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Stig Dagerman (5 October 1923 – 4 November 1954) was a Swedish journalist and writer. He was one of the most prominent Swedish authors writing in the aftermath of WWII, but his existential texts transcend time and place and continue to be widely published in Sweden and abroad. Stig Dagerman was born in Älvkarleby, Uppsala County. In the course of five years, 1945–49, he enjoyed phenomenal success with four novels, a collection of short stories, a book about postwar Germany, five plays, hundreds of poems and satirical verses, several essays of note and a large amount of journalism. Then, with apparent suddenness, he fell silent. In the fall of 1954, Sweden was stunned to learn that Stig Dagerman, the epitome of his generation of writers, had been found dead in his car: he had closed the doors of the garage and run the engine.〔Thompson, Laurie. 1983. ''Stig Dagerman''. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-6523-9〕 Dagerman's works deal with universal problems of morality and conscience, of sexuality and social philosophy, of love, compassion and justice.〔 He plunges into the painful realities of human existence, dissecting feelings of fear, guilt and loneliness. Despite the somber content, he also displays a wry sense of humor that occasionally turns his writing into burlesque or satire.〔Lagercrantz, Olof. 1958, 1967, 1985, 2004. ''Stig Dagerman''. Stockholm: Norstedts Panpockets. ISBN 91-7263-550-9〕 “An imagination that appeals to an unreasonable degree of sympathy is precisely what makes Dagerman’s fiction so evocative. Evocative or not, as one might expect, of despair, or bleakness, or existential angst, but of compassion, fellow-feeling, even love.” - Alice McDermott in her foreword to Sleet - Selected Stories (David R. Godine, Publisher, 2013). The British writer Graham Greene said this about him: "Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion."〔Dagerman, Stig. ''The Games of Night''. Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott 1961. Cover quote by Graham Greene.〕 This style is exemplified in the following excerpt from the story, "The Games of Night", where a young boy, Håkan, lies waiting for his drunken father to come home: ::: ''At night, all waking thoughts revolve around one thing, one moment. ::: ''And even Håkan's deepest sleep is much too fragile to block that thing out.'' ::: ''True, he hasn' t heard the car pull up out front. He hasn't heard the click'' ::: ''of the light switch or the steps in the stairwell. But the key that slides into the keyhole'' ::: ''also pokes a hole in Håkan's sleep. In an instant he's awake, stricken deep by a flash'' ::: ''of delight tingling hot from his toes to his scalp. But the delight disappears nearly'' ::: ''as fast as it comes, withdrawing into a cloud of uncertainties.''〔"The Games of Night", translation by Steven Hartman.〕 Dagerman's work is translated into many languages, and his work continues to inspire readers, writers, musicians and filmmakers. His collected works are available in eleven volumes. Scholars have examined his writing from every possible angle: philosophical, political, psychological, journalistic, its relationship to the medium of film, and why French and Italian readers have found him particularly appealing. Artists continue to put music to his texts.〔The French group "Tetes raides" recorded the text of "Our Need for Consolation is Insatiable" to reggae rhythm on their CD ''Banco'', 2007.〕 Films have been made of his short stories, novels and famous essay "Our Need for Consolation Is Insatiable".〔E.g. "The Games of Night" by Dan Levy Dagerman (23 min, English, 2007); "Our Need for Consolation" by Dan Levy Dagerman (20 min, English, 2012)〕 The Stig Dagerman Society in Sweden annually awards the Stig Dagerman Prize to individuals who, like Dagerman, through their work promote empathy and understanding. In 2008, the SD Prize went to the French writer J. M. G. Le Clézio, who later was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.〔http://www.dagerman.se〕 ==Life and work== Stig Dagerman, born in 1923, spent his childhood on a small farm in Älvkarleby, where he lived with his paternal grandparents. His unwed mother gave birth on the farm but left shortly thereafter, never to return. He would see her again only when he was in his twenties. Dagerman's father, a traveling day laborer, eventually settled in Stockholm. His son joined him there at the age of eleven. Through his father, Dagerman came into contact with Anarchism and its ideological offspring, Syndicalism, and joined the Syndicalist Youth Federation. At nineteen, he became the editor of "Storm", the youth paper, and at twenty-two he was appointed the cultural editor of Arbetaren ("The Worker"), then a daily newspaper of the Syndicalist movement. In the intellectual atmosphere of the newspaper world, he met fellow writers and developed a taste for polemical writing. In addition to editorials and articles, Dagerman wrote more than a thousand daily poems, many highly satirical, commenting on current events. He called "Arbetaren" his "spiritual birthplace". Dagerman's horizons were greatly expanded by his marriage in 1943 to Annemarie Götze, an eighteen-year-old German refugee. Her parents, Ferdinand and Elly, were prominent Anarcho-Syndicalists, and the family escaped Nazi Germany to be at the center of the movement in Barcelona. When Spanish fascists brutally crushed the Anarcho-Syndicalist social experiment there, the Götzes fled through France and Norway, with Hitler's army at their heels, to a neutral Sweden. Dagerman and his young wife lived with his in-laws, and it was through this family, and the steady stream of refugees that passed through their home, that Dagerman felt he could sense the pulse of Europe. In 1945, Stig Dagerman at age twenty-two published his first novel ''Ormen'' (The Snake). It was an anti-militaristic story with fear as its main theme, channeling the war-time zeitgeist. Positive reviews gave him a reputation as a brilliant young writer of great promise. He left "Arbetaren" to write full-time. The following year, Dagerman published ''De dömdas ö'' (The Island of the Doomed), completed over a fortnight during which, he says, it was as if he "let god do the writing". Using nightmarish imagery, this was an allegory centered on seven shipwrecked people, each doomed to die, each seeking a form of salvation. Critics have compared Dagerman’s works to that of Franz Kafka, William Faulkner and Albert Camus. Many see him as the main representative of a group of Swedish writers called “Fyrtiotalisterna” (“the writers of the 1940s”) who channeled existentialist feelings of fear, alienation and meaninglessness common in the wake of the horrors of World War II and the looming Cold War.〔(Articles )〕 In 1946, Dagerman became a Swedish household name through his newspaper travelogue from war-ravaged Germany, later published with the title ''Tysk Höst'' (German Autumn). Rather than blaming the German people for the war’s atrocities, calling them crazed or evil, Dagerman portrayed the human ordinariness of the men and women who scraped by in the ruins of war. To him, the root of disaster lay in the anonymity of mass organizations that obstructed empathy and individual responsibility, qualities without which the human race is threatened by extinction. :::''“I believe that man’s natural enemy is the mega-organization'' :::''because it robs him of the vital necessity to feel responsible for his fellow-man,'' :::''restricting his possibilities to show solidarity and love'' :::''and instead turns him into an agent of power,'' :::''that for the moment may be directed against others,'' :::''but ultimately is directed against himself.”''〔From “Do we believe in man?” 1950, Stig Dagerman Essäer och journalistik, transl. Lo Dagerman〕 The short story collection ''Nattens lekar'' (The Games of Night), published in 1947, met with high acclaim.〔Short review of the stories http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Coffeehouse/4587/issue7.html%23dagerman&date=2009-10-25+09:59:25〕 Many of the stories were set on his grandparents’ farm, and are written from a child’s perspective. Dagerman used a tender naturalistic style that appeals to a wide audience. This same year his first play “''Den dödsdömde''” (“The Man Condemned to Death”) opened in Stockholm to rave reviews. The most famous of Dagerman’s short stories, “''Att döda ett barn''” (“To Kill A Child”), exemplified the strong influence of film on his writing. In image after image, it portrayed in riveting detail how a series of perfectly ordinary events can be a prologue to horror. In 1948, he wrote three more plays and published his third novel ''Bränt barn'' (A Burnt Child). The story, a psychological account of a young man’s infatuation with his father’s mistress, was written in a tight, naturalistic style. Dagerman only wrote one more novel: ''Bröllopsbesvär'' (Wedding Worries), published in 1949, regarded by some as his best. In this novel, he returned one final time to the setting of his grandparents’ farm and characters to describe the human condition, including a search for forgiveness and salvation. In this book, Dagerman, who throughout his career experimented with different literary styles, used stream-of-consciousness as a method of penetrating a character. After his early and rapid successes, expectations kept rising, not the least his own. Dagerman struggled with depression and an onset of writer’s block. He became restless in the now suburbanized Götze family, and was drawn to the medium of theater. As a playwright, and even a one-time director, he met friends and lovers within the theater world, leaving his family for periods at a time. Eventually, Dagerman broke away for good to live with and later marry the celebrated actress Anita Björk, with whom he had a daughter. But the break proved difficult, emotionally and financially. Dagerman felt guilty leaving his young sons, and took on mounting debt to support his first family. The assumption being that his debt would be paid up when he were to publish his next book ... While battling deepening depression and a debilitating writer’s block, Dagerman wrote an autobiographical essay “''Vårt behov av tröst är omättligt''” (“Our need for consolation is insatiable”) about his struggles and search for a way to stay alive. He also wrote “''Tusen år hos gud''” (“A Thousand Years with God”) – part of a new novel he was planning – which signaled a turn to a more mystical bent in his writing. In spite of his struggles, Dagerman continued to deliver his daily satirical verses for “Arbetaren”, the last one published on November 5, 1954, the day after his suicide. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stig Dagerman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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