Peter Wessel Zapffe

[Malone]

If,like me,you were sufficiently intrigued by Ligotti's mention of 'The Last Messiah' to procure a copy of the essay you may be interested to know that there exists a website with several more of Zapffe's pieces,including a superb essay on The Book of Job as well as a speech Zapffe wrote to be read out at his funeral!

Check out: http://sirocco.blogsome.com/category/philosophy

If the link doesn't work,then typing something along the lines of 'Zapffe,Sirocco,translations' into Google should get you there.

Now all we need is some heroic individual willing to learn Norwegian and to spend the rest of his meaningless life translating Zapffe's masterpiece 'On the Tragic' into English...

Enjoy!

[bendk]

Many thanks for posting this, Malone. There is some great reading here. I was happy to see Zapffe take on the Book of Job. It is also a coincidence, because I have long wondered what TL's take on Job would be, being that much of his work is written from the perspective of pain. I have also daydreamed of him reimagining other parts of the Bible, like Genesis. Hey, William Blake did it.

Back to Zapffe. Since reading "The Last Messiah" in Philospohy Now #45 and various articles on or about Zapffe, I am completely hooked. (Where does TL find all of these great writers?). I agree that it is a terrible shame that PWZ's magnum opus On the Tragic has never been translated into English. For those of you who have not read the article "The View from Mount Zapffe" here is what they had to say:

"The Messiah's ideas are developed at greater length in the treatise On the Tragic (1941), unaccountably never translated into any major language. The work is rigorously argued, yet so suffused with carnivalesque humor that one critic acclaimed its author as 'the Chaplin of philosophy.' "

There are few things I enjoy more than pessimistic philosophy imbued with humor.

In another article "Philosopher of Tragedy" by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, he had this to say:

"....Zapffe's major work was a massive treatise on human tragedy, Om det tragiske, published during the Second World War. The masterpiece was written at the same time as Sartre was working out the doctrine of Existentialism. Sartre wrote in a world language, while Zapffe's Dano-Norwegian was never translated. Had it been published in German, English, or French, the book might have been a classic today."

A possible classic of atheistic pessimism in our midst - and not translated! When I first read this (and other like minded reviews) I actually looked up the website to the Norwegian Embassy in Washington D.C. and got the e-mail for the Culture Dept. I almost shot off an e-mail about how the Norwegian Govt. should sponsor a translation for the sake of pride in their intellectual heritage or some BS like that. Then I thought 'wow, this is kinda crazy' so I didn't do it. (I still might)

I found it interesting that Zapffe's reading of Henrik Ibsen was a major turning point in his thought. Ibsen's name surfaces from time to time in this regard. I know he influenced the writer, D.M. Thomas. Although I have only read and/or watched a few of his plays, I know he looms large in the theater. Some feel his influence is not far below that of Shakespeare.

I saw very good documentary on Ibsen years ago, and I remember one thing in particular: one of his biographers speculated as to how the Norwegian landscape may have influenced his thought. (the frozen wastes, etc.) This is an interesting topic that might be applied to other writers as well.

With Zapffe's liking of extreme sports (Mt. climbing) and his early championing of environmentalism, it is not hard to imagine him becoming a popular philospher if his work was more well known - like Nietzsche.

[Malone]

Chymist,I've just received some excellent news.I posted a thank you note to the chap who ran the blog with the Zappffe material and he was courteous enought to reply.He also informed me that a friend of his either had or was in the processing of translating 'On the Tragic' into English and was looking for a publisher!

So we may yet have another feast of Zappffe in a few years time....

[eth]

I will be buying Om det tragiske fairly soon (an antiquary in Copenhagen has a fairly cheap edition with a dedication), and, being half Norwegian, I can easily translate some short fragments of it into English for you.

[Malone]

Cheers,Eth.That's a very generous offer.I'm sure if you post any of it on the site there'd be more than me interested in reading it!

[Viva June]

Edit: Nothing to see here.

[Atheos]

Some great news for Zapffe fans! I have had it confirmed that an English translation of Om Det Tragiske has been completed and will be published by Peter Lang Group around the end of February 2024. The translator is American philosopher Ryan L Showler

[Michael]

THE BOOK IS OUT!!!!!!!!

[mongoose]

Mine arrived today, Saturday, April 13 in the American Midwest.