Author: Tove Ditlevsen
notes
- Tove wanting to be normal and fitting in
- Chasing affection and validation without knowing what love is
- Reality and escapism
highlights
But Pretty Lili was not pretty. My mother was, though, on those strange and happy mornings when I would leave her completely in peace, Beautiful, untouchable, lonely, and full of secret thoughts I would never know. – p. 4
I would have left her alone for a long time so that without words she would have said my name and known we were connected to each other. Then something like love would have filled the whole world, and Scabie Hans and Pretty Lili would have felt it and continued to be colored pictures in a book. – p. 5
I look up at her and understand many things at once. She is smaller than other adult women, younger than other mothers, and there’s a world outside my street that she fears. And whenever we both fear it together, she will stab me in the back. – p. 15
I know every person has their own truth just as every child has their own childhood. My mother’s truth is completely different from my father’s truth, but it’s just as obvious as the fact that he has brown eyes while hers are blue. – p. 16
Those two people were just so totally different, as if they each came from their own planet. My father was melancholy, serious, and unusually moralistic, while my mother, at least as a young girl, was lively and silly, irresponsible and vain. – p. 18
Note: Like Ory and Riber from Betrayed
He pounds nails into his board and is the family’s pride and joy. That’s what boys are, while girls just get married and have children. – p. 19
It wasn’t proper to take part in the school meals at the Carlsbergvej School, the only socialservice institution that existed in Vesterbro in the 1930s. The latter, Edvin and I were not allowed to do. For that matter, it wasn’t proper, either, to have a father who was unemployed, even though half of us did. So we covered up this disgrace with the craziest lies the most common of which was that Father had fallen off a scaffold and was on sick leave. – p. 20
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 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. – p. 21
Whenever I think such thoughts, my mask becomes even more stupid, because you can’t talk to anyone about these kinds of things, and I always dream about meeting some mysterious person who will listen to me and understand me. I know from books that such people exist, but you can’t find any of them on my childhood street. – p. 32
I’ve never cared for reality and I never write about it. – p. 58
Even though no one else cares for my poems, I have to write them because it dulls the sorrow and longing in my heart. – p. 92
I think about the fact that once the most important thing in the world was whether my mother liked me; but the child who yearned so deeply for that love and always had to search for any sign of it doesn’t exist anymore. Now I think that my mother cares for me, but it doesn’t make me happy. – p. 96
As long as I live here I’m condemned to loneliness and anonymity. The world doesn’t count me as anything and every time I get hold of a corner of it, it slips out of my hands again. – p. 127
Maybe I can’t be free of them until I get married myself and start my own family. – p. 166
But I’ve begun to long for the intimate closeness with another human being that is called love. I long for love without knowing what it is. I think that I’ll find it when I no longer live at home. And the man I love will be different from anyone else. – p. 179
It was all for your sake that we moved, says my mother bitterly. So that you could have a room to write in. But you don’t care. And now your father’s unemployed again. We can’t do without what you pay at home.” My father sits up and rubs his eyes. “Yes, he says fiercely, yes we can. Things are pretty bad if you can’t get by without your children. You sacrifice everything for them and just when you’re going to have a little pleasure from them, they disappear. It was the same with Edvin. ‘It was a different matter with Edvin, says my mother. ‘He’s a boy.’ She says it out of sheer contrariness, and I breathe a little easier, because now it’s become a fight between the two of them. – p. 183
Do you want a cup of coffee?’ I say no thanks, although I haven’t had a thing to eat or drink all day. I say no because I don’t want to sit under Hitler’s picture. It seems to me that then he’ll notice me and find a means of crushing me. – p. 188
Their poverty isn’t oppressive or sad because they all have something to look forward to; they all dream of a better life. I do too. Poverty is temporary and bearable. It’s not any real problem. – p. 195
Being young is itself temporary, fragile, and ephemeral. You have to get through it it has no other meaning. – p. 198
He says that Thorvald has gotten engaged to a very ugly girl, and it annoys me a little. I could have had him but I didn’t want him. Still, I liked it that he wasn’t attached to anyone else. – p. 199
Mr Krogh said that people always wanted to use each other for something, and that there was nothing wrong with that. It’s quite clear what I want to use the editor for, but what does he want to use me for? – p. 199
The building is just fine, enough that you don’t simply go running over to visit other people, and my mother doesn’t have a single girlfriend she can talk to and laugh with. She only has us, and we deserted her as soon as she and the law would permit it. – p. 200
Note: Reconciling with the past and abusive family members
If he’s single, I have nothing against marrying him. Entirely sight unseen. – p. 200
Some of the dogs have a short leash that’s jerked impatiently every time they stop. Others have a long leash and their masters wait patiently whenever an exciting smell detains the dog. That’s the kind of master I want. That’s the kind of life I could thrive in. There are also the masterless dogs that run around confused between people’s legs, apparently without enjoying their freedom. I’m like that kind of masterless dog — scruffy, confused, and alone. – p. 206
I am not alone anymore. – p. 214
Like all other young girls, I want to get married and have children and a home of my own. There’s something painful and fragile about being a young girl who makes her own living. You can’t see any light ahead on that road. And I want so badly to own my own time instead of always having to sell it. – p. 221
I realize I’ve never been in love, except for a brief episode two years before, when I walked home from the Olympia Bar with Kurt, who was going to be leaving the following day for Spain to take part in the civil war. – p. 232
Note: Love or infatuation?
I happily prepare my divan, and I go to bed with a faint yearning in my heart to be lying with someone’s arm around me. – p. 255
I have a funny feeling that it might last a lifetime. – p. 260
Ebbe asks, Why do you want to be normal and regular? Everyone knows you’re not. I don’t know how to answer him, but I have wanted that as far back as I can remember. – p. 269
I don’t want anything to happen to me that I don’t want, I say. It’s like getting caught in a trap. – p. 286
Note: 338
The days pass, the weeks pass, the months pass. I’ve started writing short stories, and the veil between myself and reality is solid and secure again. – p. 298
What if I told him the truth? What ifI told him I was in love with a clear liquid in a syringe and not with the man who had the syringe? – p. 314
Then I forgot about it again and lay there fantasizing about a novel I was going to write. It was going to be called For the Sake of the Child, and I was writing it in my mind. Long, beautiful sentences flowed through my thoughts as I lay on the divan, looking at my typewriter, powerless to make one single movement towards it. – p. 320
I love passive women, he said. – p. 329
I’m looking forward to the house being finished, I said sluggishly, while the familiar sweetness flowed into all my extremities. We will always stay together; Carl said with conviction. It won’t be like with the others. Viggo F. and Ebbe didn’t understand you like I do. – p. 330
Note: 260
But there was also a faint glint of triumph in his eyes as he gave me a shot in one of the veins that was still open. – p. 335
I never want to return to reality again. – p. 337
That was after several hours of hell, and I realized that I had never before known what real physical pain was like. I felt like I had been caught in a terrible trap, and where and when it would snap shut on me I couldn’t predict. – p. 338
No price was too high to be able to keep away intolerable real life. – p. 339
Yes, I say sluggishly, and we can be that way again. That was silly to call him. No, he says, that was your way out. You’ll be admitted and everything will be over. What about the children? I say, remembering them. They have Jabbe, he says. She won’t leave them. And what about you? I ask. What is your way out? I’m done, he says calmly. But don’t you worry about that. We each have to salvage what we can. – p. 347
Carl sits down next to the stretcher, staring out into space. Suddenly he snickers as if he’s just thought of something naughty. He picks up a couple of flecks of dust and rolls them between his hands. There’s no guarantee, he says flatly, that we’ll see each other again. Then he adds: Actually, I never was quite sure about that earache. That’s the last sentence I ever hear him say. – p. 348
People aren’t meant to be alone, I say. – p. 359
I pour myself three doses instead of the two I usually get, and while the deadening effect spreads inside me, I think how it’s springtime, and I’m still young, and there’s no man in love with me. I embrace myself involuntarily, curl up my pillow, and pull it close as if it were alive. – p. 360
He seemed pretty sober, and the sight of him made all my irritation disappear. I let go of the children’s hands, and they ran into the house. I couldn’t see Victor’s eyes because of the sun, but his mouth had the most beautiful cupid’s bow shape that I had ever seen. His entire person radiated a kind of disheveled demonic vitality that absolutely fascinated me. – p. 363
Victor knelt down in front of me and started caressing my ankles. I love you, he said. I love your poems. For years I’ve wanted to meet you. I turned his face up toward mine, and I said, Until now I always thought all that talk about love at first sight was a lie. I took his head in my hands and kissed his beautiful lips. – p. 363
I’m head over heels in love with you, I said, when we were lying back in my bed. Will you stay overnight? I will, for the rest of my life, he said, smiling with his blindingly white teeth. What about your wife? I asked. We have the law of love on our side, he said. That law, I said, kissing him, gives us the right to hurt other people. – p. 364