Timmermannen.

Schoolfield, George C.

It cannot be mere coincidence that so many prominent authors with roots in Swedish Ostrobothnia have taken up the Christian story. One must surmise that the ubiquity of Baptist and Methodist meeting houses, free churches, and Pentecostal sects in that hardscrabble agrarian world played a considerable part in creating this (sometimes nostalgic) fascination. In 1983 the late Hans Fors published his lyric novel, Josef fran Arimatea; in 1987 Lars Hulden got much attention for his Judas Iskariot Samfundets Arsbok, and now Agren's poem cycle about the Carpenter has come along, based on the Book of Mark. In Ostrobothnia, Americans might see a sort of analogy, to the upland South, which produced Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. After all, even today, Mark 16:18 ("They shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deathly thing, it shall not hurt them") is imitated in West Virginia's hollows.

Now, nobody could argue that lovely and quiet devotion characterizes Timmermannen. (The title, by the way, somehow suggests no-nonsense toughness, a suggestion like that made by the title of Lloyd Douglas's epic on Peter, The Big Fisherman, to many a mid-century Bible class.) Agren is just as hardbitten as in his previous collections. His Carpenter becomes annoyed at the talkative disciples, whose "whispering" - the word appears five times in the slender text - among themselves gets on His nerves. He is a practical-minded if impatient physician, and a quite human victim of fear ("for fear / cannot be fought against. It must / be touched"). Nevertheless, He meets His terrible earthly fate with fortitude: "bnt when / the Roman ruler / had approved the Great Council's sentence, / his terror was transformed / to iron."

In a prose introduction, Agren states his admiration for Johannes Marcus: "As an author, he is outstanding. The solid, perspicacious structure gives solidity to the tale. He is objective and clear. The legendary material is not allowed to dominate, even though it gives color to the events." Agren's description of Mark's authorial nature can be applied to his own approach: he includes Christ's miracles but does not dwell on them; he is understated about the spiritual torments of the last days and the physical horrors of the last hours. (One image is quite unforgettable: "[His brain] must remain calm / and dark as a resting / book, despite the fact that the nailed hands / constantly attack it, two / mad, living dogs.") Agren's special brand of staccato utterance can become monotonous, but the reader is jarred to attention by his occasional insertions of anachronism into his vocabulary: e.g, "The people in the village [of Nazareth] / shone on him with an ancient / searchlight, mockery, / and he went away / his forehead / calm with thoughts." (Agren's Christ is nothing if not self-controlled.) Sometimes the jars are almost too violent, as in the driving of the moneylenders from the temple: "The adventure darkened / with force and biological splendor." Elsewhere, "Another [Mark, Agren?] observed everything through / his [Christ's?] eyes. / They were / chilly and late-come like / camera-lenses." These passages have an ambiguity that is fairly rare in Agren's verse.

As Lars Hulden once pointed out, verbal subtlety in Agren is replaced by paradox, far and away his favorite rhetorical device. Surely, it is much displayed here, starting with the prelude, "The Expedition": "There was / no goal, for then the wandering itself / would have become meaningless." As for the Pharisees, "Every / miracle is a reply / and they had / no question." Often, these paradoxes are proclamatory: "To believe is not / to affirm anything. / It is to challenge / everything!" The finale concludes with a statement that has another of the collection's favorite words (also used five times) as its subject: "Longing / for a message is the only / message that arrives."

The paradoxes can become trying for the reader, like the clenched-teeth litotes. But Timmermannen, while testing patience, deserves attention and respect. Agren himself has great veneration for his material - the Ostrobothnian heritage will out.

George C. Schoolfield Yale University