Vad döljer sig i Västerbottens mage? Om Augustinus och Torgny Lindgrens Minnen

Krzysztof Bak, Department of Literature and History of Ideas, Stockholm University, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures / Section for Swedish Language and Literature, Jagiellonian University, Cracow What is Hidden in Västerbotten’s Stomach. On Augustine and Torgny Lindgren’s Minnen (Vad döljer sig i Västerbottens mage? Om Augustinus och Torgny Lindgrens Minnen) The article examines the intertextual relation between Torgny Lindgren’s Minnen (2010) and Augustine’s Confessions, from which Lindgren has taken the motto for his memoir. By using the patristic intertext as a starting point, the investigation aims to show how Lindgren has constructed the image of Västerbotten, his home district. The opening part of the article (1)establishes the hermeneutic principles of the study. The second part (2.1–2.4) charts parallels between text and intertext in their portrayal of grace, evil, and man. It emerges that those elements of Lindgren’s worldview which are particularly closely related to Augustinian theology are also the ones that possess a strong Västerbottenian character. The third part of the article (3.1–3.2.3) demonstrates that most of the differences between Minnen and Confessions can be linked to the cultural memory of modernity, which documents the rise and fall of industrial subjectivity. In the fourth part (4.1–4.3), it is argued that Lindgren’s memoir attempts to counteract the crisis of industrial cultural memory by reviving the Augustinian forms of memoria. Within his image of Västerbotten, Lindgren finds adequate metaphorical models for use in his compensatory project of counter-memory. In the concluding part of the article (5) it is observed that, just as Lindgren’s dialogue with Augustine recapitulates the history of Western memory, the memoir’s Västerbotten is elevated to the status of a universal symbol of European consciousness and its fate