Om sted og identitet i Knud Romers - Aarhus Universitet

English summary
In this thesis I have tried to make an analysis of Knud Romer’s Den som blinker er bange for døden
(He who Blinks is Afraid to Die) focusing on the importance of place in the development of the
identity of the novels first-person narrator, Knud. I have tried to unlock the text by using two
place-theoretical terms the chronotope and the heterotopia, which I have borrowed from the
Russian theorist Mikhail M. Bakhtin and the French philosopher Michel Foucault.
The chronotopic analysis of the home resulted in the following: The home on Hans
Ditlevsensgade is a part-chronotope, where the historical time is the dominating one, which
means that the past is dominating the home. The father creates a claustrophobic home-
environment, by dissociating himself from the uncertainty of his own childhood. Knud’s mother,
Hildegard, furnishes the home in a German aristocratic country style. She is living in the past, and
tries to maintain her own illusion by producing a pre-modern German idyll in the living room. But
Hildegard is suffering a slow mental death in the unfriendly provincial town, Nykøbing. The novel
thus becomes an epitaph for the mother, in which Knud defends and explains her actions and
behavior. At the same time the chronotopic analysis reveals that Knud is feeling uncomfortable in
the claustrophobic home. He feels mentally confined in the home. The novel can therefore be
seen as both an apologia for the over-collaborating child, who is injuriously affected by the
idealism of the parents, as it is a defense of the mother.
In the part-chronotope provincial town of Nykøbing, to types of time and space
dominates: The everyday-time and the normal space, and the fairytale-time and the magic space.
The everyday-time is composed of a cyclic time, which creates a stationary street-space and a
collective time, which creates a street-space, where the deviant inhabitants of the city are not
welcome. Through his place and time descriptions Romer tries to take control of his native town,
which has been holding him and his family down his entire childhood. He does it deliberately by
using the cyclic- and collective time to create a public space that feels so claustrophobic that the
reader can´t help but feel sympathy for the hunted. In this way Den som blinker er bange for
døden becomes the victor’s story writing. Through the chronotopic analysis we gain access to one
of the main motives of the book: the first person narrator’s written battle with and his victory over
his childhood oppressors. The magical spaces that the fairytale time creates in the provincial town
can be seen as mental pictures of Knud’s view on his surroundings. Therefore the spaces that arise
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