Jon Fosse: Letting Words Breathe

Andrea Romanzi - Meeting with the Norwegian writer, whose plays have been staged more than two thousand times around the world well before he won the Nobel Prize: here he talks about his prose in Nynorsk, an endangered language.

“When I write well, it is not me writing,” says Jon Fosse, for whom putting prose on paper is not an exercise in control but an act of listening. For the Norwegian author, writing involves moving away from the self and into another space, letting language find its own path. The result is a rarefied, rhythmic style built around repetitions, pauses, and silences, where what matters most is not what is explicitly stated but what remains suspended.
Fosse has created a body of work spanning poetry, theater, novels, children’s literature, and nonfiction, yet he defines himself as a scribe—someone who steps aside to let the text take shape on its own.
His language is Nynorsk, a minority variant of Norwegian that is musical and rugged, deeply rooted in the land, sea, and secluded life of coastal villages. From Nynorsk, Fosse draws the unique, hypnotic voice that runs through all his work. He began writing poetry as a teenager and still considers it the form that suits him best. His poems are essential, composed of short, paced verses constructed through subtraction. For Fosse, eliminating the superfluous means seeking depth elsewhere, with absolute confidence that each word suggests far more than it appears to say.
In 2023, the Nobel Prize in Literature brought this reclusive figure, who has always worked on the margins of visibility, to the center of the international stage. It was through theater that he achieved global fame, becoming one of the world’s most performed contemporary playwrights, second only to Henrik Ibsen in Norwegian history.
His plays are marked by minimal settings, stark dialogue, and characters who seem suspended in time and space. The repeated use of phrases and lines becomes a musical mechanism that reveals the incommunicability, waiting, and silent anguish of the protagonists.
Among his recent works, Einkvan (Any Person, 2024), already performed in Norway and set to reach international stages, demonstrates Fosse’s ability to probe the depths of human relationships with minimal elements. The text explores the distance between parents and children, the difficulty of connection, and the radical loneliness that inhabits each of us. The dramaturgy blends cinematic visual elements, creating a theatrical experience suspended between presence and absence, words and silence, concreteness and shadow.
Fosse writes from approximation, necessity, and faith, without ever arriving at definitive explanations. This is evident in the first volume of his new narrative trilogy, Vaim, recently published in Norway (with two more volumes to follow in 2026 and 2027). Here, he returns to his imaginary fishing village on the West Coast, reminiscent of the landscapes in his monumental Septology, populated by minimal existences, animals, boats, and enigmatic presences, in a continuous oscillation between the everyday and the sacred.
We met him in Rome, where he was a guest in the Pope’s apartments. We discussed his writing, which for him is an act of abandonment, a way of being traversed by something beyond rational control. We also spoke of his complex relationship with language—not merely a communicative tool but a space to be inhabited, listened to, and explored.

Your literary output is vast, encompassing prose, theater, poetry, and nonfiction, and each work seems to contribute to an organic, cohesive, interwoven universe. What is your relationship with the different literary genres?
I feel that each text—each novel, each play—must constitute a universe of its own, governed by its own laws. Yet something always unites them, as if each work recalls the others, forming a kind of grand edifice where each part connects to the next, supporting and pushing one another. This is especially true for plays: one play can trigger the next. For example, when I wrote the play I svarte skogen inne (Inside the Dark Forest), a desire for something new emerged. I took a theme from it and wrote A Gleam in the form of a prose narrative.

You spoke of a “writing movement” that continues until the narrator disappears from the novel. At that point, where is the author?
I don’t write to express myself but to move away from myself, to enter another universe, another place. If that doesn’t happen, it doesn’t interest me at all. I never make plans or conduct research, and in this sense, I am the opposite of autofiction authors. Of course, I use personal experiences, more or less consciously. In Septology, for example, I drew on what I think I know about depression and alcoholism, to be clear. In A Gleam, however, walking in the woods, as the protagonist does, is something I’ve never done. I prefer to drive—perhaps the only thing I can say I find myself in. In the play I Am the Wind, I draw on my experience of the sea. I have a boat and enjoy sailing. But in both the forest of A Gleam and the sea of I Am the Wind, the protagonist dissolves into space, vanishes.

Especially in your essays, but not only, Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance recurs often. Where do you most frequently look for meaning in what you read and write?
In the 1980s, I was studying philosophy and literature in Bergen, a time when French postmodernists began to be read in Norway. I vividly remember the first time I read Derrida’s De la grammatologie. I already had a background in philosophy, particularly Heidegger, and reading Derrida felt like a reversal of Heidegger: while Heidegger asked what all things that exist have in common, Derrida asked why the things that exist are not all the same. That’s where the concept of différance came from, which became central to his thinking about writing and, thus, to his approach to language. At the same time, I was studying novel theory, which often focused on orality and the narrator as a living voice. But literature is written, so I began to think that the real key to understanding written literature is not the voice but what I call “the writer.” After finishing my studies, I felt the need to distance myself from theory. I sensed a huge gap between theoretical and literary language, and I felt that my talent, if I can call it that, lay in the concrete and musical, not the abstract and conceptual. So I chose to write for a living, which wasn’t always easy. I wrote everything—prefaces, catalog texts, various pieces. Some of those ended up in essay collections.

Your literary language is deeply marked by the musicality of repetitions, pauses, and silences, particularly in your dramaturgy. What role do you assign to silence and pause in your writing?
I would say they are the most important elements. Let me explain with an image: if you take a white sheet of paper and draw on it with a black pen, what truly dominates and gives meaning to the image is the white, empty space. The black line exists to highlight the white, not the other way around. In my works, something similar applies: silence is central, and the rest emphasizes it, brings it out.

An almost visual conception of writing.
Yes, exactly. This also connects to another fundamental aspect for me: color and painting. Colors often appear in my writing, as does the act of painting. I’m not sure why, but I think it relates to my deeply visual nature. I was greatly influenced by Georg Trakl, who used color in his poetry in an almost painterly way, likely influenced by Rimbaud. Over time, I reworked and made that approach my own. I have a great passion for classical oil-on-canvas painting. In recent years, I’ve been profoundly moved by the work of Mark Rothko.

So writing, for you, also has something to do with painting?
Yes, it does. Writing, like painting, tries to make visible what is invisible. It uses language to create light, form, color, and space. Even silence, which in painting might be a blank, empty area, has the same evocative power. A pause in a text or play is like a blank zone on a canvas: that’s where the deepest meaning is generated.

What is your relationship with theater today?
To be honest, it has never interested me much. I rarely attend performances, and I’ve stopped watching productions of my own texts, which number over two thousand. For fifteen years, I traveled to see various productions, and I’ve had the chance to experience some excellent theater. Often, it can be boring, but when it works, theater can create something unique—a kind of epiphany I’ve never experienced from writing or reading. This applies, really, to all literature: a good poem is a small epiphany, and that’s where everything comes from.

Poetry has accompanied your writing from the beginning, yet it’s less discussed than your theater or prose. What role does it play for you?
I started writing poetry, and even song lyrics, at the age of twelve, and I continue to write verse. I wouldn’t say I “write” it—verse happens. Heidegger said that art happens, and for me, it’s the same with poetry. Some of my poems are among the works I’m most satisfied with. Compared to my prose and drama, my poetry is more traditionally modernist, rooted in the Nynorsk tradition, and perhaps less innovative. That said, what can be called “poetic” is also central to my prose and drama.

When you received the Nobel Prize, you said you were especially happy for Nynorsk.
At that moment, I felt particularly generous, but it’s true: Nynorsk is my language, and it’s among those under threat, even despised by some. I don’t feel the need to defend it—writing in Nynorsk is simply the most natural thing for me. It’s a small language, spoken by just over half a million people, and it’s important to me that it endures and that we can continue to write poetry and literature in it. I also appreciate that Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish allow for mutual understanding. Despite historical and political differences, we could almost speak of one language in three (or four) variants.

In Bergen, you taught at the prestigious writing school Skrivekunstakademiet, and many of your students are now established authors. Some consider you a reference. How do you feel in this role?
If that’s true, I’m grateful. Literature is born from other literature, as it was for me. My main influences were Hamsun, above all, then Vesaas, Beckett, and Trakl. In some new Norwegian fiction, I see traces of myself, and that’s fine, as long as each author brings something unique. Otherwise, it becomes epigonism, which I find irritating. Among my former students who’ve become established is Karl Ove Knausgård, though I wouldn’t say he was influenced by me—he does the exact opposite of what I advised. I used to say not to write directly from personal experiences, and he built his entire oeuvre on that very thing. In that sense, he’s been an exemplary student!

Do you think there’s still something waiting to be written by you, something that perhaps already exists but you’ll only discover later?
I hope so. But I’ve also learned the importance of pauses. Writing requires waiting and openness. When I manage to produce something, it feels like receiving a gift, and gifts shouldn’t be demanded too often. This is especially true in theater. There’s a kind of dialogue between me and something unknown. When people ask me for a text, I always say, “If I can do it.” If one day I can’t, I’ll be grateful for what I’ve written and not bitter about what I couldn’t.

Writing, like believing, involves surrendering to something you don’t fully understand, something beyond your control. Do you see a connection between writing and faith?
When I started writing, I wasn’t a believer, at least not consciously. I never had a “childlike faith.” But writing requires deep trust that there’s something within us that can surface. You’re right—writing involves surrender, and it’s something given. For it to emerge, you must trust in it. In that sense, yes, writing resembles faith. Both are processes where you don’t know where you’re going. Writing what you know is a way of understanding as you go along. It’s almost logical: writing implies an act, if not of faith, at least of trust.

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