In Klaus Rifbjerg’s novel The Opera Lover (Operaelskeren), irrational action battles it out with rational explanation. We know the premise
for this battle, but what form does it take in the hands of Danish author Rifbjerg – an expert in the portrayal of repressed sexuality – when the irrational element being explained is the troublesome body with its insistent cravings?

Rifbjerg gives the assignment to husband and mathematics professor Helmer Franck, who initially appears to have a perfectly straightforward persona but he proves to be on the brink of a breakdown. In his newly-acquired diary, Helmer attempts to explain to himself why he is having an affair with a Norwegian opera singer, Mira Hjelm.

The author of the diary shares his first name with Henrik Ibsen’s Helmer in A Doll’s House, and his surname has a ring of honesty to it, but Helmer Franck is having quite a struggle with honesty. Not only does he have difficulty in being honest with his wife, Ellen, and his lover, Mira, but also with himself – even in his very own diary.

Writing materialises in an innermost sanctuary, a space to which Helmer has trouble acclimatising. He cannot recognise himself in the words he writes, and language is not to be trusted. You write one thing, but in the re-read it says something else and something more than you thought you had actually written.

In so saying, we have now already touched on a number of features typical of Klaus Rifbjerg’s work: that language and writing are in themselves themes, for example, and thus Helmer’s personal crisis is also revealed in the language used to express it, ”a trembling articulation-machine” as he calls his role in writing the diary entries.

Moreover, the strong awareness of Scandinavian artists’ partiality to addressing blame and shame is also typical of Rifbjerg. Ibsen is mentioned, as are Bergman’s films. Helmer cannot recognise himself in either Ibsen or Bergman. The reader, however, can see the similarity between Helmer and guiltstricken Nordic patriarchs lacking self-knowledge. 

However, as the title says, Helmer loves opera. The novel takes up the Don Juan motif, Mira’s last performance is as Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni – and, like the opera, Rifbjerg’s story is both comic and tragic, in equal measures, given that the reader sees Helmer better than he sees himself.

“You’re no seducer,” his friend Leonard tells him, but what does he know about that? Well, he does know something, because he has seen Helmer with other women, and it was with Leonard that Helmer had his first sexual experiences when they were boys. Helmer is no longer troubled by that urge; he now pursues mathematical logic, he has become cultured and sophisticated. He describes his experiences of fine food, fine wine and fine cigars with great precision. But it is not his mission “to make inappropriate comparisons between a good cigar, a good meal and a good fuck”. He explains good taste in terms of ‘quality’ – this is the comedy. When it comes to the physical attraction he feels for other people, however, along with the question of what the word ‘love’ actually involves – well, here Helmer proves to be sadly inadequate. And that is the tragedy.

Kamilla Löfström