Stig Dagerman
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Stig Dagerman (October 5 1923, Älvkarleby, Uppsala County - November 4 1954) was a Swedish author and journalist.
Stig Dagerman was one of the most prominent Swedish authors during the 1940s. In the course of five years, 1945-49, he enjoyed phenomenal success with four novels, a collection of short stories, a book about postwar Germany, five plays, hundreds of poems and satirical verses, several essays of note and a large amount of journalism. Then, with apparent suddenness, he fell silent. In the fall of 1954, Sweden was stunned to learn that Stig Dagerman, the epitome of his generation of writers, had been found dead in his car: he had closed the doors of the garage and run the engine.
Dagerman's works deal with universal problems of morality and conscience, of sexuality and social philosophy, of love, compassion and justice. He plunges into the painful realities of human existence, dissecting feelings of fear, guilt and loneliness. Despite the somber content, he also displays a wry sense of humor that occasionally turns his writing into burlesque or satire.
The British writer Graham Greene said this about him: "Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion." This style is exemplified in the following excerpt from the story, "The Games of Night", where a young boy, Håkan, lies waiting for his drunken father to come home:
- At night, all waking thoughts revolve around one thing, one moment.
- And even Håkan's deepest sleep is much too fragile to block that thing out.
- True, he hasn' t heard the car pull up out front. He hasn't heard the click
- of the light switch or the steps in the stairwell. But the key that slides into the keyhole
- also pokes a hole in Håkan's sleep. In an instant he's awake, stricken deep by a flash
- of delight tingling hot from his toes to his scalp. But the delight disappears nearly
- as fast as it comes, withdrawing into a cloud of uncertainties.
Since the 1980s, there is a strong renewed interest in Stig Dagerman's work and life. His collected works are available in eleven volumes. Scholars have examined his writing from every possible angle: philosophical, political, psychological, journalistic, its relationship to the medium of film, and why French and Italian readers have found him particularly appealing. Artists in Sweden and abroad continue to put music to his texts. (The French group "Tetes raides" has recorded the text of "Our Need for Consolation is Insatiable" to reggae rhythm on their recent CD "Banco", 2007.) Films have been made of his short stories and novels. Most recently, "The Games of Night" by Dan Levy Dagerman (23 min, English, 2007) The Stig Dagerman Society in Sweden annually awards the Stig Dagerman Prize to individuals who, like Dagerman, through their work promote empathy and understanding. In 2008, the SD Prize went to the French writer JMG Le Clezio, who later was awarded also the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Dagerman's work is translated into many languages, and his work continues to inspire readers, writers, musicians and filmmakers in Sweden and abroad.
Life and Work
Stig Dagerman, born in 1923, spends his childhood on a small farm in Älvkarleby where he lives with his paternal grandparents. His unwed mother gives birth on the farm but leaves shortly thereaftrer, never to come back. He meets her only when he is in his twenties. Dagerman's father, a traveling day laborer, eventually settles in Stockholm. His son joins him there at the age of eleven.
Through his father, Dagerman soon comes into contact with Anarchism and its ideological offspring, Syndicalism, and joins the Syndicalist Youth Federation. At nineteen, he becomes the editor of "Storm", the youth paper, and at twenty-two he is appointed the cultural editor of Arbetaren ("The Worker"), then a daily newspaper of the Syndicalist movement. It is in the fertile ground of the newspaper world that he meets fellow writers and relishes in polemic writing. In addition to editorials and articles, Dagerman pens over a thousand daily poems, many highly satirical, commenting on current events. He calls "Arbetaren" his "spiritual birthplace".
Dagerman's horizons are greatly expanded by his marriage in 1943 to Annemarie Götze, an eighteen-year old German refugee. Her parents, Ferdinand and Elly, are prominent Anarcho-Syndicalists, and the family escapes Nazi-Germany to join the center of the movement in Barcelona. As Spanish fascists brutally crush the Anarcho-Syndicalist social experiment there, the Götzes flee through France and Norway, with Hitler's army at their heels, to a neutral Sweden. Dagerman and his young wife live with his parents-in-law, and it is through this family, and the steady stream of refugees that passes through their home, that Dagerman feels he can sense the pulse of Europe.
In 1945, Stig Dagerman is twenty-two and publishes his first novel Ormen (The Snake). It is an anti-militaristic story with fear as its main theme, channeling the war-time zeitgeist. Positive reviews earn him the reputation as a brilliant young writer of great promise. He leaves "Arbetaren" to write full-time. The following year, Dagerman publishes De dömdas ö (The Island of the Doomed), completed over a fortnight during which, he says, it is as he "let's god do the writing". Using nigthmarish imagery, this is an allegory centered on seven shipwrecked people, each doomed to die, each seeking a form of salvation.
Critics compare Dagerman’s works to Franz Kafka, William Faulkner and Albert Camus. Many see him as the main representative of a group of Swedish writers called “Fyrtiotalisterna” (“the writers of the 1940s”) who channel existentialist feelings of fear, alienation and meaninglessness common in the wake of the horrors of World War II and the looming Cold War.
In 1946, Dagerman becomes a Swedish household name through a newspaper travel log from war-torn Germany, later published with the title Tysk Höst (German Autumn). Rather than blaming the German people for the war’s atrocities, calling them crazed or evil, Dagerman portrays the human ordinariness of the men and women who now scrape by in the ruins of war. To him, the root of disaster lies in the anonymity of mass-organizations that obstructs empathy and individual responsibility, qualities without which the human race is threatened by extinction.
- “I believe that man’s natural enemy is the mega-organization
- because it robs him of the vital necessity to feel responsible for his fellow-man,
- restricting his possibilities to show solidarity and love
- and instead turns him into an agent of power,
- that for the moment may be directed against others,
- but ultimately is directed against himself.”
The short story collection Nattens lekar (The Games of Night), published in 1947, meets with high acclaim. Many of the stories are set on his grandparents’ farm, and are written from a child’s perspective. Dagerman uses a tender naturalistic style that appeals to a wide audience. This same year his first play “Den dödsdömde” (“The Man Condemned to Death”) opens in Stockholm to rave reviews.
The most famous of Dagerman’s short stories, “Att döda ett barn” (“To Kill A Child”), exemplifies the strong influence of film on his writing. In image after image, it portrays in riveting detail how a series of perfectly ordinary events can be a prologue to horror.
In 1948, he writes three more plays and publishes his third novel Bränt barn (A Burnt Child). The story is a psychological account of a young man’s infatuation with his father’s mistress, and is written in a tight, naturalistic style.
Dagerman will write only one more novel: Bröllopsbesvär (Wedding Worries), published in 1949, regarded by some as his best. In this novel, he returns one final time to the setting of his grandparents’ farm and characters to describe the human condition, including a search for forgiveness and salvation. In this book, Dagerman, who throughout his career experiments with different literary styles, makes ample use of stream-of-consciousness as a way of penetrating a character.
After his early and rapid successes, expectations keep rising, not least his own. Dagerman struggles with depression and an onset of writer’s block. He becomes restless in the now suburbanized Götze family, and is drawn to the medium of theater. As a playwright, and even a one-time director, he meets friends and lovers within the theater world, leaving his family for periods at a time. Eventually, Dagerman breaks away for good to live with and later marry the celebrated actress Anita Björk with whom he gets a daughter. But the break proves difficult, emotionally and financially. Dagerman feels guilty leaving his young sons, and takes on mounting debt to support his first family. The assumption is that the debt will be paid when he publishes his next book.
Battling deepening depression and a debilitating writer’s block, Dagerman pens a magazine essay “Vårt behov av tröst är omättligt” (“Our need for consolation is insatiable”) about his thoughts of suicide. He also writes “Tusen år hos gud” (“A Thousand Years with God”) – part of a new novel he is planning – which signals a turn to a more mystical bent in his writing. In spite of his struggles, Dagerman continues to deliver his daily satirical verses for “Arbetaren”, the last one published on November 5, 1954, the day after his suicide.
Main Works
- Ormen (The Snake) 1945, novel
- De dömdas ö (The Island of the Doomed) 1946, novel
- Tysk höst (German Autumn), 1947, non-fictional account of post-war Germany
- Nattens lekar (The Games of Night) 1947, a collection of short stories
- Bränt barn (A Burnt Child) 1948, novel
- Dramer of dömda: Den dödsdömde; Skuggan av Mart (Dramas of the Condemned: The Man Condemned to Death; The Shadow of Mart) 1948, plays
- Judas Dramer: Streber; Ingen gar fri (Judas Dramas: No One Goes Free; The Climber) 1949, plays
- Bröllopsbesvär (Wedding Worries) 1949, novel
- Vårt behov av tröst (Our Need for Consolation is Insatiable) 1955, prose and poetry. Edited by O. Lagercrantz
English Translations
1. BOOKS
The Snake. Translation and introduction by Laurie Thompson. Quartet Encounters, London, 1995. ISBN 0-7043-0241-1 "The Snake seems to be a collection of short stories until, in a brilliant denouement, disparate threads are brought together to reveal the underlying thematic structures. Dagerman writes with equal skill from the point of view of both sexes, and through them he examines wider issues of social justice and the psychology of fear." (book jacket)
Island of the Doomed. Translation by Laurie Thompson. Quartet Encounters, London, 1991. ISBN 0-7043-7001-8 "SD's novel penetrates the dark regions of the soul and is a haunting, powerful allegory about the state of modern man. Its potent themes include the existentialist argument over meaning and reality, and the confrontation of political ideals represented by the main protagonists." (book jacket)
The Games of Night. Translation by Naomi Walford and introduction by Michael Meyer. Bodley Head, London, 1959; Lippincott, Philadelphia and New York, 1961; Quartet Encounters, London, 1986. ISBN 0-7043-0024-9 "Much of SD's best writing is to be found in his short stories. His work is original and daring. A critic has written of him: "Everything was briefer, more fiery and more sharply felt for him than for other people. His books exploded from him." (book jacket)
German Autumn. Translation and introduction by Robin Fulton. Quartet Encounters, London, 1988. ISBN 0-7043-0047-8 "Undoubtedly SD's most unusual assignment as a journalist was when a Swedish newspaper asked him to go to Germany in the autumn of 1946. German Autumn gathers together these articles, and remains one of the most unusual documents of life in Germany immediately after the fall of the Third Reich." (book jacket)
A Burnt Child. Translation by Alan Blair and introduction by Laurie Thompson. Chatto & Windus, London, 1950; Morrow, New York, 1950; Quartet Encounters, London, 1990. ISBN 0-7043-0125-3 "A Burnt Child is about the emotional reactions of a family to the mother's sudden death. The principal drama ia played out between the son, his father, the father's mistress, and the son's young fiancee. SD explores the complex tensions within this group with compassion and brilliant psychological insight." (book jacket)
2. SHORT STORIES, A PLAY AND PROSE EXCERPT
2.1 Translations by Steven Hartman:
"Our Need for Consolation". (unpublished)
"Thousand Years with God". (unpublished)
"The Surprise". Southern California Anthology 8, Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, 1996. 60-66
"Men of Character". Southern Review 32:1. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1996. 59-79
"Salted Meat and Cucumber". Prism International 34:2. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, 1996. 54-60
"Sleet". Confrontation 54/55 (Double Issue). New York, NY: Long Island University, 1994. 53-62
"The Games of Night". Black Warrior Review 20:2. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama, 1994. 107-117
"In Grandmother's House". Quarterly West 38. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah, 1994. 160-167
"To Kill A Child". Grand Street 42. New York, NY, 1992. 96-100
2.2 Other Translations:
"Pithy Poems". Translation by Laurie Thompson. The Lampeter Translation Series: 4. Lampeter, Wales. 1989.
"God Pays a Visit to Newton, 1727". Translation by Ulla Natterqvist-Sawa. Prism International, Vancouver, BC, October 1986. 7-24
"Bon Soir". Translation by Anne Born. The Swedish Book Review supplement. UK, 1984. 13-
"The Man Condemned to Death". Translation by Joan Tate. The Swedish Book Review supplement. UK, 1984. 21-
" The Condemned". Translation by Henry Alexander and Llewellyn Jones. Scandinavian Plays of the Twentieth Century. Third Series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951.
3. RECENT (English language) ADAPTIONS TO FILM AND MUSIC
"To Kill A Child" (TRT 10 min, 2003, Swedish with English subtitles) by Bjorne Larson and Alexander Skarsgard. Narrated by Stellan Skarsgard.
"The Games of Night" (TRT 23 min, 2007, English) by Dan Levy Dagerman. Screenplay based on translation by Steven Hartman.
"No One Can Reinvent the World" ("Jorden kan du inte gora om"). Poem translated by Steven Hartman. Recorded by The Real Group (title withheld; anticipated release 2009)
