Stig Dagerman
Stig Halvard Dagerman (5 October 1923 – 4 November 1954) was a Swedish journalist and writer. He was one of the most prominent Swedish authors writing in the aftermath of World War II, but his existential texts transcend time and place and continue to be widely published in Sweden and abroad. Stig Dagerman was born in Älvkarleby, Uppsala County. 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. He died in 1954, having closed the doors of the garage and run the engine. Dagerman's works have been translated into many languages, and his works continues to inspire readers, writers, musicians and filmmakers. 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 continue to put music to his texts. Films have been made of his short stories, novels and famous essay "Our Need for Consolation  Is Insatiable". 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 prize went to the French writer J. M. G. Le Clézio, who later was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Life and work. Stig Dagerman, born in 1923, spent his childhood on a small farm in Älvkarleby, where he lived with his paternal grandparents. His unwed mother gave birth on the farm but left shortly thereafter, never to return. He would see her again only when he was in his twenties . Dagerman's father, a traveling day laborer, eventually settled in Stockholm. His son joined him there at the age of eleven. Through his father, Dagerman came into contact with Anarchism and its ideological offspring, Syndicalism, and joined the Syndicalist Youth Federation. At nineteen, he became the editor of "Storm", the youth paper, and at twenty-two he was appointed the cultural editor of Arbetaren ("The Worker"), then a daily newspaper of the Syndicalist movement. In the intellectual atmosphere of the newspaper world, he met fellow writers and developed a taste for polemical writing. In addition to editorials and articles, Dagerman  wrote more than a thousand daily poems, many highly satirical, commenting on current events. He called "Arbetaren" his "spiritual birthplace". Dagerman's horizons were greatly expanded by his marriage in 1943 to Annemarie Götze, an eighteen-year-old German refugee. Her parents, Ferdinand and Elly, were prominent Anarcho-Syndicalists, and the family escaped Nazi Germany to be at the center of the movement in Barcelona. When Spanish fascists brutally crushed the Anarcho-Syndicalist social experiment there, the Götzes fled through France and Norway, with Hitler's army at their heels, to a neutral Sweden. Dagerman and his young wife lived  with his in-laws, and it was through this family, and the steady stream of refugees that passed through their home, that Dagerman felt he could sense the pulse of Europe. In 1945, Stig Dagerman at age twenty-two published his first novel Ormen (The Snake). It was an anti-militaristic story with fear as its main theme, channeling the war-time zeitgeist. Positive reviews gave him a reputation as a brilliant young writer of great promise. He left "Arbetaren" to write full-time. The following year, Dagerman published De dömdas ö (The Island of the Doomed), completed over a  fortnight during which, he says, it was as if he "let god do the writing". Using nightmarish imagery, this was an allegory centered on seven shipwrecked people, each doomed to die, each seeking a form of salvation. Critics have compared Dagerman's works to those of 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 channeled 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 became a household name in Sweden through his newspaper travelogue from war-ravaged Germany, later published in book form with the title Tysk Höst (German Autumn). Rather than blaming the German people for the war's atrocities, calling them crazed or evil, Dagerman portrayed the human ordinariness of the men and women who scraped by in the ruins of war. To him, the root of disaster lay in the anonymity of mass organizations that obstructed empathy and individual responsibility, qualities without which the human race is threatened by extinction. The short story collection Nattens lekar (The Games of Night ), published in 1947, met with high acclaim. Many of the stories were set on his grandparents’ farm, and are written from a child's perspective. Dagerman used a tender naturalistic style that appeals to a wide audience. This same year his first play “Den dödsdömde” (“The Man Condemned to Death”) opened in Stockholm to rave reviews. Also in 1947 he published his empathetic account of people's sufferings at the time of the Allied Occupation of Germany, "German Autumn" (in its English translation), an eye-witness account of devastation and sorrows, a literary equivalent to the film Germany Year Zero . The most famous of Dagerman's short stories, “Att döda ett barn” (“To Kill A Child”), exemplified the strong influence of film on his writing. In image after image, it portrayed in riveting detail how a series of perfectly ordinary events can be a prologue to horror as a motorists accidentally hits and kills a child crossing the road. In 1948, he wrote three more plays and published his third novel Bränt barn (A Burnt Child). The story, a psychological account of a young man's infatuation with his father's mistress, was written in a tight, naturalistic style. Dagerman  wrote only one more novel: Bröllopsbesvär (Wedding Worries), published in 1949, regarded by some as his best. In this novel, he returned 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 experimented with different literary styles, used stream-of-consciousness as a method of penetrating a character. After his early and rapid successes, expectations kept rising, not the least his own. Dagerman struggled with depression and an onset of writer's block. He became restless in the  now suburbanized Götze family, and was drawn to the medium of theater. As a playwright, and even a one-time director, he met friends and lovers within the theater world, leaving his family for periods at a time. Eventually, Dagerman broke away for good to live with and later marry the celebrated actress Anita Björk, with whom he had a daughter. But the break proved difficult, emotionally and financially. Dagerman felt guilty leaving his young sons, and took on mounting debt to support his first family. The assumption being that his debt would be paid up when he were to  publish his next book ... While battling deepening depression and a debilitating writer's block, Dagerman wrote an autobiographical essay “Vårt behov av tröst är omättligt” (“Our need for consolation is insatiable”) about his struggles and search for a way to stay alive. He also wrote “Tusen år hos gud” (“A Thousand Years with God”) – part of a new novel he was planning – which signaled a turn to a more mystical bent in his writing. In spite of his struggles, Dagerman continued to deliver his daily satirical verses for “Arbetaren”, the last one published on November 5, 1954, the day after  his suicide. Literary style and themes. 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. “An imagination that appeals to an unreasonable degree of sympathy is precisely what makes Dagerman’s fiction so evocative. Evocative or not, as one might expect, of despair, or bleakness, or existential angst, but of compassion , fellow-feeling, even love.” - Alice McDermott in her foreword to "Sleet: Selected Stories" (David R. Godine, Publisher, 2013). 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." English translations. Books. "German Autumn." Translation by Robin Fulton. Introduction by Mark Kurlansky. University of Minnesota Press, 2011. "Sleet - Selected Stories". Translation by Steven Hartman. Preface by Alice McDermott. David R. Godine, 2013. "A Burnt Child". Translation by Benjamin Mier-Cruz. Introduction by PO Enqvist. University of Minnesota Press, 2013. "Island of  the Doomed". Translation by Laurie Thompson. Introduction by JMG Le Clezio. University of Minnesota Press, 2012. "The Snake". Translation and introduction by Laurie Thompson. Quartet Encounters, London, 1995. "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. Individual Texts Translated by Steven Hartman. "Our Need for Consolation." "Little Star", Issue 5, 2014. 301-307 "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 Other English Translations. "Marty's Shadow." Translation of the play "Skuggan av Mart" by Lo Dagerman  and Nancy Pick, 2017. "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. Selected Adaptations to Film and Music. "To Kill  A Child" (TRT 10 min, 2003, Swedish with English subtitles) by Bjorne Larson and Alexander Skarsgard. Narration by Stellan Skarsgard. "The Games of Night" (TRT 23 min, 2007, English) by Dan Levy Dagerman. Screenplay based on translation by Steven Hartman. "Our Need for Consolation" (TRT 20 min, 2012, English) by Dan Levy Dagerman. Narration by Stellan Skarsgard. "Notre besoin de consolation est impossible a rassasier," Têtes raides, CD "Banco," 2007. "Corps de mots," CD booklet + DVD, 2013. "Stig Dagerman," a French poem inspired from "Our need for consolation is insatiable", written by Kentin Jivek, part of the album "Now  I'm Black Moon", released in April 2011.