This novel opens with the portrait of a priest who is not dependable actually showing up for Sunday service. That alone grants him gratitude and good feeling. He thereupon sets to fashioning a sermon delivered and accepted with grace and joy. He is feeling on top of the world, assured in the love of his congregation. In an exceedingly short number of pages, he tumbles from this height downward to beggardom as he is betrayed by a close associate—or so he interprets it—which leads to being defrocked and cast out of his ministry. He is symbolically found guilty and crucified.
By the end, this same man—Gosta Berling in case you couldn’t guess—has found contentment as a simple carpenter who has taken a vow of poverty and dedicated himself to helping the needy. It is a saga, to be sure, and one that not coincidentally has Gosta’s road to redemption taking a path through twelve pensioners who look to him as their leader and guide. That’s twelve pensioners. As in twelve apostles. That’s carpentry, as in what Jesus did before he started his ministry which led to betrayal, a guilty verdict and crucifixion. Gosta Berling’s story starts where the story of Christ ends and ends where the story of Christ starts. (Okay, not exactly, since it would be pretty ridiculous for Gosta to wind up in a manger.)
This is not to suggest that The Saga of Gosta Berling can or should be read as an allegorical retelling of the story of Jesus Christ. After all, Gosta has love affairs with women and his one true one love throughout is with brandy. Brandy’s not a fine girl, but a fine digestif that Gosta hardly feels the need to wait until after a meal to consume. Liquor is the source of Gosta’s downfall which definitely puts the story outside of the realm of allegory, but make no mistake that Gosta’s saga is one which tells the story of Christ in reverse. In this version, he starts out already deeply into his ministry and works backward toward becoming a simple carpenter.
What is the story trying to say? That Jesus would have done better to have remained a carpenter? Doesn’t seem so since one of the last things Gosta says is “Now I shall be and remain a poor man among the peasants, and help them with whatever I can.” But there is something else that Gosta says—just before this promise to help the poor—that may carry more meaning than it seems. Gosta promises that he will from this moment on—after finding his redemption—live his own life, content in poverty and simplicity. And then, without really reflecting upon it in the moment, but clearly speaking from the consequences of all that has befallen him over the previous four-hundred-something pages, he asserts that “If someone should offer me all the riches of the universe, it would not tempt me.”
When one considers the story of Jesus—especially in light of the controversy over the book and film—one things of the man temptations which Christ faced and rejected, but there may be a last temptation to which he submitted which is not considered. Jesus did leave the safety and security of being a simple carpenter who helped the needy whatever he could. But Jesus did not do that. Jesus took on followers which, like the pensioner of Gosta, numbered twelve. And Jesus may well even have taken a wife—who really knows what role Mary Magdalene served in his life? But most importantly, Jesus went out into the world and left behind his simple life as a carpenter. He preached to the masses. He preached interpretations of the scripture which ran counter to the official curriculum, as it were. Jesus was tempted by certain riches—the richness that comes with making a difference—and look where it got him.
Is this what the book is trying to teach by telling the story of Christ backward so that in Gosta he winds up plain, simple and useful to those who need him? It is an interpretation. It may carry some weight among readers or it may be rejected. But in presenting a near-allegory, an almost-allegorical story of Jesus told in reverse, surely the author was trying to make some point with where she leaves her protagonist at the end.
