A DANE WRITES ABOUT CHOPIN. PEER HULTBERG’S “PRELUDES” AS AN EXAMPLE OF A CONTEMPORARY DANISH BIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL

The paper A Dane writes about Chopin. Peer Hultberg’s “Preludes” as an example of a contemporary Danish biographical novel concerns the condition of a contemporary Danish biographical novel. The main focus is put on Peer Hultberg’s work Preludes on the famous Polish composer, Fryderyk Chopin. The author of the paper uses the definition of a biographical novel as Maria Jasinska understands it, and the definition of a modernist literary novel by Stephen J. Walton. The article also addresses other contemporary biographical novels written in Scandinavia. Its main aim is to examine in what respects Hultberg’s novel deviates from the standards of a modernist biographical novel. The research is based on four criteria: focus put on one character, chronological structure of the narration, including all life stages, presence of the milestones in the protagonist’s professional career and appearance of authentic characters in the novel’s plot. As it turns out, Preludes hardly fulfills any of the above-mentioned requirements. Although the protagonist is clearly defined, the polyphonic structure of the narration makes it difficult to focus on one character only. The chronological composition is present, but the plot does not include any of the milestones in the composer’s career, since the novel only concerns his childhood. As to authentic characters, they play a peripheral role in the novel’s plot. One can therefore assume that Peer Hultberg’s Preludes is a postmodernist biographical novel, where a fragment replaces the whole, and one stage of life, namely childhood, is capable of telling a story of the origin of genius.