But he didn’t. He never did. He fought against his terrible rival with a constant vigor and rage that filled me with horror. Whenever he was tempted to give up the fight, he would call Dr Borberg, whose words gave him renewed strength. I had to abandon the night doctors, because Victor hardly dared to sleep anymore. But when he was at work, I visited other doctors and got them to give me shots without much difficulty. To protect myself, I would tell Victor about it in the evening. He called up lots of doctors and threatened to report them to the Department of Health, so I wouldn’t be able to go back to them anymore. But in my wild hunger for Demerol I always found new ones. I hardly ate. I lost weight again, and Jabbe was seriously worried about my health. Dr Borberg told Victor that if I kept this up, I would have to be readmitted, but I begged him to let me stay home. I promised I would change and then I broke my promises. Finally Dr Borberg told Victor that the only real solution would be for us to move away from Copenhagen. At the time we didn’t have much money, but we got a loan from Hasselbalch Publishing and bought a house in the suburb of Birkerød. There were five doctors in the town, and Victor visited every one of them right away and forbade them to have anything to do with me. So it was impossible for me to get the drug, and slowly I adapted to accept life as it was. Victor and I loved each other, and having one another and the children was enough for us. I started writing again, and whenever reality got under my skin, I bought a bottle of red wine and shared it with Victor. I was rescued from my years of addiction, but ever since, the shadow of the old longing still returns faintly if I have to have a blood test, or if I pass a pharmacy window. It will never disappear completely for as long as I live.
Notes
Chapter 45
1. ‘A man should not covet you, O stars’, adapted from Goethe’s ‘Trost in Tränen’.
Chapter 49
1. A member of the Civil og Beskyttelse, the civilian defense and rescue corps formed when the Germans dissolved the Danish police during the occupation.
Chapter 51
1. The Hilfspolizei, a Gestapo-backed pseudo-police force of Danish citizens that patrolled and terrorized Copenhagen in 1944.
A Note About the Author
Tove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was in her early twenties and was followed by many more books, including the three volumes of the Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood (1967), Youth (1967), and Dependency (1971). She died in 1976. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Childhood
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Youth
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Dependency
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Notes
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Childhood and Youth first published in Denmark in 1967 as Barndom and Ungdom
Copyright © 1969 by Tove Ditlevsen & Gyldendal, Copenhagen
English translations first published in the United States in 1985 by The Seal Press
Translations copyright © 1985 by Tiina Nunnally
Dependency first published in Denmark in 1971 as Gift
Copyright © 1971 by Tove Ditlevsen & Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Translation copyright © 2019 by Michael Favala Goldman
Trilogy first published in 2020 by Penguin Random House, Great Britain
Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
All rights reserved
First American edition, 2021
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-60240-6
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