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1. Mr. Hammarskjöld
- University of Michigan Press
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1 Mr. Hammarskjöld “Y ou see,” he once said, “even a very small dent may lead to a rift, and a rift may lead to an opening and you may break in through the wall. . . . The interesting thing is, is this a dent which may lead to a rift?”1 He was speaking of the search for nuclear disarmament. A dent that leads to a rift is needed here also because Dag Hammarskjöld is all but forgotten. His star rises astronomically on special occasions and anniversaries, and declines until the next. Yet his wisdom and methods, and his focused verve in the face of difficulty, offer crucial guidance and inspiration for our time. Secretary-general of the United Nations for more than eight years (1953–61), he endowed the organization with new methods and dignity, and left a vivid written legacy that can speak powerfully to many now who carry public responsibilities or have in mind lives of service in communities large or small. A man of the mid-twentieth century and of the UN, he is more: a classic figure awaiting clarity of recognition. A small but global tribe of political scientists, working diplomats, NGO participants, and scholars of literature and religion know the Hammarskjöld legacy well. They are aware of his struggles and achievements as secretary-general; he set the standard. They know the value of his political thought, which is as much an enduring reflection on the human condition as it is a response to specific circumstances. They are reinterpreting his politics, exploring the previously little-known record of his youth and early career in Sweden, gradually publishing his correspondence , and revising translations of Markings. To this audience that knows him well, I promise new perspectives and more than enough unfamiliar documents to reward their attention. A further promise: I will not rehash their work. And then there are the Old Believers, men and women for whom their reading of Markings decades ago (and many times since) was a notable event of their lives. A surprise bestseller in the first year or so after its publication in English in 1964, Markings is a spiritual classic of the twentieth century. Although it has long since dropped off bestseller lists, it is likely to have a place in the canon of literature to which people far into the future 2 Hammarskjöld | A Life will turn. Like the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, it records the thoughts at quiet moments of an exceptional man engaged at the highest level of responsibility in world affairs. Like the Confessions of St. Augustine, it is an exhaustingly honest exercise in autobiography. And like Pascal’s Pensées, its scope is vast, from unflinching observations of human nature—his own and others’—to moments of transcendent perception surely granted only to those whom the gods love. Markings was deliberately left unpublished in his lifetime. One person knew of it; no one had read it. For these Old Believers, Markings is the treasure, and the rest—the immense work at the United Nations, the speeches and public writings ranging over so much of human experience—can be courteously ignored. Their attitude reverses the attitude typical of scholars and diplomats for whom the shattering self-interrogation of the journal, its intimate engagement with issues of faith, hope, and love, and its delight in refined literary expression—all that the Old Believers most care for—tend to mean little. There is a third cohort: men and women of a certain age who remember Hammarskjöld with respect but without detail. Some seniors say, “Wasn’t he a mystic? Why do I think that?” Others: “Yes, I remember him. That must date me.” They would have seen covers of Time magazine that carried his portrait—the first, businesslike and direct in 1955 for the tenth anniversary of the United Nations, or perhaps the third, summer 1960, offering an icon-like allegory of the Congo Crisis: Hammarskj öld’s face, softly lit with raised blue eyes, set against a mighty storm in the background. Members of this cohort might also remember something of his courageous handling of the Suez Crisis of 1956–57 and his later struggle with Nikita Khrushchev. And of course they recall his tragic death in an air crash in central Africa, mid-September 1961. Readers and rememberers of such widely differing ages, interests, and levels of knowledge reflect the fact that Hammarskjöld left a dual legacy. That legacy has been difficult...