Description

Amer Scandinavian Foundation [Published Date: 1968]. Hardcover, 298 pp. No other printings listed. Very good in good dust jacket. Red cloth covered boards with gold lettering on spine. Light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers. Binding tight. Pages lightly aged but otherwise unmarked. Dust jacket has several small nicks and tears and light creasing along edges. light overall scuffing, aging and soiling to jacket as well. NOT price clipped. Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. Includes a few black and white photos. [From jacket flaps] Introductions by Stina Bergman Edited by Walter Johnson The deep humanity and subtle art of Sweden’s second greatest dramatist, Hjalmar Bergman (1883-1931), are captured in these translations authorized and introduced by his widow. As a playwright, Bergman was concerned with the whole tragicomedy of human existence. He had a keen sense of the grotesque humor in much of life, and a special awareness of the tender, ironic, sometimes macabre relationships between youth and age. Markurells of Wadkoping, set against the background of a small Swedish city, has for its central character a “fox- red troll,” sly, often cruel, an unpleasant person with “one virtue that redeems all his inhumane acts—his Jove for his son.” In The Baron’s Will Bergman created “one of the few really great comic figures in Swedish drama —the self-indulgent, tyrannical, good-hearted old Baron Roger Bernhusen de Saars, whose relationships with his enchanting young ward Ingrid and other members of his household form the subject matter of this delightful comedy. The baron was modeled after Bergman’s own godfather, and Fru Bergman writes that “even in Ins nursery days Hjalmar and his little friends had a game they called ‘playing baron.’With his belly thrust out and his legs spread wide, the fat little four-year-old strutted about snorting, snuffling, and swearing. ... The old gentleman’s unconventional behavior, his offenses against the current mores and good manners, impressed and delighted the little boy.who himself had had a strict, old-fashioned bringing up." Both of these plays have been translated by Henry Person. Swedenhielms, translated by Raymond Jarvi and Robert Lindquist, has been called the Swedish national comedy, and is the most frequently performed of Bergman's works. A comedy with tragic undertones, it is a study of various forms of ambition, noble, serious, selfish, or frivolous, as reflected in the lively family circle of the poor but brilliant Swedenhielms. The final play, Mr. Sleeman Is Coming, translated by Walter Johnson, is a grisly comedy that is close to the expressionism of Strindberg and the symbolism of Maeterlinck. The story of a poor girl sold by her guardians to a rich old man is told against an idyllic setting that heightens the horror. This is one of Bergman's marionette plays, of which he wrote: "We are born people, but we become marionettes when we are forced to give up. We struggle and struggle to hold on to our youth, our health, and our vital existence. But Mr. Sleeman comes." Fru Bergman's informal essays provide an inimitable| introduction to the playwright. "I am thinking of the time when I was little and built seven worlds, one on top of the other," he once wrote to her. "What a job for a little boy between three and nine —to build seven worlds! You sometimes chide me about being lazy, but think of what I have accomplished, how well I have earned my rest."66 s. net