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Tove (Irma Margit) Ditlevsen (1917-1976) |
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Danish author who
published some 30 books: poems, novels, memoirs, essays, and
short stories. Tove Ditlevsen became one of the most widely read women
writers in Denmark. She was known for her direct style and honest
accounts of her private life. Ditlevsen enjoyed popularity from the
1940s until her tragic death in 1976. She was married and divorced four times. "Jag har elsket en mand med et hjerte som dit, Tove Ditlevsen was born in Copenhagen. She grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Vesterbro, as the child of constantly arguing and often impoverished parents. Her father, Ditlev N. Ditlevsen, who was 37 when she was born, worked as a fireman. He was class-conscious, voted for the Social Democratic Party, and read Gorky. When he lost his job in 1924 during an economic downturn, the family was forced to turn to the poor relief for a period. The domineering figure of Ditlevsen's childhood was her mother, Alfrida (née Mundus), ten years junior to her husband. Throughout her career, Ditlevsen viewed herself foremost as a poet.
She began writing poems at the age of ten. After finishing school,
she worked at an office from 1932. Her first published poem, 'Til
mit døde barn,' about a mother speaking to her dead
child, appeared in the magazine Vild Hvede.
(Wild Wheat), edited by her husband, the writer and journalist Viggo F.
Møller. It was included in Ditlevsen's first collection of poems, Pigesind (1939), her actual debut. These formally traditional poems were well received, but Lille Verden
(1942) was criticized for its traditionalism. It was not until in 1969,
when Ditlevsen published a poetry collection in the style of modernist
free verse. Ditlevsen first attracted attention in 1941 with her book about child molestation, Man gjorde er barn fortæd
(A child was hurt). To avoid waking up her husband in the early morning
hours, which she spent all to herself, she wrote
the novel by hand on cheap yellow vellum and did not use his old
typewriter. Møller kept his much younger wife under his thumb and
Ditlevsen
first submitted to his authority. "I do whatever I can to
please him, because I'm so thankful he married me," Ditlevsen said in
her autobiographical book Gift
(1971, Dependency). Except that he did not have many wrinkles on his face, Møller looked just like any other
middle-aged man. Ditlevsen's husbands number two and three in the 1940s were
about her own age. The central character of Man gjorde et barn fortræd is a young woman, who suffers from a sexual neurosis. To be able reveal the identity of the culprit, she forces herself to unearth her buried, traumatic memories. Noteworthy, Ditlevsen had not read Freud, but basically the story portrays the mechanism underlying psychoanalytic healing. The director Benjamin Christensen wanted to film the novel, but lost backing for the project. In Astrid Henning-Jensen's film Early Spring (1986), based on the novel Barndommens gade (1943), Sofie Gråbøl was cast as the young Ester, Ditlevsen's alter ego. The screenplay followed the novel fairly closely. "Girls
can't be poets," Ditlevsen's father had once said. Family
relationships and her own experiences were the focal point
of her work. The autobiographical trilogy Barndom (Childhood), Ungdom (Youth), and Gift (Dependency) (1967-71)
was an account of her life and a long struggle with drugs. Ditlevsen
wrote the work after recovering from depression. The first volume opens
with the words: "In the morning there was hope." Other autobiographical
books include Vilhelms værelse (1975) and Tove Ditlevsen Om mig selv (1975),
completed before her death on March 7, 1976. At the age of 58,
Ditlivsen committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping
pills. It did not come as a surprise to many: a few months earlier she had made a failed suicide attempt. In her books, Ditlevsen dealt with sexual matters, joy of love, marriage, and motherhood. From 1956 until her death she contributed to the Familie Journal's mailbox 'Små Hverdagsproblemer' (Small everyday problems). By focusing on issues that bother others, Ditlevsen found an escape from her own problems. A central theme in her work is the effects of childhood experiences on adulthood; in her youth, her friends at that time were mostly interested in sex and stealing. In the poem 'Rain' she wrote: "Drunk men / are not dangerous / said my / girlfriend / child molesters / are always sober." (transl. by Cynthia Norris Graae, Canadian Woman Studies, Vol 8, No 2, 1987) Ditlevsen's background reflected in her verse, where the major theme was loneliness in the big city. Some of the poems in Den hemmelige rude (1961) interpreted the Grimms' Brothers Fairy Tales from a new an very personal perspective. Ditleven had owned a copy of the Brothers Grimm in her childhood. Ditlevsen's first three marriages (with Viggo Frederik Møller, Ebbe Munck, and Carl Theodor Ryberg) did not bring her the happiness she expected. Emotionally exhausted, she was hospitalized after the divorces. When she married Møller, Ditlevsen was twenty-two; he was thirty years her senior. Ditlevsen, who felt that her husband did not pay enough attention to her, had an affair with the poet Piet Hein, whom she had met at the Young Artists Club. With Victor Andreasen, a businessman and chief editor, whom she married in 1951, Ditlevsen had her most enduring relationship although they separated in 1973. All
of Ditlevsen's novels drew material from her difficult childhood,
failed marriages, and her experiences as a female writer and a drug
addict. From her third husband, who was a doctor, Ditlevsen received
Pethidine (a synthetic opioid) injections. She used this addictive, narcotic drug, for
years. Ansigterne
(1968, The Faces) was a psychological masterpiece, exploring the
psychosis of a woman, Lise Mundus, who is torn between her roles as
mother, wife, and a writer of children's books. "We’ve found out what kind of person you are.
When you’re going to write a book, you go around looking at all kinds
of other books written by people who know their stuff. You steal a
sentence from every book and put them together like a puzzle, and then
you make people think that you’ve written every sentence yourself." (from The Faces, transl. by Tiina Nunnally)
Lise believes that her husband is having an affair with their
housekeeper. After a suicide attempt she is taken to a mental hospital,
another reality. "Despite the horror it depicts, Ditlevsen’s writing is
deeply humane and understanding." ('The Faces by Tove Ditlevsen review – a tortured life turned into art' by John Self, The Guardian, 26 January, 2021) The partly autobiographical Vilhelms værelse was about a destructive marriage. Blurring the line between fiction and fact, the narrator and the protagonist, the work tells of events leading to the suiduce of Lise Mundus. Kære Victor, Victor Andreasen's correspondence with Ditlevsen, which was a kind of commentary on the book, came out in 1993. Ditlevsen's ruthlessly honest memoirs, Det tidlige forår (1969, Early Spring), depicted her first eight years in a harsh working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen during the depression. The narrator, who is more innocent than other girls of her age, learns about politics and unemployment, drunkenness and prostitution of the adult world around her. "When we reach Gasværksvej, where we usually turn around, Ruth says, 'Let's go down and look at the whores. There are probably some who have started.' A whore is a woman who does it for money, which seems to me much more understandable than to do it for free. Ruth told me about it, and since I think the word is ugly, I've found another in a book: 'Lady-of-the-evening'." (from Early Spring) The work starts with the words "in the morning there was hope" and culminates in the publication of her first book – but at the background of this opening was a writer's block, which shadowed Ditlevsen's last creative years. In a late poem, published in Det runde værelse (1973), Ditlevsen compared herself with her cat, who was too old to catch birds: "Ikke flere fugle at jage / ingen mus at skræmme. / Ingen utvej af erindringens / labyrint. / Sagte rinder livet ud / som dråber langs et nedløbsrør." For further reading: Om Tove Ditlevsen, ed. by Harald Mogensen (1976); Husmor og skribøse, en brevveksling med Tove Ditlevsen by Ester Nagel and Tove Ditlevsen (1986); A History of Danish Literature, ed. by Sven H. Rossel (1992); 'Tove Ditlevsen and the Aesthetics of Madness' by Anthe C. Petersen, in Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Spring 1992); 'Minnets labyrint,' in Nordisk kvinnoliteraturhistoria 3: Vida Världen 1900-1960, ed. Elisabeth Møller-Jensen (1996); Tove Ditlevsen: myte og liv by Karen Syberg (1997); Til døden os skiller. Et portræt af Tove Ditlevsen by Jens Andersen (1997); Af Morsingbo slægt: Aksel Sandemose og Tove Ditlevsen by Svend Borg (1999); Tove Ditlevsen som ung by Frank Egholm Andersen (2004); 'Ditlevsen, Tove (1917-1976)' in Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Literature and Theater by Jan Sjåvik (2006); Stil og tema i Tove Ditlevsens forfatterskab by Niels Kofoed (2013); Et lyst værelse: empati, rumopfattelse, kunstnerisk selvspejling og æstetik i kvindelige danske forfatteres og billedkunstneres værker i perioden 1930-90 by Eva Pohl (2015); Tove Ditlevsen: et portræt by Anne-Sofie Storm Wesch (2018) Selected works:
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