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In this book, Mikael Enckell continues the biography of his father which he started in “Beneath the Star of Persistence”, reviewed in Scand. Psychoanal. Rev., 12:86-88. His father, Rabbe Enckell was a prominent figure in Finno-Swedish poetry. This turn-of-the-century movement was rooted in the classical tradition, but gradually evolved parallel to and through exchanges with modernism.
The book's title “To enlightenment!” wakes associations to God's command in Genesis in the face of unshaped darkness: “Let there be light”. As the father turned a searchlight on the inescapable verities of his own life, however painful they might be, so the son sheds light on his father's life and works. At the same time, it is implicit that the process will illuminate Mikael E's own life. As he writes, he will—again—for the upteenth time—understand, integrate and overcome, however temporarily, the disastrous consequences of the failure of Rabbe E's first marriage.
Unconsciously, we are formed by our parents and our early relationships. In the introduction. Mikael E. treats the dilemma of writing about his own father during a period when his view is so coloured by personal memories and affective impressions. The introduction also touches on the divorce, with all the contradictory feelings and desires that it woke in him as he was growing up.
In the book itself, however, he chooses to take on a neutral stance of the psychoanalyst, approaching the subject “with as close and comprehensive an understanding as possible”, seeking to avoid the emotionally warping effect of his father. But does he not lose the unique perspective a son has, refusing to tap “the wide subterranean stream of imagination that flows from generation to generation.” In that stream are all the conceivable emotions of which the child is capable, from the most civilized to the most barbarous. When, as here, the savage is tamed, then one path for the reader to understanding of his father's life and work is barred. Occasi