Stig Dagerman (1923 – 1954)
Swedish author and journalist.
To increase his suffering he now accused her, asserting that she didn't love him, and that is always a dangerous thing to say: If one wants somebody to love one, one should not ask her to consider whether she "really": does. When all is said, we "really" do very few things. If one probes very deeply one realizes that the weight never reaches the bottom, and then one grows afraid of the depths inside one. But it is not until one understands that another name for deep is emptiness that one becomes really afraid.
The only current happiness is indifference, the only current feelings are the very small ones, the only current thoughts are smaller still. The only beautiful things are small feelings. Commons sense is never beautiful. People can never understand that the only thing which makes the small dogs' position at all bearable is that the big dogs' reason can analyse it.
I am sufficiently intelligent to be able to differentiate between real falsehood, which is aimed at hurting people, and a wise moderation of so-called truth, whose only object is to simplify life for all concerned.
Do you think I'm seventeen, he remembered she had said. Not very loudly, but she had said it, though she was not annoyed any more. It had sounded more as though she was sorry she was no longer seventeen.
Parents always live a less pure life than their children, because they condone everything they do. The ability to condone everything in oneself but practically nothing in one's children is the boon that "experience" bestows on humanity. What parents call experience is really nothing but attempts, successful to the point of sheer cynicism, to belie everything which they found pure, true and right when they were young. They themselves don't notice the awful cynicism behind this incessant talk of "experience" being the highest aim in life: they only notice "inexperience" in their children, that is, the form of inexperience called purity and integrity, and then they get annoyed.
It made her pure, and those we love must be pure, otherwise we can't love them. But loving a person is also making her pure.
They talked quietly, lying on their backs and letting the words float up to the ceiling as though they were talking to themselves. By reason of their calmness they could tell each other everything without shame, without its sounding like a confession. Nor were they surprised at what they found out about each other.
They knew that if they let each other go they were lost, but if they went on holding each other they were also lost.
Nothing is so beautiful as the first few minutes alone with someone who might love one and someone whom one might love. There is nothing so quiet as those minutes, nothing so saturated with sweet expectancy. It is for the sake of those few minutes that one loves, not the many that follow. Never again, they knew, would anything so beautiful happen to them. They would be more joyous perhaps; more ardent too, and immeasurably content with their own bodies, and each other's. But never again would it be so beautiful.
For anyone who feels our of place in the land of small dogs the only thing left is to become a big dog, and the only advantage in being a big dog is that one is not then ashamed of dying. Not even a big dog can help feeling shamed of living, a big dog least of all.
In the land of small dogs we are all card-sharpers, we do everything in fun: in fun we feed all the small dogs with the crumbs of our feeling; in fun we make out we love every little dog we meet, and no one therefore can love properly in the land of small dogs; there is nothing genuine. Not even falsehood is genuine.
I'm tired of living, tired of living here in this land of small dogs, small feelings, small pleasures, small thoughts. One has to be satisfied, but I don't want to be satisfied. I won't be satisfied like a little dog, there's nothing more repulsive that small dogs when they come home frightened and satisfied from their small doggy adventures. I myself have been a big dog, but I won't be a big dog either, even if it is better to be a big dog than a little one. There's nothing between being a big dog and being a little one.
Once they knew each other it was more difficult, because it is difficult to love those we know well. To be in love is to be curious. A thing is only beautiful if we do not have surfeit of it, perhaps only what is new is beautiful; in any case we can only love what is new. In order to love people we have got to know too well, we must first of all forget them, not altogether but very nearly. This they learnt during the fortnight. They didn't tell each other that they had learnt it; they were careful, that is, untruthful. To be able to love someone a long time one must lie, quite often to oneself, but mostly to the person one loves.
To die is to become like a child, at last one knows nothing, nothing of death and nothing of life, only that all distances are equally long and all words unintelligible but beautiful.
I am still fairly convinced that as a theory it's true enough: to live, really only means to put off one's suicide from day to day. You have probably had some experience of this too; even if you are not able to put it into words, you must have been subconsciously aware of it.
Browsing in books as lovers do, they were only being considerate, because their tenderness to each other made them tender towards others as well.
When you're called up you don't need many personal belongings — not when you love either.
The worst of his life is not that he thinks that it is living, but that he is satisfied with it, and the most awful thing of life is that he thinks that is how it should be. He can't understand anyone who thinks differently from him, and when he can't understand anything he says: I'm sorry, but I'm only a humble joiner. It's all he can do to accept that fact that I am studying the history of literature and Scandinavian languages: he accepts it not because I will thereby become mentally enriched, but because he thinks that it will enable me to live an easier life that he. Easier but not different.
One way of poisoning love is to mingle it with hate. It is the best way but in some ways the most dangerous. Love and hate are the cat and mouse of our emotions, sometimes the cat chases the mouse, often the mouse chases the cat; but when both cat and mouse are tired of chasing each other there is little left to do. All one can do then is to admit the most bitter truth of all, the most bitter but also the best: that two people in love with each other can not be alone on an island without ceasing to love; that they can not be an island, they need contact with the mainland, they need other people. It is cold comfort for those who believe that love is an island in the sea, and when we have grown tired of islands very little consolation remains. When we have grown tired of loving we are glad that the one we love is not the only person in the world.
All my life I have, more of less consciously, sought an alternative way of life to his, one which is purer, one which is more intense and pays less regard to others, which is more exacting, which burns more dangerously, which gives one everything except a flabby happiness.