A new look at Auden's take on Hammarskjold (original) (raw)

Arts|A new look at Auden's take on Hammarskjold

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/arts/a-new-look-at-audens-take-on-hammarskjold.html

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

May 20, 2005

UNITED NATIONS, New York — Nothing left behind by Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold after the plane crash that killed him in the Congo in 1961 had a more enduring impact than a typewritten manuscript found in the bedside table of his New York apartment with an accompanying letter saying it was his "only true profile."

The diary-form collection of notes, observations and haiku verses, entitled "Markings," was published in 1964 in the United States and hailed as an inspirational message on rooting a life of international public service in deeply felt meditations. In addition, it attracted literary notice because the direct translation from Swedish was refined by the poet W.H. Auden, who also contributed a foreword.

Emblematic of the book's reception was a front page notice in The New York Times Book Review that credited Auden with renderingHammarskjold's thoughts in "pellucid English" and also called the book "the noblest self-disclosure of spiritual struggle and triumph, perhaps the greatest testament of personal devotion, published in this century."

Now, with the beginning of United Nations commemorations of the centennial of Hammarskjold's birth in July, the book is attracting attention again, and so is the involvement of Auden - though for reasons unsuspected by the millions of Americans who have read "Markings."

Swedes familiar with the original say that Auden took large liberties with the Swedish text, misunderstanding some of Hammarskjold's allusions, misconstruing others to inject his own religious and cultural biases, and even altering citations in a way calculated to turnHammarskjold's musings on friendship into Auden's expressions of anxiety at being neglected by a longtime male lover.

They also dispute the skeptical view that the Auden foreword took of Hammarskjold's disciplined self-assessment, his expressions of mysticism and his characterizations of his inner battle as "my negotiations with myself - and with my God." Auden, who died in 1973, questioned Hammarskjold's premise that the book was his true profile because, he wrote, "no man can draw his own 'profile."'

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT