Word: ld
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...manuscript of Markings was discovered in Hammarskjöld's Manhattan home shortly after his death. With it was an undated letter in which Hammarskjöld called the writings "a sort of white book concerning my negotiations with myself-and with God." Skillfully translated by W. H. Auden, with the help of a Swedish linguist, Markings is in turn earnest, pedestrian, paradoxical and noble. The first entry was written when Hammarskjöld was a college student of 20; the last, a few days before his plane crashed in Northern Rhodesia...
Imitation of Christ. The son of a former Swedish Prime Minister and a brilliant economist in his own right, Hammarskjöld was a meteoric success as a banker even before he entered international politics. Yet Markings shows that every step of the way he was dogged by agonizing self-doubts and despair. "Time goes by," he noted, "reputation increases, ability declines." "The little urchin makes a couple of feeble hops on one leg without falling down," he wrote, "and is filled with admiration at his dexterity, doubly so, because there are onlookers. Do we ever grow...
Speck of Dirt. But in the early 1950s, it appears that Hammarskjöld found faith in God. "Didst Thou give me this inescapable loneliness," he wrote, "so that it would be easier for me to give Thee all?" Inspired by the medieval mystics, he strove to pattern his life after Christ's, an ambition that some Swedish critics of Markings chose to interpret as blasphemy or egomania; yet if Markings makes anything clear, it is that Hammarskjöld was a truly humble man: "How far from both muscular heroism and from the soulfully tragic spirit of unselfishness...
...years that he served as Secretary-General, Hammarskjöld drove himself mercilessly to become "pure of heart" in the service of others: "On a really clean tablecloth, the smallest speck of dirt annoys the eye. At high altitudes, a moment's self-indulgence may mean death." Yet he remained ever and exquisitely aware of the ambiguities of even the best-intentioned human behavior and never became self-righteous about his own projects: "The 'great' commitment all too easily obscures the 'little' one. But without the humility and warmth which you have to develop...
...Call. There is one wry poem, surely written, at least in his head, during one of the U.N.'s interminable debates, which suggests Hammarskjöld was sometimes less than happy about his job as man in the middle...