Histories of Tears : Eva-Marie Liffner's Lacrimosa as Queer Archive

The focus of this study is Eva-Marie Liffner’s (b. 1957) historical novel Lacrimosa (2011) and especially its queer protagonist Ros. Liffner imagines that Ros was in fact a real historical person who inspired one of the most famous Swedish authors, Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793–1866), to create the mysterious Tintomara, featured in The Queen’s Diadem (1834). With a particular focus on Ros, including their upset reactions to Almqvist’s portrayal, this study seeks to illuminate queer people’s motivations and opportunities to create the image of themselves and write as well as rewrite their own histories. I do this primarily by reading Lacrimosa as queer archive, but I also study it in relation to postmodern aesthetics, notably historiographic metafiction and intertextuality. The analysis centres around three different themes: identities, objects, and texts. It shows the importance of nuanced representations of queer people, including the desire to be a recognised part of history. Compared to their predecessor Tintomara, Ros has greater opportunities here. Ros is given a clearer voice of their own and also departs from stereotypical and degrading representations of queer people, at least to some extent. They also leave something behind in the form of objects and an autobiographical manuscript, preserving their history. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether Ros actually manages to rewrite and reach out with their history, especially in a long-term perspective. Thus, through Lacrimosa, Liffner emphasises the possibilities as well as the limitations that the queer archive entails.