Vem dog på Leopolds hotell?

• Birgitta Holm, Who died at Leopold's Hotel?A split subject is signalled already by the twofold naming of Victoria Benedictsson/Ernst Ahlgren. More than most writers she herself took her pen-name seriously (ernst), and in literary history the naming of her has fluctuated more than in most cases. What effect has this split had on her writing? And what part did it play in her death, the brutal suicide at Leopold's Hotel? In Pengar, her first novel, the split manifests itself most clearly in a conflict between the protagonist Selma, in different stages of self-consciousness, and the narrative perspective, an instance close to Selma but not identical with her. The result is a tension between an intense narcissistic pleasure in the text and an equally intense assurance of (or dream of) self-forgetfulness. As seen by the names, the split in the subject is also a split in sexual affiliation. This split finds a curious and uncomfortable outlet in her cooperation with Axel Lundegård, as exemplified by her writing a passage for him about a woman's hand. It culminates in her confrontation/relation with Georg Brandes, ending in the death at Leopold's Hotel. The person dying there is a person driven to death by a deep split combined with a demand, from without and within, for unity and a unified sexual identity.

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HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

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Literature

Litteraturvetenskap

Literature

Litteraturvetenskap

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