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White Winds and White Woods
A Blanket upon Dim Powers: Gustaf Fjæstad
A BLANKET UPON DIM POWERS: GUSTAF FJÆSTAD
Carl-Johan OlssonThe Romanticism in Gustaf Fjæstad’s work is muffled, verging on tranquility – free of the storm and stress that roiled earlier generations of Romantics, with none of their yearning for the fearful thrill of the sublime. We find a sense of communion with the vastness of nature in his empty Nordic scenes, the awe of immense silences into which the self melts. His metamorphic landscapes speak of impermanence: water runs slowly, branches bend beneath snow, thin layers of ice form and melt in an instant. Light slants from elsewhere, from outside the frame, warming this grove of trees or that snowy ridge. Like the hedge in Leopardi’s poem, a natural barrier keeps the gaze from hurtling into infinity: we are stirred, instead, by the intuition of that which we cannot see. Carl-Johan Olsson leads us through Fjæstad’s hushed, whispering, rustling world, evoking its endless yet echoing mystery.
