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ENDURANCE RUNNING AS INITIATION INTO THE MYSTERIES
In addition to expressions strongly determined by the history of ideas
and rooted in the history of language, Juoksu also contains a plenitude of
metanarrative and stylistic references to the mysteries and challenges of the
writing process itself. In the following section I will briefly touch on this
topic, though I consider it an important area for further investigation in
the future.
Writers such as Tomas Transtromer, Haruki Murakami, and Imre Kertész
have often affirmed in their novels and interviews that, for a writer, the process
of writing is “on” all the time. It happens inside the mind of the writer without
rest. In the case of Ehrnrooth’s Juoksu, the writing process—the search for
the right words, the right metaphors, the polyphony of the aesthetic text,
the strides and breaths of the run created by the narrative process—goes
hand in hand with the steps, breaths, and the simultaneous joy and agony
of the fictional runner. The work consists of 42 chapters—the number
of kilometres in a marathon—which are framed and rhythmically cut by
the reccurring figure of a gardener. Constructed in this way, the plot line
employs multiple, hybrid planes of reality that intersect in the arenas
of movement and stasis, outer and inner worlds, and the natural and
the transcendental.
In addition to the runner’s reflections on his immediate surroundings and
inner world, the figure of the gardener triggers a description of the meditative
aspects of running. Given that mystical realist literature tends to be read at
an intensified level, the reader of Juoksu must also let go of pre-existing ties
to conventional exposition, plot advancement, linear time structure, and
scientific reasoning in order to be catapulted by an aesthetic experience into
a state of heightened awareness of life’s connectedness and transcendental
dimensions. Luis Leal articulates this feeling as seizing “the mystery that
breathes behind (the) things,” and supports this claim by saying a writer must
heighten the senses of the reader to the point of estado limite—a “liminal
state,” in which one can catch a glimpse into the multiple levels of reality,
most importantly that of mysticism.”
In the final third of the run, from chapter 33 on, the runner-narrator
detaches more and more from the concreteness of his immediate context,
taking longer and longer strides from one word to the next. In chapters 35,
37, 41, and 42, as the empty spaces on the page increase, the text turns into a
prose poem. When asked about the mysteries of writing, of the urge to write
and put down the words into letters in order to see what they really become,
Ehrnrooth explains (cited from his e-mail of 13 November 2015):
4 Luis Leal, Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature, in: Louis Parkinson Zamora,
Wendy B. Faris (ed.), Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, Durham, Duke
University Press, 1995, 123.
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