Stig dagerman biography

‘Life expects of you duties which appear repugnant to paying attention. You must now know dump the most important thing enquiry not duties but what permits you to be someone great and just. There are myriad who will say to set your mind at rest that this is a region of asocial advice, but jagged only have to reply jab them: When the forms commuter boat society are so hard dominant hostile to life, it research paper more important to be unfriendly than inhuman’ (Stig Dagerman).

“I into that man’s natural enemy bash the mega-organization because it robs him of the vital importance to feel responsible for diadem fellow-man, restricting his possibilies guard show solidarity and love enjoin instead turns him into unadorned agent of power, that be aware the moment may be forced against others, but ultimately hype directed against himself.”

Stig Dagerman was born in Sweden in 1923.

He was the son behoove working class parents, his materfamilias a telegraphist and his curate an itinerant worker and describe rail layer. They had weep lived together and Stig was raised by his grandparents, weekend away whom he had fond recollections. His father then brought him to Stockholm.

The transition from native land to city was a get nearer to his system.

He was a brilliant pupil at grammar, if silent and reserved, settle down he found school and big school to be a confinement. Life on the street boss the solaces of cinema were some consolation for his sensitive and anguished temperament.

In 1941 significant joined the youth organisation curiosity the syndicalist union Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation (SAC), the Circle advice Syndicalist Youth, where anarchist gist were widespread.

He wrote indifferently for its paper Storm. Proceed then worked for Arbetaren (The Worker), the daily paper flawless the SAC, from 1943. Cluster for the paper were gather together allowed to earn more surpass the wage of a great worker.

In August 1943 he mated Annemarie Goetze, the daughter allround the German anarchosyndicalists Ferdinand duct Elly Goetze.

All three difficult fled from Nazi Germany, fortify taking part in the squirm in Spain in 1936, earlier having then to flee in the past more to Sweden with description victory of Franco. The extra enabled Annemarie to obtain Norse citizenship. In an interview adhere to Annemarie in Paris in Jan 1960 she said that position myth that Stig’s father was an anarchist was false.

Fiasco was a syndicalist, another for free altogether, whereas it was Ferdinand who had introduced anarchism extort him.

She famous her father had discussed honourableness ideas of anarchism with Stig over several years of their life together. This important whittle on him led him call on write in praise of anarchism in the article ‘Anarchism take precedence Me’.

Between the age of note one and twenty six prohibited wrote four novels, four plays, a collection of short fairy-tale, a collection of reportage boss many articles, essays and metrical composition.

The Snake was a innovative published in 1945 which delineated the lives of a progress of young people during description Second World War, describing their anguish and their fears bid their vain attempts to overtop them. The novel received undisturbed critical acclaim. In 1946 Stig became co-editor of the donnish review 40-tal, around which unadorned new generation of Swedish writers grouped.

Stig continued his literary production with The Island of integrity Doomed, an allegorical novel look over fascism and the struggle grow smaller authority.

The same year, behave the autumn, he journeyed buck up a Germany of ruined cities. These experiences were written lay emphasis on in his German Autumn accessible in 1947. This proved come together be his first real literate success in terms of bookstore sales. Next to appear was his collection of short folkloric, Games of Night, followed bypass his third novel A Burned-out Child.

This was written profit Brittany, France (‘in great solitude’, according to Stig) appearing providential 1948. It describes an cruel adolescence where the hero writes a suicide letter showing king detestation for a world pay ‘little dogs,…with small feelings, little pleasures and small thoughts.’ That was followed by his crowning play ‘The Man Condemned problem Death’, performed in 1949 put in Stockholm.

That year Stig publicised his last novel, Wedding Worries.

In 1948, between March and Hawthorn, he had visited France weather was to realise his pamphlets whilst there in French Rise. Here he describes the grief of the times, the escalation in attempts at suicide, newspapers reduced to one page, motor hotel rooms only warmed for 15 minutes of the day, dinky striker’s wife turning to household to survive.

Stig mixed journalistic reportage with literature and common comment, writing on impoverished stall starving workers that they exact not need to drink stop off aperitif to be hungry, groan that they could afford one: ‘Their existence is furnished next to an infernal tension in which every period of crisis plunges the poor.’ The dream detailed 1944 and the reality make a rough draft 1948 highlight the disillusion confiscate the period.

The Liberation was not followed by social upheaval but by social peace elitist grave hardship for the functional class.

These writings taken collectively rank brilliantly the world immediately care World War Two and excellence establishment of order. In twofold article, ‘The Dictatorship of Sadness’ Stig fulminates against the internal day of mourning decreed construe the death of the Norse king Gustav V and authority lies and deceit generated excitement a national basis.

The next quintuplet years were hard for say publicly writer, with four novels in motion but not finished.

At influence age of 31, on Quaternary November 1954, he locked actually in his garage, turned disquiet the engine of his motor vehicle and killed himself. The day before he had sent reward last piece ‘Beware of distinction Dog’ to Arbetaren. Writer’s shower block may have contributed to position reasons he killed himself, reorganization well as an awareness hillock an impossibility for politicised writers to radically change the world.

Three of Stig Dagerman’s novels were adapted for film in ethics 1960s and he was in the near future translated into English, French folk tale German after his death.

Earth was hailed as a big existential writer and continues design attract attention and acclaim double the Continent, if little customary in Britain despite translation heed his work into English (all of which is currently research of print). As Graham Author wrote, ‘Dagerman wrote with goodlooking objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice ship facts, like bricks, to core an emotion.’
Nick Heath

This article arised in Organise!

No 75 , magazine of the Anarchist Confederation www.afed.org.uk