drew his last breath in his home in Ålefjær.

Writing style

Apart from his first symbolistic novel, "Dyretemmerens Kors", Axel Jensen's early novels mostly depict a young man that attempt to break away from his social and cultural background. These novels include "Icarus: A Young Man in Sahara" (1957) (a new 1999 edition is illustrated by Franz Widerberg), "A Girl I Knew" (1959) and "Joacim". Some critics have argued that these early novels are influenced by Beat-authors like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. The reason for this is that the novel's male main characters often try to escape from their obligations in a Western capitalistic society. Instead they try to replace their former life with some sort of undefined spiritualism and fail miserably in their attempt.

Later Jensen departed from the realism in his early novels and began to move in a new direction by writing science fiction, poems, essays and manuscripts for cartoons. In this experimental phase he produced manuscripts for the psychedelic comic-strip "Doctor Fantastic" (published in the newspaper Dagbladet between March and July 1972), the science fiction comic strip collage "Tago" (1979), the animated movie "Superfreak" (1988) and a manuscript for a comic novel which is a caricature-rendering of the life of the French playwright and founder of pataphysics, Alfred Jarry. In the same period, Jensen also published a poem-collection with a hindu-theme called " Onalila - A Little East West poetry " (1974), an essayistic novel called "Mother India" (1974) and three autobiographical novels named "Junior" (1978) and "Senior" (1979) and "Jumbo" (1998).

But Jensen is perhaps most famous for having written the science fiction novels "Epp" (1965), "Lul" (1992) and "And the Rest is Written in the Stars" (1995) illustrated by Pushwagner. With these novels, Jensen created a dystopian vision of the future, much in the tradition of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Ray Bradbury. Nevertheless, Jensen's novels also differ from these authors since the tragic vision in his novels is supplemented with comedy, setting an ambiguous and absurd tone. In this way, Jensen's novels are similar to the satirical and parodic novels of Jonathan Swift and Kurt Vonnegut.

Besides his fiction, Axel Jensen also published a series of articles and essays which focused on three main political and social issues. His collection of essays, "God Does Not Read Novels. A Voyage in the World of Salman Rushdie" (1994), is a critique of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and a defense of the freedom of speech. Another political text by Axel Jensen is the article " A Children's Disease ", published in the anthology "The Collective Fairytale. A Book about Norway, Europe and the EU" (1994). This article discusses Norway's role as a future member in the European Union. The third main issue that was of great concern of Axel Jensen, was how sick and disabled people are treated in a modern bureaucratic society. Two books containing articles on this subject was therefore published; "The Deafening Silence" (1997) and "The Patient in the Centre" (1998). All the articles are an account of how it is to suffer from ALS and at the same time not receive adequate help from the Norwegian welfare state.

Among his political writings, Jensen also found the time to write a biography on the mythical guru G. I. Gurdjieff which is titled "Guru - Glimpses from the World of Gurdijieff (2002)". In addition to this, Jensen was also the co-writer with Peter Mæjlender on his own autobiography, called "Life Seen From Nimbus" (2002).

Axel Jensen received a literary prize from the Austrian Abraham Woursell Foundation in 1965 for his novel "Epp". In 1992 Jensen was given the annual literary award from the Norwegian publishing house Cappelen for his novel "Lul". For his essays on Salman Rushdie, he received the Carl von Ossietzky-award from the International PEN-club in 1994 and an award from The Freedom of Expression Foundation in Norway.

Bibliography

Novels
*1955: "Dyretemmerens kors"
*1957: "Ikaros – ung mann i Sahara/Icarus - A Young Man in Sahara" (a new edition illustrated by Frantz Widerberg at JM Stenersens Publishing 1999)
*1959: "Line/A Girl I Knew" (Adapted into a movie 1961)
*1961: "Joacim"
*1965: "Epp" (new edition in 2002)
*1974: "Mor India /Mother India"
*1978: "Junior"
*1979: "Senior"
*1992: "Lul"
*1995: "Og resten står skrivd i stjernene/And the Rest is Writ(ten) in the Stars", illustrated by the artist Hariton Pushwagner
*1998: "Jumbo"

Other works
*1974: "Onalila – en liten østvestpoesi"/" Onalila - A Little East West Poetry "
*1978: "Blodsband", autobiografi, published in Sweden (translated by Jan Verner-Carlsson)
*1979: "Tago", science fiction-collage, drawings by Per Ekholm
*1993: "Trollmannen i Ålefjær" (Axel Jensen on Axel Jensen) by Jan Christian Mollestad
*1994: "Det kollektive eventyr, «en bok om Norge, Europa og EU»/The Collective Fairytale.A Book about Norway,Europe and the EU", an anthology where Axel Jensen contributed with his article " A Children's Disease ".
*1994: "Gud leser ikke romaner.En vandring i Salman Rushdies verden/God Does Not Read Novels. A Journey in The World of Salman Rushdie", essay
*1995: "Doktor Fantastisk/Doctor Fantastic", comic strip, drawn by Tore Bernitz Pedersen
*1997: "Den øredøvende stillheten/The Deafening Silence", articles
*1998: "Pasienten i sentrum/The Patient in the Centre" (Rapport fra Nimbus) og Pasienten i periferien, articles
*1998: "En mann for sin hatt: Alfred Jarry (1873–1907)", illustrated by Per og Gisela Ekholm (Geelmuyden.Kiese Publishing)
*2002: "Livet sett fra Nimbus/Life Seen From Nimbus", autobiography in cooperation with Petter Mejlænder (Spartacus Publishing)
*2002: "Guru – glimt fra Gurdjieffs verden/Guru - Glimpses From the World of Gurdijeff", in cooperation with Eric Delanouë

References

* [http://www.axel-jensen.no/ Axel Jensen official website]