There are perhaps few Danish writers with such a prolific career as the poet and writer Tove Ditlevsen (1917-76), who published eleven poetry collections, seven novels, and four short fiction collections. Just this year her incredible trio of memoirs, The Copenhagen Trilogy, initially published separately through the 1960s and early 70s, has been translated into English and become available to an international audience. Ditlevsen was an accomplished writer by her early 20s in Denmark, and these memoirs chronicle the early years into adulthood of a misfit child determined to become a writer and transcend the poverty from which she originated. Ditlevsen recalls her childhood in such magnificent detail, and writes about her life, especially her relationship to her mother, with such clarity and poetic sensibility. The same can be said of her adolescence, when she begins to make steps towards becoming a poet while also exploring her sexuality and the freedoms afforded to her by moving out of her parents’ home. In the third portion of the memoir, Ditlevsen writes about life as a young writer, her four marriages, one of which was to an abusive husband who got her hooked on painkillers, and continues to explore agency and art in her life.
“Childhood” is a staggering achievement in the genre of a memoir written by an adult reflecting on their youth, in that Ditlevsen manages to capture the surroundings and ethos of her childhood with such clarity, while also offering the wisdom of the adult writer. Ditlevsen led a deeply lonely childhood in the working class neighborhood of Vesterbro, Copenhagen, and her father and brother were tradesmen with socialist political interests and a total disinterest in the lives of the women around them. Ditlevsen had a complicated relationship with her mother, a cold but somewhat volatile woman, who discouraged her daughter from her passion for writing. Ditlevsen remarks of her mother in a scene during her early childhood, “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.” Ditlevsen becomes increasingly sure that she needs to escape the confines of her family home, and the constant financial woes and working class attitudes of her parents. Forced to stop her education after middle school, she begins a series of odd jobs and eventually earns enough to pay for her own room and board. She concludes the first section of the memoir, “My childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.”
In “Youth”, we see Ditlevsen develop as a writer while she becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the low wage jobs available to her, and also begins to explore romantic relationships. Love, sex, and art are inextricable in Ditelvsen’s life, as they intersect and bring up questions of agency and fulfillment. With the publication of her first collection of poetry, Ditelvsen marries a much older gentleman, actually her editor, who brings her into a new world of intellectuals and artists that was previously not available to her. She is now privy to discussions about art and literature in her social circles, which is just the type of life she had dreamed for herself as an impoverished youth; but as her marriage begins to sour, she finds that she is not altogether satisfied. She then has a couple more romantic relationships, all while pursuing a career as a writer and finding the widespread success she was looking for, but each of her relationships is missing something. She feels that she lacks autonomy and creative freedom, and becomes quickly disillusioned with her marriages. She becomes a mother, which is not the joyful event one might imagine, and experiences a traumatic back alley abortion that makes the question of motherhood even more fraught for her.
But the real tragedy of the triptych comes in “Dependency”, when Ditlevsen develops a crippling addiction to morphine, which is supported by her third husband, a doctor. Ditlevsen marries this sociopathic man, who seduces her by injecting her with demerol shots regularly, forcing her to become dependent on the drug and the man who administers it to her. The years of her drug abuse are very difficult to read about, she writes in this sort of disembodied voice about her life as an addict, which pulls her away from her children and her work, and the abuse she suffers at the hands of her complicit husband. While she is eventually able to escape the marriage, the damage has set in, and Ditlevsen has become fully dependent on the drugs despite her efforts to quit. The scene in which she first relapses is particularly devastating, as Ditelvsen confronts her struggles with such a frank and disarming honesty. It is rare to encounter a text that is so transparent with its author’s failings, and is not in pursuit of some sort of redemption arc.
Ditlevsen’s memoirs are such a vital contribution to the literary canon, and her work is a testament to her immense talent and willingness to confront the ugliness in life. She took her own life at the age of 58, but one can’t help but read these memoirs as a ferocious effort at creation and life by their author, who spins elegant and moving prose from some of life’s most challenging circumstances. Ditlevsen refuses to allow shame to poison her recollections of her life as a woman and an artist, reflecting her commitment to capturing life in all its rawness. The Copenhagen Trilogy is a compelling portrait of an artist who grapples with many demons in her life, but is consistently driven forward by her love of the written word, and her belief in the power of language and art. It is a shame that it has taken so long for these landmark texts to reach a global audience, but such a testament to Ditlevsen’s enduring legacy that the memoirs feel so urgent and contemporary, like they could’ve been written in a journal just days ago.