Dagny or a Love Feast

A phantasmagorical mixture of religious mysticism and eroticism, bound up with the mythic origins of civilization, and taking in everything from shamanic art to Bach's "Art of the Fugue."

Dagny or a Love Feast  is a novel written in English. In 2012 it was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. In 2014 the novel was published in the US by Dalkey Archive Press. As the title suggests, there are two contrasting storylines unfolding in the novel: One of the Norwegian poetess and dramatist Dagny Juel (1867-1901), a beautiful and creative woman, whose errant life brings her to a totally foreign country. Dagny Juel was an inspiration to such celebrities as Edward Munch, August Strindberg, Gustav Vigeland, and was the “Queen” of the Berlin bohemia of the 1890s. The other story is a phantasmagoric mixture of religious mysticism and eroticism, mythic origins of arts and politics. It is a play with various cultural themes, traversing such extremes as shamanic art and Bach’s art of the fugue, Gnosticism and modernist esthetics, magic and linguistics. This mix of themes and ideas is rendered in a story of a so called Agape, the “Love Feast” a half-religious half-artistic event. The “Topos”-place where the “Love Feast” intersects with reality is the city of limitless feasting and wine-crazed discussion – Tiflis.

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