About the Soul
No one has done more than Tiina Nunnally to enable the rediscovery of Sigrid Undset in the English-speaking world, revealing her as an acutely modern writer, not a producer of mock-medieval mush. Nunnally’s awaited translation of the great cycle about Olav Audunssøn is now complete. In the Christmas issue of the TLS, Hal Jensen writes: ‘Undset takes us right into the minds of Olav and Ingunn, giving voice to their thoughts, matching the big themes of sin, forgiveness, repentance and duty with the subtlety of her understanding of the psychology by which humans attempt to wriggle out of their uncomfortable moral predicaments. Sin is not a crude slogan here, it is a thing of slithering and wavering, delusion and self-deception, well-meant promises to self and self-defensive rationalizations. Undset records these internal trials with the same clear and non-judgemental eye that she brings to natural history. Although there is a strong religious element to the setting, she never climbs to the pulpit. Nor does she reach for any waffly rhetoric of transcendence. There is, however, a cumulative and mesmeric immensity to her focus. This is how to write about the soul.’
