Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child: A Novel, introduction by Per Olov Enquist, translated from the Swedish by Benjamin Mier-Cruz (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 2013) ("The worst thing about hitting animals is that you can never ask them for forgiveness. And you can never get forgiveness. Though, in the end, forgiveness is the only thing you need." Id. at 105.).
Stig Dagerman, German Autumn, foreword by Mark Kurlansky, translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton Macpherson (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 2011) (This is a collection of writings about the aftermath of the Second World War in Germany. From "The Art of Sinking": "Sink a little! Try to sink a little! When it comes to the art of sinking then there are worse and better artists. In Germany there are bad practitioners who keep themselves alive only by the thought that since they have so little to live for they have even less to die for. But there are surprisingly many who are willing to accept anything merely to survive." Id. at 43, 43. From the essay "Literature and Suffering": "What is the distance between literature and suffering? Does it depend on the nature of the suffering, on its closeness or on its strength? Is the distance less between poetry and the suffering caused by the reflection of the fire than the distance between poetry and the suffering arising from the fire itself? There are examples to hand that show there is more or less immediate connection between poetry and remote or closed suffering. Perhaps we can say that simply to suffer with others is a form of poetry, which feels a powerful longing for words. Immediate open suffering distinguishes itself from the indirect kind by, among other things, not longing for words, at least not at the moment it occurs. Open suffering is shy, restrained, taciturn." Id. at 111, 111.).
Stig Dagerman, Island of the Doomed, preface by Alice McDermott, translated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman (Boston: A Verba Mundi Book/David R. Godine, 2013) ("But above all it's through your severe eye slits, captain, that we can see you're proud of being an empty suit of armour; an empty suit of armour can't be afraid, for instance, it can wander through any forest you like without being worried, without being afraid that a snake might wriggle up through the heather and wrap itself around its leg. You think it's an advantage, an enormous advantage not to be able to feel afraid, and in your emptiness you are laughing away at all the many people who are terrified at the prospect of dying of hunger, dying of thirst, dying of loneliness, dying of paralysis, dying of wounds, but if you pause and think about it then maybe it's not as much of an advantage as you think. Your lack of fear isn't in fact due to your store of courage, but rather to your inability to feel anything at all, to your not being able to feel anything because you haven't had anything to feel with for for the last four hundred years, and your memories of the time when the armour was bristling with life just fill you with ridicule and sterile defiance." " That's why it's right to say to you what someone once said to somebody else: I say unto you the man who fears not life shall not love life, the man who does not harbor fear, neither shall he harbor courage, the man who fears not death shall not be enabled to die with dignity, the man who fears not himself, neither shall he love another. But let's not talk about that, captain, you can't be opened up with words, you can only be opened up with a tin opener or a five-inch nail, and when you have been opened up, people will only wonder why they bothered." Id. at 249-250.).
Stig Dagerman, Sleet, foreword by Mark Kurlansky, translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton Macpherson (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 2011) (From "The Stockholm Car": "When you're the child of a small family farmer, your back grows crooked already at an early age from you trying to bear as much on it as the grown-ups. It's only fitting that we bear their burdens, seeing as we already wear their outgrown clothes and speak their castoff words. Our haunches burn from the strain of trying to keep pace with their long strides. It's not easy walking in these grown-up shoes, no sir. But it's what we've got to do, 'cause being children is a choice we've never really had." Id. at 119, 119.).
