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Your texts are still a pleasure to read; funny, surprising, contradictory
From: Carsten Palmær
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This is a cultural article which is part of Aftonbladet’s opinion journalism.
Swedish newspapers The cultural aspects are characterized by a remarkable consensus, whether it is dissociating from a disgusting opinion or praising a recently deceased colleague in the same way.
One might think that the natural intellectual reflex should be different: taking the trouble to participate in the debate only when one thinks differently, or at least has some new arguments to make.
But the instinct of a normal Swedish writer is to stand up and, in detail and in many words, agree with the previous speaker. To mark unity, not conflict. This broad consensus is not helpful for the spiritual climate of Sweden. Although there is a broad consensus in Sweden.
With Jan Myrdal, things were different. When he sat down at the keyboard, the reader could be sure that he was going to disappoint the gang and say no.
Photo: Thomas Johansson / TT
Jan Myrdal has passed away at the age of 93.
For more than sixty This year he poured his scorn on the Swedish Academy, but when the Metoo debate began and the whole line of opinion broke out on coats on the stock market, he fell silent (except for a short text where he defended Horace Engdahl and Katarina Frostenson).
He supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. He not only advocated for the freedom of expression of right-wing extremists Robert Faurisson Y David irving – He took them seriously intellectually, argued with them. When the left became interested in the environment, Jan Myrdal advocated nuclear power and private automobiles. When the Berlin Wall was demolished, he, who had already emphasized the need for German unification thirteen years earlier, began to speak wonderfully about the GDR and to call himself a non-partisan communist.
He tried to complicate the issue of the position of women in Saudi Arabia and expressed respect for the Islamic revolution in Iran. He was at the same time a supporter of the dictatorship of the proletariat and a fundamentalist of freedom of expression. Contradictory? Of course. That was the point.
“Refractory,” he called itself, an unusual word that can be replaced by “disobedient” or “bouncy”. But the conflict between Myrdal and the Swedish public was more than opinions. He thought fundamentally differently: “All truths are contradictory and require dichotomy.” In 1966 he declared at a writers’ congress in Lahti:
“Because the world around us is constantly changing, it also means that if we hold the same opinions about the world today as yesterday, then we will have changed our minds. The truth that I defend today will be a lie tomorrow. If I am true to my friends, I will deceive you. If I, when I fight for a limited objective, when this objective is reached, I maintain it, then I have changed sides.
Jan Guillou described before Myrdal’s 70th birthday how a sick and pessimistic Myrdal lived and became cheerful and combative when he was threatened with expulsion from the PEN club after he expressed his support for the Chinese government after the Tiananmen Square riots in 1989. Jan Myrdal was not created for endorsement and his best lyrics that he did not write when surrounded by like-minded fans.
In the summer of 2019 Ninety-two-year-old Jan Myrdal explained that he had made a decisive mistake in his life: in 1963 he decided not to switch to writing his texts in English. The fact that he wrote in Swedish had, in the long run, made it impossible for him to get outside of an isolated Sweden dominated by a single question.
Nine years earlier, however, he had explained that the reason he chose Swedish as his working language was that he had discovered that the English that he had mastered well from his childhood in New York lacked depth, a fourth dimension.
That explanation is valid. If Myrdal had chosen to switch from Swedish to English, he could have gained more readers. But he had become a different writer, and hardly a better one. The Swedish language is thinner, rougher, and more twisted than English and suited Myrdal perfectly. He tested Swedish to the fullest and musically, pulling forgotten words out of hiding and quoting delightfully long passages from ancient legal texts and Bible translations.
In Aftonbladet cultural page, began writing in 1966, then Stockholms-Tidningen to turn off. For us in the 1960s left, their Sunday chronicles played a crucial role: blackout curtains were raised, windows exploded, the outside world was much larger than we thought, and time lost its meaning.
Myrdal moved just as easily in the muddy towns of China, India, and Afghanistan as in 11th-century Europe. Your texts are still a pleasure to read; funny, surprising, contradictory. His knowledge was vast, though as selective as Sherlock Holmes’s, his authority enormous. He struggled, he mentioned names.
He was often both careless and unfair: colleagues who did not share his views were given hot adaptations, hoof whipping, subservient beast dogs, the prostitutes of the intellect, and the tail boys of the spirit.
They might respond with barking: “pecoralista”, “megalomaniac demagogue” and called “crazy masturbator” Allan Fagerström Myrdal when he parted with Aftonbladet side of culture, since the newspaper’s management wanted to cut its space. That time, in 1971, Myrdal declared that he would never write again. Aftonbladet, a promise that you better not keep. He wrote his last text on this page in April 2016. Then there was a dispute again: the editors wanted to interrupt him, Myrdal refused.
Books from the sixties and autobiographical novels will live a long time. But it is also worth reading about the limited time, the 21 volumes of controversies and chronicles, there is much available online through the Runeberg project.
For those of us who have the word for a livelihood, Myrdal’s voice continues to come from the other side:
Go to the sources! Never trust the minutes! Take root in the newspaper clippings! See for yourself!
Photo: Thomas Johansson
Jan Myrdal in the studio. Archive 2017
Photo: SVENSKA DAGBLADET-TT
Jan Myrdal at the Vietnam demonstration at Medborgarplatsen in Stockholm in 1966.
Photo: Anders Deros
Jan Myrdal in his library
Photo: Lennart Nygren / SvD
Jan Myrdal at an opinion meeting outside the US embassy in Stockholm in 1972.
Photo: TT
Jan Myrdal meets Mao during one of his many trips to China. Archive 1967
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