Dag Hammarskjöld died when I was seven, in a plane crash. (He was the first person I knew of dying in this manner.) His name was enticing, and utterly unfamiliar to my northern Manhattan life. And his somber photographed face in the newspaper matched his name. Later, his book came out, which was entitled Markings. I’m still astonished by that title. Dag Hammarskjöld was my earliest encounter with European intellectuality — its brooding, scholastic courage. A small park across from the United Nations was named for him, and I attended many demonstrations there, all rather winsome and futile. (One in 2001 attempted to free Leonard Peltier.)
Now I am researching Dag, for this essay. I was sure he was Danish, but he was a Swede. His complete name was Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld. Markings is considered a "Spiritual classic," perhaps by born-again Christians. Its real Swedish title is Vägmärken. Here’s a quote from it, plucked from a cream-colored Internet website:
You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency: your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end, and remain purely as a means.
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