Scan barcode
hopefulgoat's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
A good read, though it's hard to know what to say about it. It just kind of is. It's a little weird, a little sad and plenty poetic.
roses_are_rosa's review against another edition
4.0
Super schön geschrieben. Freu mich schon die nächsten 2 Teile zu lesen.
ilse's review against another edition
4.0
I carried the cups out of the kitchen, and inside of me long, mysterious words began to crawl across my soul like a protective membrane. A song, a poem, something soothing and rhythmic and immensely pensive, but never distressing or sad, as I knew the rest of my day would be distressing and sad. When these light waves of words streamed through me, I knew that my mother couldn’t do anything else to me because she had stopped being important to me.
Normally I tend to steer clear of childhood memoirs. I confess the prospect of possibly having to wrestle first through another bland recount of a period in life that I find only mildly interesting used to desist me from reading (auto)biographies in the past. Either I suspect such memories to be thoroughly miserable, or syrupy nostalgic, or self-aggrandising. An unhappy childhood is a writer’s goldmine (as amply illustrated by the novels of Patrick Modiano) and so I prefer to read the fictionalised rendition; pink-rimmed reminiscences tend to irritate me, as well as the adult version in hindsight allotting prodigious capacities to the child version. So I am not sure what made me bring this first volume of the memoirs of the Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen (1917-1976) from the library, but as it happens I did and I quite enjoyed reading it, mostly because of the very fine perceptive writing and the depiction of life in the 1920-30ies in Vesterbro, the working class neighbourhood in Kopenhagen where Tove Ditlevsen grew up. Evocative, poetic and intense – I read this slim book in one sitting despite having other plans (reading-wise and non-reading-wise). A wise observation of a friend on her review of Nathalie Sarraute’s [b:Enfance|405452|Enfance|Nathalie Sarraute|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348594345l/405452._SY75_.jpg|1443982] recently made me realise I might have become less wary of reading about childhood now having attained a most comfortable distance from it.
The tender lavender coloured covers of Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen trilogy, each with a black and white photograph on it , could give the impression that her memoirs belong to the nostalgic category – which is, at least for the first volume, pretty deceptive. Her grandmother, telling stories, is a brief but warmly respected presence in the girl’s life and her relationship with her brother Edvin improves over time, but there is the aloof and bitter mother, the cramped living space, the heavy drinking of the men and numerous teenager pregnancies in the family and in the neighbourhood.
(Anna Ancher, At Noon, 1914)
As Childhood entails the memories of a budding poet and novelist – Ditlevsen started to write poems at the age of ten - the significant role of the written word, books, libraries in the young girl’s life is striking from the first chapter which illuminates the meaning of words to the six year old girl – their taste, their sound, their mysteries, their comfort – quite a few Danish writers crop up in her recount ([a:Zakarias Nielsen|1387006|Zakarias Nielsen|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], [a:Vilhelm Bergsøe|3375524|Vilhelm Bergsøe|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png], [a:Johannes V Jensen|14311804|Johannes V Jensen|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png][a:Agnes Henningsen|5311947|Agnes Henningsen|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png]…).
What prompts a person to start writing, what makes one person wish to express emotions, thoughts, impressions in poetry while others don’t and won’t? Rather obviously there is the delicate, sensitive nature of the child, which here is so out of tune with the toughness of life and lack of perspective in the tenement block. There are the few books at home, the model of a reading father - a socialist losing his job because of his political activities - nolens volens triggering and inspiring her. From these first years arises the portrait of a perpetual outsider, the position of the misfit that drives one to the solace of words and writing – and an inward but intransigent rebelliousness against a fate that seems carved in stone, especially for girls who are too poor to continue studying and for who life at best has a marriage with ‘a stable skilled worker who comes right home with his weekly pay-check and doesn’t drink’ in store:
'Lamentation – what does that mean, Father?' I found the expression in Gorky and loved it. He considered this for a long time while he stroked the turned-up ends of his mustache. ‘It’s a Russian term’, he said then. ‘It means pain and misery and sorrow. Gorky was I great poet’. I said happily, ‘I want to be a poet too!’ Immediately he frowned and said severely, ‘Don’t be a fool! A girl can’t be a poet. Offended and hurt, I withdrew myself again while my mother and Edvin laughed at the crazy idea. I vowed never to reveal my dreams to anyone again, and I kept this vow throughout my childhood.
Reminding myself how I much I loved reading Maxim Gorky’s [b:My Childhood|163620|My Childhood|Maxim Gorky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1576430173l/163620._SY75_.jpg|2777614] – actually the perfect antidote to rebut my silly wee aversion of reading childhood memories - it struck me as particularly revelatory to encounter him again in Tove Ditlevsen’s memoirs.
Unlike the narrator, I have never experienced childhood as long and narrow like a coffin but I recall vividly how I also wished to grow up as soon as possible and shed that childhood odour from me. Equally, growing up with the stories my parents have told me about their childhood, their family circumstances and options at the age of fourteen (in 1960) quite alike those of Tove Ditlevsen, I cannot remember I had any dreams or aspirations at that age myself – but somehow, their stories favoured a lasting joy found in reading and learning.
(Anna Ancher, Sunlight in the blue room, 1891)
At the age of fourteen, Tove’s haste for leaving childhood behind and plunging into adult life has waned. The future is terrifying, ‘a monstrous, powerful colossus that will soon fall on me and crush me’. Her appreciation of childhood, which will stay a prominent topic in her writing, has changed:
Now the last remnants fall away from me like flakes of sun-scorched skin, and beneath looms an awkward, an impossible adult. I read in my poetry album while the night wanders past the window – and unawares, my childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.
I look forward to continue with [b:Youth|15836839|Youth|Tove Ditlevsen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568137810l/15836839._SY75_.jpg|21575256] and [b:Dependency|43685224|Dependency|Tove Ditlevsen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1566270405l/43685224._SY75_.jpg|2547028] soon, aware that those lovely pink covers might shield fragility and future suffering.
Twinkling lights
In childhood’s long night, both dim and dark
there are small twinkling lights that burn bright
like traces memory’s left there as sparks
while the heart freezes so and takes flight.
It’s here that your pathless love shines clear,
once lost in nights misty and chill,
and all that you’ve since loved and suffered most dear
has boundaries set by the will.
The first-felt sorrow’s a frail, thin light
like a tear that quivers in space;
that sorrow alone your heart will hold tight
when all others time has effaced.
High as a star on a night as in spring
your childhood’s first happiness burns,
you sought for it later, only to cling
to late-summer shadow’s swift turns.
Your faith you took with you to great extremes,
the first and the last to your cost,
in the dark now somewhere it surely gleams,
and there is no more to be lost.
And someone or other draws near to you but
will never quite manage to know you,
for beneath those small lights your life has been put,
since when everyone must forego you.
(***½)
Normally I tend to steer clear of childhood memoirs. I confess the prospect of possibly having to wrestle first through another bland recount of a period in life that I find only mildly interesting used to desist me from reading (auto)biographies in the past. Either I suspect such memories to be thoroughly miserable, or syrupy nostalgic, or self-aggrandising. An unhappy childhood is a writer’s goldmine (as amply illustrated by the novels of Patrick Modiano) and so I prefer to read the fictionalised rendition; pink-rimmed reminiscences tend to irritate me, as well as the adult version in hindsight allotting prodigious capacities to the child version. So I am not sure what made me bring this first volume of the memoirs of the Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen (1917-1976) from the library, but as it happens I did and I quite enjoyed reading it, mostly because of the very fine perceptive writing and the depiction of life in the 1920-30ies in Vesterbro, the working class neighbourhood in Kopenhagen where Tove Ditlevsen grew up. Evocative, poetic and intense – I read this slim book in one sitting despite having other plans (reading-wise and non-reading-wise). A wise observation of a friend on her review of Nathalie Sarraute’s [b:Enfance|405452|Enfance|Nathalie Sarraute|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348594345l/405452._SY75_.jpg|1443982] recently made me realise I might have become less wary of reading about childhood now having attained a most comfortable distance from it.
The tender lavender coloured covers of Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen trilogy, each with a black and white photograph on it , could give the impression that her memoirs belong to the nostalgic category – which is, at least for the first volume, pretty deceptive. Her grandmother, telling stories, is a brief but warmly respected presence in the girl’s life and her relationship with her brother Edvin improves over time, but there is the aloof and bitter mother, the cramped living space, the heavy drinking of the men and numerous teenager pregnancies in the family and in the neighbourhood.
(Anna Ancher, At Noon, 1914)
As Childhood entails the memories of a budding poet and novelist – Ditlevsen started to write poems at the age of ten - the significant role of the written word, books, libraries in the young girl’s life is striking from the first chapter which illuminates the meaning of words to the six year old girl – their taste, their sound, their mysteries, their comfort – quite a few Danish writers crop up in her recount ([a:Zakarias Nielsen|1387006|Zakarias Nielsen|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], [a:Vilhelm Bergsøe|3375524|Vilhelm Bergsøe|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png], [a:Johannes V Jensen|14311804|Johannes V Jensen|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png][a:Agnes Henningsen|5311947|Agnes Henningsen|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png]…).
What prompts a person to start writing, what makes one person wish to express emotions, thoughts, impressions in poetry while others don’t and won’t? Rather obviously there is the delicate, sensitive nature of the child, which here is so out of tune with the toughness of life and lack of perspective in the tenement block. There are the few books at home, the model of a reading father - a socialist losing his job because of his political activities - nolens volens triggering and inspiring her. From these first years arises the portrait of a perpetual outsider, the position of the misfit that drives one to the solace of words and writing – and an inward but intransigent rebelliousness against a fate that seems carved in stone, especially for girls who are too poor to continue studying and for who life at best has a marriage with ‘a stable skilled worker who comes right home with his weekly pay-check and doesn’t drink’ in store:
'Lamentation – what does that mean, Father?' I found the expression in Gorky and loved it. He considered this for a long time while he stroked the turned-up ends of his mustache. ‘It’s a Russian term’, he said then. ‘It means pain and misery and sorrow. Gorky was I great poet’. I said happily, ‘I want to be a poet too!’ Immediately he frowned and said severely, ‘Don’t be a fool! A girl can’t be a poet. Offended and hurt, I withdrew myself again while my mother and Edvin laughed at the crazy idea. I vowed never to reveal my dreams to anyone again, and I kept this vow throughout my childhood.
Reminding myself how I much I loved reading Maxim Gorky’s [b:My Childhood|163620|My Childhood|Maxim Gorky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1576430173l/163620._SY75_.jpg|2777614] – actually the perfect antidote to rebut my silly wee aversion of reading childhood memories - it struck me as particularly revelatory to encounter him again in Tove Ditlevsen’s memoirs.
Unlike the narrator, I have never experienced childhood as long and narrow like a coffin but I recall vividly how I also wished to grow up as soon as possible and shed that childhood odour from me. Equally, growing up with the stories my parents have told me about their childhood, their family circumstances and options at the age of fourteen (in 1960) quite alike those of Tove Ditlevsen, I cannot remember I had any dreams or aspirations at that age myself – but somehow, their stories favoured a lasting joy found in reading and learning.
(Anna Ancher, Sunlight in the blue room, 1891)
At the age of fourteen, Tove’s haste for leaving childhood behind and plunging into adult life has waned. The future is terrifying, ‘a monstrous, powerful colossus that will soon fall on me and crush me’. Her appreciation of childhood, which will stay a prominent topic in her writing, has changed:
Now the last remnants fall away from me like flakes of sun-scorched skin, and beneath looms an awkward, an impossible adult. I read in my poetry album while the night wanders past the window – and unawares, my childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.
I look forward to continue with [b:Youth|15836839|Youth|Tove Ditlevsen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568137810l/15836839._SY75_.jpg|21575256] and [b:Dependency|43685224|Dependency|Tove Ditlevsen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1566270405l/43685224._SY75_.jpg|2547028] soon, aware that those lovely pink covers might shield fragility and future suffering.
Twinkling lights
In childhood’s long night, both dim and dark
there are small twinkling lights that burn bright
like traces memory’s left there as sparks
while the heart freezes so and takes flight.
It’s here that your pathless love shines clear,
once lost in nights misty and chill,
and all that you’ve since loved and suffered most dear
has boundaries set by the will.
The first-felt sorrow’s a frail, thin light
like a tear that quivers in space;
that sorrow alone your heart will hold tight
when all others time has effaced.
High as a star on a night as in spring
your childhood’s first happiness burns,
you sought for it later, only to cling
to late-summer shadow’s swift turns.
Your faith you took with you to great extremes,
the first and the last to your cost,
in the dark now somewhere it surely gleams,
and there is no more to be lost.
And someone or other draws near to you but
will never quite manage to know you,
for beneath those small lights your life has been put,
since when everyone must forego you.
(***½)
jarrigy's review against another edition
5.0
We are absolutely BACK with the quiet, mournful, and crushing Scandinivian domesticity.
marc129's review against another edition
3.0
The Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen (1917-1976) started her autobiographical ‘Copenhague trilogy’ in the mid-1960s. She was almost 50 at the time, for many people an age to take stock of their lives. In most cases, childhood is presented as the happiest period, a time of security and innocence. Not so with Ditlevsen. This short book is full of very bitter characterizations of her childhood, such as, “Whichever way you turn, you bump into your childhood because it is angular and hard, and it doesn't stop until it completely has torn you.”.
Ditlevsen grew up in a proletarian environment and if we are to believe these memoirs, it is the lack of attention and tenderness from her choleric mother that has marked her for life. In general this coming-of-age story has all the typical characteristics: the struggle with the secrets of the adult world, the urge to be 'normal' or to be recognized as such, the discovery of her own individuality (she started writing poems early on), and the struggle with the social convention that girls and women must 'conform'.
This is a very conventionally structured and therefore easy to read book; it simply follows the chronology of childhood over twenty episodes. The sharp observations and the slightly naturalistic touch give it its own oppressive undertone. Especially the 6th chapter, with a general and very negative characterization of childhood, leaves an depressing mark. I look forward to reading the next parts.
Ditlevsen grew up in a proletarian environment and if we are to believe these memoirs, it is the lack of attention and tenderness from her choleric mother that has marked her for life. In general this coming-of-age story has all the typical characteristics: the struggle with the secrets of the adult world, the urge to be 'normal' or to be recognized as such, the discovery of her own individuality (she started writing poems early on), and the struggle with the social convention that girls and women must 'conform'.
This is a very conventionally structured and therefore easy to read book; it simply follows the chronology of childhood over twenty episodes. The sharp observations and the slightly naturalistic touch give it its own oppressive undertone. Especially the 6th chapter, with a general and very negative characterization of childhood, leaves an depressing mark. I look forward to reading the next parts.
glenncolerussell's review against another edition
Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen
The last time I read an autobiography was more than forty years ago - Philosopher at Large : An Intellectual Autobiography by Mortimer J. Adler. I read the book since, at the time, I was interested in the Great Books of the Western World and Mortimer Adler spearheaded the project.
I mention this to let readers know memoirs and personal reminiscences are generally not to my taste. For me, a recounting of day-to-day happenings is not nearly as provocative as a shifting into the fantastic via imagination. By way of example, here's a childhood episode as recounted by one of my favorite authors:
CEMENT by Barry Yourgrau
I am at the beach with my mother. I bury her up to her neck in sand, "Alright, now please let me out," she says finally. "It''s hard to breathe." Only if you pay me a tremendous amount of cash," I inform her, teasing. I start to dig her out, but I can't. The sand is like stone. It's turned to cement. "Please, stop joking, get me out," my mother pants. "I can't breathe." I'm not joking, something's wrong," I protest. I scratch at the cement desperately. I pound on it with my fists. The surf surges around us, splashing my mother in the face. "Help me, help me," she bleats, wildly. "I''m trying. I can't do anything.!" I cry. "I'll have to get help!" I rush down the beach, waving and shouting, frantic. Some men are drinking beer by a pickup truck. They run back with me with shovels and pickaxes.
I wander about holding my head in my hands. They smash up the cement, their pickaxes swinging high and low, violently. "Careful, oh please be careful," I plead, walking back and forth, helpless. One of them crouches by my mother, cupping her chin out of the water. Her eyes are haggard with terror. "Can't breathe . . . can't breath . . . " she keeps bleating, through clenched teeth. "You'll be okay, you'll be okay," I promise her desperately.
Finally they have her out. The seawater gushes and roams in the rubble. Other, different men appear, they bear my mother over the dunes, carrying her high in a litter. An oxygen line runs into her nose from a cylinder. A catheter bag sways from a little handle, its hose running up under her pale thighs.
I follow behind in a distraught daze, plodding through deep sand carrying our sandy beach towels, my mother's much-ornamented beach bag. "How did it happen, how did it happen?" I moan, over and over again. A small plane flies low over the beach, dragging a long, fluttering sign. I give out a sobbing cry, imagining the sign bearing her frail name, the helpless dates and particulars of her obituary.
-----------------
-----------------
However, I did enjoy many parts of Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen, especially when she speaks of her connection to writing and poetry. Here are several direct quotes along with my comments:
"She was foreign and strange, and I thought that I had been exchanged at birth and she wasn't my mother at all."
Tove recounts her feelings as a preschooler, sensing she belongs with another mother. Our modern society has a name for this sense that usually doesn't hit women and men until they are young adults: alienation.
"I sleep to escape the night that trails past with window with its train of terror and evil and danger."
When Tove begins to venture outside with or without her mother, her sense of alienation deepens - not only does Tove feel she belongs to another mother; she intuits she belongs to another world.
"All of my childhood books where his (her Father), and on my fifth birthday he gave me a wonderful edition of Grimms' Fairy Tales, without which my childhood would have been gray and dreary and impoverished."
Ah, even as a five-year-old, Tove comprehends there is a world where she can escape the trap of a deadening associating with the adults she's fated to live with: a book!
Tove's father tells her that Maxim Gorky was a great poet. To which, Tove tells him, "I want to be a poet too!" Tove then relates that "Immediately he frowned and said severely, "Don't be a fool! A girl can't be a poet." Tove's subsequent reflection, "Offended and hurt, I withdrew into myself again while my mother and Edvin laughed at the crazy idea. I vowed never to reveal my dreams to anyone again, and i kept this vow throughout my childhood."
So, so sad. And not all that uncommon - a child expresses a desire to be an artist or writer or musician and the inevitable putdown by an adult. The reason? Mainly because literature and the arts represent a threat to the uptight, constipated world created by legions of conforming mediocre stiffs.
Tove Ditlevsen documents her confrontation with her family and the world as she moves through her childhood, all the while deepening her love of books and writing, expressed in language that's clear, straightforward and remarkably poetic.
Danish author Tove Ditlevsen, 1917-1976