Hi everyone,
Hope everyone is having a nice start to the summer. This week’s recommendation is an autobiographical trilogy featuring the fascinating yet tough life of iconic Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen. Each of the books composing the trilogy was originally written and published separately. The edition I read includes all three books in one, resulting in roughly 380 pages.
I hope you enjoy it!
mariana
Why did I read this book?
I received this book in the post as part of the book subscription that I got as a birthday gift last year. On the cover, I saw a mini review by Patti Smith and that was enough to convince me to read it.
What is the trilogy about?
Childhood: The first book of the trilogy paints a picture of Tove’s early years up until she turns fourteen. Tove was born in Denmark in 1918, just as WWI was coming to an end. Her family was poor, and as she was growing up, she gradually realised she wouldn’t have many appealing options to earn a living as an adult. This was partly due to her working-class background and because of the gender expectations at the time. Tove felt like a misfit during her childhood and had an interesting relationship with her aspirations and reality. She had a strong desire to become a poet, and when she was 10 she started writing.
Youth: In the second book of the trilogy, Tove starts making decisions that will shape her future. At 18, she leaves her parents house to pursue her aspirations as a writer more seriously. She has to make a living and fully look after herself for the first time, she slowly brings herself out of poverty. As she gets acquainted with independence, she also starts interacting with men outside of her family environment. During this period, she faces engagements, marriage, fame, divorce, motherhood, and pressure to make her romantic relationships work.
Dependency: I found the third book the toughest one to read. During this part of her life, we get to see Tove as an established artist and writer, succeeding in what she always wanted to do. Her dreams are coming true. We see Tove become a mother, which was one of her dreams, only to later see her struggle with addiction, caused by an unwanted pregnancy inspired by the fear of losing her husband. This book is a harrowing recount of her grappling with addictive substances during adulthood, a battle that would hunt her until the end of her days.
“Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning like a little animal that’s locked in a cellar and forgotten. It comes out of your throat like your breath in the cold, and sometimes it’s too little, other times too big. It never fits exactly. It’s only when it has been cast off that you can look at it calmly and talk about it like an illness you’ve survived. Most grownups say that they’ve had a happy childhood and maybe they really believe it themselves, but I don’t think so. I think they’ve just managed to forget it.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood, Youth, Dependency
Why should you read it?
If you’re after a beautifully written memoir: Tove Ditlevsen is one of the most famous Danish authors. She published around 30 books during her lifetime. Her life was never easy. After a long struggle with addiction, Tove ended up taking her own life when she was 58, five years after she finished writing the third book of this trilogy.
Poverty in Denmark: It’s hard to imagine poverty in Denmark. This book paints a picture of what life was like for working-class families in Copenhagen throughout the first half of the last century.
A testimony of the struggles with addiction: Tove’s story depicts how easy it can be for some people to get hooked to certain substances and how difficult it can be to escape them. It’s impossible not to feel a deep sympathy for her.
“What if I told him the truth? What if I told him I was in love with a clear liquid in a syringe and not with the man who had the syringe? But I didn’t tell him; I never told that to anyone.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood, Youth, Dependency
Links to buy the book
Always try to support your local bookshop. If you’d like me to add any bookshops to the list, let me know. This week’s new bookshop recommendation is Pages of Hackney, thanks Antonia!
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Spain
Mexico
Italy
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Favourite quotes
//The purpose of this section is to share some of my favourite book bits, so you can come back to them when you finish a book, if you wish to do so. I’ve put in bold my favourite ones, in case you want to read a few (or all) ahead of the book.//
“My brother is the prince and he doesn’t know that soon he’ll be blind after his fall from the tower. He pounds nails into his board and is the family’s pride and joy. That’s what boys are, while girls just get married and have children. They have to be supported and they can’t hope for or expect anything else.”
“Neither my mother nor my father likes the police.”
“...and my mother has often talked about the time the police came and got her father and put him in jail. She’ll never forget it. My father doesn’t drink and he’s never been in jail, either. My parents don’t fight and things are much better for me than for them when they were children.”
“In the meantime, there exist certain facts. They are stiff and immovable, like the lampposts in the street, but at least they change in the evening when the lamplighter has touched them with his magic wand.”
“I know every person has their own truth just as every child has their own childhood. My mother’s truth is completely different from my father’s truth, but it’s just as obvious as the fact that he has brown eyes while hers are blue.”
“...my father says that I shouldn’t believe in the Lord since the capitalists have always used Him against the poor.”
“Someday I’ll write down all the words that flow through me. Someday other people will read them in a book and marvel that a girl could be a poet, after all.”
“My classmates find me unceasingly, overwhelmingly comical, and I’ve gotten used to the clown role and even find a sad comfort in it, because together with my confirmed stupidity, it protects me against their peculiar meanness towards anyone who is different.”
“Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own. It’s there all the time and everyone can see it just as clearly as you can see Pretty Ludvig’s harelip.”
“Everything that is ugly or unfortunate is called beautiful, and no one knows why. You can’t get out of childhood, and it clings to you like a bad smell. You notice it in other children — each childhood has its own smell. You don’t recognise your own and sometimes you’re afraid that it’s worse than others’.”
“People with such a visible, flagrant childhood both inside and out are called children, and you can treat them any way you like because there’s nothing to fear from them. They have no weapons and no masks unless they are very cunning.”
“Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning like a little animal that’s locked in a cellar and forgotten. It comes out of your throat like your breath in the cold, and sometimes it’s too little, other times too big. It never fits exactly. It’s only when it has been cast off that you can look at it calmly and talk about it like an illness you’ve survived. Most grownups say that they’ve had a happy childhood and maybe they really believe it themselves, but I don’t think so. I think they’ve just managed to forget it.”
“Like all grownups, she doesn’t like it when children ask about something, so she gives short answers. Wherever you turn, you run up against your childhood and hurt yourself because it’s sharp-edged and hard, and stops only when it has torn you completely apart. It seems that everyone has their own and each is totally different. My brother’s childhood is very noisy, for example, while mine is quiet and furtive and watchful. No one likes it and no one has any use for it.”
“Everyone loves my brother, and I often think his childhood suits him better than mine suits me. He has a custom-made childhood that expands in tune with his growth, while mine is made for a completely different girl. Whenever I think such thoughts, my mask becomes even more stupid, because you can’t talk to anyone abuot these kinds of things, and I always dream about meeting some mysterious person who will listen to me and understand me. I know from books that such people exist, but you can’t find any of them on my childhood street.”
“The worst thing about grownups, I think — they can never admit that just once in their lives they’ve acted wrongly or irresponsibly. They’re so quick to judge others, but they never hold Judgement Day for themselves.”
“I’ve never cared for reality and I never write about it.”
“I know that you sometimes have to lie in order to bring out the truth.”
“My childhood was supposed to last until I was fourteen, but what was I going to do if it gave out beforehand? You never got answers to any of the important questions.”
“I always dreamed of finding a person, just one, to whom I could show my poems and who would praise them.”
“I also thought a lot about my early childhood, which would never return, and it seemed to me that everything was better then.”
“I felt like saying that even though we were poor, we were not in the least deaf.”
“Oh, Granny, you’ll never hear me sing again. You’ll never spread real butter on my bread again, and what you’ve forgotten to tell me about your life will now never be revealed.”
“Whenever I think about the future, I run up against a wall everywhere, and that’s why I want to prolong my childhood so badly.”
“The future is a monstrous, powerful colossus that will soon fall on me and crush me.”
“In her eyes, all young girls are enemy agents who are only out to get married and be supported by a skilled worker, whose training his parents have scrimped and saved to pay for.”
“I don’t remember it myself, and in general the grownups have completely different memories about you than you yourself have. I’ve known that for a long time.”
“My mother was far away and I wouldn’t see her for eight hours. I was among strangers — I was someone whose physical strength they’d bought for a certain number of hours each day for a certain payment. They didn’t care about the rest of me.”
“I thought to myself that rich people drank tea and poor people drank coffee.”
“...my father always said that skilled workers could never be unemployed.”
“I think about my childhood ghost: the stable skilled worker. I don’t have anything against a skilled worker; it’s the word ‘stable’ that blocks out all bright future dreams.”
“He does most of the talking when I’m there, because he doesn’t like me to show my curiosity. One evening when I asked him why he wasn’t married, he said, ‘You’re not supposed to know everything about a person — remember that. Then it stops being exciting.”
“People always want something from each other, and I’ve known all along that you wanted to use me for something.”
“They shouldn’t count on me in any way when they make plans behind my back.”
“I look at all this, which has remained unchanged, and I realize that I detest changes. It’s difficult to keep a grasp on yourself when things around you change.”
“There’s something good about everyone, Alfrida.”
“And almost every night, when the taverns have closed, I stand downstairs in the entryway kissing some young man who’s usually unemployed and who I never see again. After a while I can’t tell one young man from the next. But I’ve begun to long for the intimate closeness with another human being that is called love. I long for love without knowing what it is. I think that I’ll find it when I no longer live at home. And the man I love will be different from anyone else.”
“But I don’t read many poems anymore, because then I easily end up writing something that resembles them.”
“Death is not a gentle falling asleep as I once believed. It’s brutal, hideous, and foul smelling.”
“Things are pretty bad if you can’t get by without your children. You sacrifice everything for them and just when you’re going to have a little pleasure from them, they disappear.”
“I can’t forget that my father once said that a girl can’t be a poet. Even though I didn’t believe him, his words made a deep impression on me. I have to share my joy with someone.”
“Some of the dogs have a short leash that’s jerked impatiently every time they stop. Others have a long leash and their masters wait patiently whenever an exciting smell detains the dog. That’s the kind of master I want. That’s the kind of life I could thrive in. There are also the masterless dogs that run around confused between people’s legs, apparently without enjoying their freedom. I’m like that kind of masterclass dog—scruffy, confused, and alone.”
“It looks completely different in print than typewritten or in longhand. I can’t correct it anymore and it’s no longer mine alone.”
“According to his experience, you should never expect anything from life, then you’ll avoid disappointments.”
“It makes a strong impression on a young person to see their name in print for the first time.”
‘Families,’ he says, ‘never understand artists. Artists only have each other to rely on.’
‘If they don’t want them,’ says Viggo F., ‘you just send them to another one. There are plenty of publishers.’
“Don’t let yourself be beaten by something like this. Trust in yourself, otherwise you’ll never get anyone else to.”
“Viggo F. says that he can’t understand why I didn’t move out before, and I think that he doesn’t know what it is to be poor. But I don’t say anything.”
“Like all other young girls, I want to get married and have children and a home of my own. There’s something painful and fragile about being a young girl who makes her own living. You can’t see any light ahead on that road. And I want so badly to own my own time instead of always having to sell it.”
“My book! I take it in my hands and feel a solemn happiness, that isn’t like anything I’ve ever felt before. Trove Ditlevsen. Pigesind. It can’t be taken back anymore. It is irretrievable. The book will always exist, regardless of how my fate takes shape.”
“I do whatever I can to please him, because I’m so thankful he married me.”
“I’m thinking about my novel all the time, which I know the title of, though I’m not completely sure what it will be about. I’m just writing; maybe it will be good; maybe not. The most important thing is that I feel happy when I’m writing, just as I always have. I feel happy and I forget everything around me, until I pick up my brown shoulder-bag and go shopping.”
“For me, writing is like it was in my childhood, something secret and prohibited, shameful, something one sneaks into a corner to do when no one else is watching.”
“I don’t think Piet Hein knows what it’s like to have been poor and to have had to use nearly every second of your life just to survive.”
“He says that women authors shouldn’t have children; there are plenty of other women who can. On the other hand, there aren’t so many who can write books.”
“I feel good these days: I’m going to get married, I’m going to have a baby, I’m in love with a young man, and soon we’re going to have our own home. I tell Ebbe that I’ll never leave him, and that I can’t stand it when life gets so complicated, like it’s been recently. He lifts my chin and kisses me. It could be, he says, that if you’re complicated, your life gets to be like that too.”
“Ebbe asks, “why do you want to be normal and regular? Everyone knows you’re not. I don’t know how to answer him, but I have wanted that as far back as I can remember.”
“And I realize more and more that the only thing I’m good for, the only thing that truly captivates me, is forming sentences and word combinations, or writing simple, four-line poetry. And in order to do this I have to be able to observe people in a certain way, almost as if I needed to store them in a file somewhere for later use. And to be able to do this I have to be able to read in a certain way too, so I can absorb through all my pores everything I need, if not for now, then for later use.”
“I think I can only like other people if they’re interested in me; that’s why I’ll never suffer from unrequited love.”
“I’ve delivered my manuscript, ‘The Street of Childhood’, and now that I’m not currently writing, I have a huge void inside me that nothing can fill. It feels like everything is going into me but nothing is coming out again. Lise says that now I have to enjoy life for a while, that I deserve it after all that hard work. But for me life is only enjoyable when I’m writing.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to me that I don’t want, I say.”
“Men seem to be excluded from my world right now. They’re foreign creatures, it’s as if they came from another planet. They’re not in touch with their bodies.”
“When I was a child, I say to Tutti in my fevered reverie, I thought that stars really had five points on them.”
“We dance, celebrate and enjoy ourselves, but this historic event doesn’t really penetrate my consciousness, because I always experience things after they’ve happened; I’m rarely in the present.”
“You probably slept with someone else, he says. I plead my innocence, but actually find it humorous that it should matter so much. There are other forms of loyalty that mean so much more.”
“If I’m not writing, I say, then I’m pregnant.”
“I decide never to let go of this man who can give me such an indescribable blissful feeling.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that, I said. I don’t think an outlook on life is something people give one another.”
“What if I told him the truth? What if I told him I was in love with a clear liquid in a syringe and not with the man who had the syringe? But I didn’t tell him; I never told that to anyone.”
“Whenever she came over, he had me put on a dress with long sleeves to hide the needle marks on my arms. Not that it matters that much, he said, but it doesn’t look so great.”
“He never told me about his childhood, as other men had, and if I asked about it, he gave me an empty, meaningless response, as if he couldn’t remember anything about it.”
“Then time ceases to be relevant. An hour could be a year, and a year could be an hour. It all depends on how much is in the syringe. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, and I tell Carl, who is always nearby: There wasn’t enough in it.”
“You can’t expect, he wrote, to abandon a person for five years and then find him in the same place when you return.”