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Burzum
August 1991
When night falls
She cloaks the world
In impenetrable darkness.
A chill rises
From the soil
And contaminates the air.
Suddenly...
Life has new meaning.
Creeping And Crawling, Rustling And Fluttering (Det Rusler Og Tusler, Rasler Og Tasler)
There are two natural lights in this world, the sun and the moon. The first distorts the appearance of the other, often until it is unrecognizable. The sun gives us colour, warmth and clarity, while the moon gives us no colour, coldness and unclarity. We live in the sunlight, and we make artificial sunlight, after Arvakr and Alsvinnr, send by Sol, have drawn down the sun in sea in the West, because we like colour, warmth and clarity. The starting-point of our reality lies in this light; when Naglfaris' wife, Night, comes, our world disappears in a certain way. She is illuminated by a light, that we don't like, the colourless, cold and indistinct moonlight. Strange beings show themselves in the woods and the people draw back into their reliable, small houses. Out there, only the forces of darkness reign, yes, in the most true meaning of the word. The world becomes a total different one, for some the world becomes a place worth living. For those, who want to challenge these giants, who are brought to us by the moon in the shape of uncontrollable powers of nature, the world finally becomes a place really worth living in.
Det Rusler Og Tusler, Rasler Og Tasler
Burzum’s eponymously titled song, “Burzum,” is just one of countless possible subjects through which one can study the ways in which a text may be read in innumerable different ways. New Criticism, for example, examines the lyrics exclusive from the song and the artist because the text “contains its own meaning within itself” (Barry 17). The Structuralist critic will take into account the full breadth of the work in the proper context of its various structures in order to establish unity within the text because “things cannot be understood in isolation—they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are a part of” (39). Post-Structuralists, on the other hand, will deconstruct the text to find disunity to show how our “decentred universe” is one of “radical disunity” (61-62).
In entering the lyric of “Burzum,” the New Critic, ignorant of the larger structures at work in the text, will first note the utter lack of any of the traditional tools of poetic measure; he will recognize it as one essentially fighting against itself. It would seem evident that any semblance of poetic technique or expression is more likely to be incidental than intentional or intended to be interpreted as a pattern. The closest semblance of a pattern is the way in which the text is structured around three sentences, three separate clauses. Each clause is further broken down into fragments, the first two being shorter and providing the context that makes the effect (as opposed to the cause expressed in the preceding fragments) able to be understood, its separation from the cause accentuating the significance of the effect. The final clause, however, does not follow this pattern; rather, it contains one short fragment marked off by an ellipsis (the only punctuation other than the periods that signal the end of each clause), which separates the second fragment even further from the previous fragment than are the other clause fragments.
Yet this apparent shattering of the only element of unity contained within the text turns out, in fact, to be the gateway to the primary textual unity to which the New Critic, in evaluating this text, will cling; that is, namely, the way in which “form and content [are] fused in an organic way” (19). The literary form of this lyric is not merely decoration or cosmetic dressing applied after the fact, but it is rather essential to the understanding of the whole. The New Critic has already noted the way in which the individual clauses are divided into fragments. For the first two clauses, the first fragment introduces the subject that is the agent provocateur, namely “night” and “a chill”. The second fragment describes the recipient of the action, namely “the world” that the night “cloaks” and “the soil” from which the chill “rises”. While the third clause does not maintain this pattern, the very breaking of the pattern is constitutive of the new understanding of the form of the lyric; the clause begins “suddenly”, and then pauses immediately, as if in a state of reflection as the text comes to terms with the realization that “life has new meaning” as a result of the darkness and chill that descends upon the world. The breaking up of the formative constancy in one way works against the unity of the poem, yet, at the same time, this subversion results in a new unity that is mutually cognizant of the text itself, bringing about an organic unity between form and content.
Though the New Critic is ultimately successful in bringing about an organic unity within the lyric, it seems to the Structuralist critic to be superficial in some sense. The New Critic fails to account for the broader structures at work in the lyric, and as a consequence seems to be missing integral pieces to the puzzle given the complex dynamic of analyzing such a brief and cryptic text. These broader, more abstract boundaries are, for the Structuralist, the true unity of a work because “meaning…isn’t a kind of core or essence inside things: rather, meaning is always outside” (39).
The nature of this particular lyric seems to call for the analysis of the Structuralist critic, in particular one of the autobiographical tradition which analyses a piece of work in the context of the author’s own life, thoughts, and ideas. The impenetrability of the text (reflected in the impenetrability of the darkness in the lyric) in its shying away from established forms of meter, rhyme, rhythm, etc., as well as the ambiguous and unclear manner of the “sudden” philosophical breakthrough that serves as the narrative climax of the lyric, suggests to the Structuralist that meaning must be sought outside of the work. Unbeknownst to the New Critic, this lyric was written by Varg Vikernes in August of 1991, the first song ever written for his project which he named Burzum, after the song. The date of composition is relevant in that its writing coincides with the origins of the rise of the Black Metal movement in Norway, in which he was a seminal figure. In his article, “A Burzum Story: Part I – The Origin And Meaning,” Varg describes the origins of his one man band, the individualism of this unit further highlighting the purity of the philosophy expressed in and out of the music. In so far as “Burzum” is the eponymous song of the band, its core philosophy also reflects the philosophy of the band entire, and in turn, of the artist. Basing the primordial groundings of the band on JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings lore, he recounts that the word “’burzum’ is one of the words that are written in Black Speech on the One Ring of Sauron” (Vikernes 3). He says that “Burzum was an attempt to create…an imaginary past, a world of fantasy…based on our Pagan past” (4). In so far as he read Tolkien’s work as praising the “light” elves and men and condemned the “dark” orcs, demons, and Sauron within the framework of a Christian versus Pagan context of good and evil, Varg found himself identifying himself with the darkness; in fact, ‘burzum’ is the Black Speech word for ‘darkness.’ Thus, he says, “the idea of Burzum” was “to create a new ‘darkness’ in a far too ‘light,’ safe and boring world” (3). There is a “need for ‘darkness’ in the world…as too much ‘light’ doesn’t illuminate our paths and warm us, it only blinds and burns us” (5). This is why his music is “supposed to be listened to in the evening, when the sunbeams couldn’t vaporize the power of the magic” (4).
It is fitting, then, that the nature of the autobiographical context of the song is told almost exclusively in the artist’s own words, because the ideological component of the band’s music is so pure in its individual thought since he was the only person influencing that ideology within the band. Thus, as is made clear, the “new meaning” ushered forth by the “impenetrable darkness” of the “night” is the reawakening of the world to a state of clear-sightedness, in that the darkness allows the world, previously blinded by the light, to see. For Varg, this means an awakening to the realization of the Christian subversion of his Pagan ancestry. Life has a new meaning that is no longer propagated by force through Christian dogmatic moralism (and immoralism).
Also of note are the accompanying adjuncts to the text, namely the picture and the text provided above. The text further elucidates the meaning of usage of darkness in the poem. The creeping and crawling represents the awakening of the rational senses in the individual, recovering from a long period of dormancy. The image attached to the song also shares the name of the short story provided with the song; accordingly, its spirit resonates with the same principle message of rising up to the rational senses and clear sight. Thus, the autobiographical Structuralist has identified the unity of the composition through its relations to the author.
Yet, for the Post-Structuralist critic, the author’s interpretation is not the end of the matter altogether, but rather only the beginning. One of the key conceptual principles that establish the core of Post-Structuralist thinking is the idea that when one writes, one writes more, less, or other than what one thinks, meaning that there are hidden interpretations and meaning imbedded within a text that can be unearthed, whether or not the author intends them or agrees with them or is even able to see them. So simply writing a piece and proceeding to explain what that piece is intended to mean is not necessarily the answer, but only one of a plethora of answers. Varg’s conception of darkness as a tool that allows one to see clearly is but one interpretation of the darkness that is found in the lyric. The Post-Structuralist’s work, then, is to identify other interpretations in the text that contradict each other, thereby creating a disunity in the text which reflects the slippery and inherently meaningless nature of language.
A curious fact of this particular song is that, upon its release, on the back of the album was listed the German translations of the song titles instead of the actual song titles (which was properly printed on the booklet inside the album). As a result of this, “Burzum” has widely become known, possibly even better known, by its German translated title, “Dunkelheit,” than its proper title of the Black Speech, to the point where, for example, when the band Reverend Bizarre published their second album, it contained a cover song of “Dunkelheit” rather than “Burzum.” That this particular song, the song sharing the name of the band which is supposed to embody the ideological basis upon which the band is established, is misattributed a false title is very significant and reflects the arbitrariness of language as a whole. If this song can be so easily mistaken for some different, other ‘song,’ in the sense that, when people listen to the song they have the German word ‘dunkelheit’ in their subconscious rather than the Black Speech word ‘burzum,’ then so too can any and all words be mistaken for others. That the listener does not identify this song with the proper form of the word ‘darkness’ prevents the listener from properly recognizing the significance of this song that is meant to embody the philosophy of the artist whose band he named after this song and whose ideology is shared between artist, band, and song. This connection is ‘lost in translation.’ This is not simply a Derridean “trace” of meaning that is left over; this is an entire usurpation of meaning.
There is also a discrepancy between the Structuralist’s view of the accompanying adjuncts and the Post-Structuralist’s view. While the former may ignore elements of division for the sake of the greater unity of the whole, the Post-Structuralist revels in the internal discrepencies. For example, in the booklet that accompanies the album, that short story is in fact provided only in Norwegian. The English translation can only be found on the band’s web page. The song’s lyrics are expressed in one language, the accompanying story in another, and the picture of course in an entirely different medium, yet another language. Also, the booklet does not reveal the title of the painting; it is again another connection that the Structuralist must piece together himself, another thread not found in the work itself, but outside it.
Aside from the outside textual influences, there is a further disunity that the Post-Structuralist will dig up within the song itself. For example, whereas the New Critic will see the third clause of “new meaning” as a new structure for the poem and thus a new unity, the Post-Structuralist will see this as a shattering of unity; the trinity of each sentence is broken down to a pair and marked off by a punctuation unique to the last clause, signaling a disunity between the first two thirds of the song and the final third. There is also an unexplainable shift in tense from the hypothetical future of “when night falls” to the present of “a chill rises / from the soil”, and finally to the universal declaration of “life has new meaning” which is both outside of the conception of time and forcefully placed into the conception of time by the “sudden”-ness of the revelation. The song also never explains why a chill would “contaminate” the air, or what the new meaning of life is. He could have paradigmatically chosen a word other than contaminate to describe the relationship between the chill and the air; that he chose this word suggests that he means something akin to poison, as though the chill is negatively impacting the air. But the chill is paired with the night which “cloaks” the world in “impenetrable darkness.” These negative pairings reflect the deconstructionist “tendency to reverse the polarity of common binary oppositions…so that the second term, rather than the first, is ‘privileged’ and regarded as more desireable” (74). This inversion of the world in which we live is “symptomatic of the way language doesn’t reflect or convey our world but constitutes a world of its own” (79). If language is constitutive not of our world but of a new world of its own, then our understanding of our world based on language is entirely useless and meaningless, which is in entire opposition that there is a “new meaning” to the “life” that we all share, and indeed completely against the very communication of this idea through language. For it makes little sense to convey in this world a new meaning for this world in a language constitutive of a world of its own. Thus, there is a great disunity in the song, its meaning unmoored from its structures and cast off to drift in the endless sea of fluid language, never able to hold on to one specific thing.
As articulated above, there are many paths one can take from this song, but each lead to a different end. The New Critic has ended in the realm of stunted meaning, the nature of the poem not allowing him to truly grasp the meaning of the poem due to its intentionally unorthodox characteristics. The autobiographical Structuralist has shown the ‘true’ meaning, or at least the primary intention of the song, of what darkness is meant to signify. The Post-Structuralist has shown that this intention is simply one of many, not necessarily more relevant than others or even meaningful in any real sense.
Works Cited
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
Vikernes, Varg. “A Burzum Story: Part I – The Origin and Meaning”. Burzum.org. Dec. 2004. 18 Dec. 2007. <http://www.burzum.org/eng/library/a_burzum_story01.shtml>.
