Foreword

One thing can be said about the literary legacy of Edvard Munch: it defies

generalization. A complete and scholarly presentation belongs to the

future. Over the years fragments and extracts have been published. It is

tempting—beyond resistance!—to quote from Munch’s texts to bolster

one’s own concept of the “true” Edvard Munch. To what extent was there

ever a “true” Edvard Munch? The twisted figure in The Scream is not the

ultimate self-portrait. But stories are told and myths are established. In a

liberating post-modern perspective perhaps one could say “he was no-one

and everyone.” What matters more is that he engages and activates the

beholder—and reader. J. Gill Holland is an old acquaintance of Edvard

Munch, and his selection of texts also reveals some less familiar facets of

a complex and ambiguous artist.

FRANK HØIFØDT

Scandinavia's most famous painter, the Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863-1944), is probably best known for his painting The Scream, a universally recognized icon of terror and despair. (A version was stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, in August 2004, and has not yet been recovered.) But Munch considered himself a writer as well as a painter. Munch began painting as a teenager and, in his young adulthood, studied and worked in Paris and Berlin, where he evolved a highly personal style in paintings and works on paper. And in diaries that he kept for decades, he also experimented with reminiscence, fiction, prose portraits, philosophical speculations, and surrealism. Known as an artist who captured both the ecstasies and the hellish depths of the human condition, Munch conveys these emotions in his diaries but also reveals other facets of his personality in remarks and stories that are alternately droll, compassionate, romantic, and cerebral.
This English translation of Edvard Munch's private diaries, the most extensive edition to appear in any language, captures the eloquent lyricism of the original Norwegian text. The journal entries in this volume span the period from the 1880s, when Munch was in his twenties, until the 1930s, reflecting the changes in his life and his work. The book is illustrated with fifteen of Munch's drawings, many of them rarely seen before. While these diaries have been excerpted before, no translation has captured the real passion and poetry of Munch's voice. This is a translation that lets Munch speak for himself and evokes the primal passion of his diaries. J. Gill Holland's exceptional work adds a whole new level to our understanding of the artist and the depth of his scream.