Om Käbi Laretei/about Käbi Laretei...

Got stuck at the computer before fixing up here! Reading blogs and googling... Found a site about one of my former teachers Käbi Laretei which was one of Ingmar Bergman's wives... In Swedish though... But there was a site with links in English too!!!

I had her for four years in all, and what she contributed mostly with to me I think was to stimulate my intellectual interests? She talked fairly a lot about Bergman and seemed to be a real admirer of him! But their life together was fairly stormy... And Käbi herself contributed to this much! :-)

She has written about their life together in her recent book "Såsom i en översättning" ISBN 92-0-010410-8 ("As in a translation" or something in English) which came 2004.

They stimulated each others mutually I think. Seeing things from two different angles... And this enriched them both, both in work and privately... As the creative persons they both were and are. But Käbi made Ingmar Bergman loose his childish enjoyment of music and Bergman Käbis childish enjoyment of theater and film. Because when they visited concerts, theater, listened to music the expert-part critically commented the performance! :-)

But Bergman had other women besides and even got a daughter out of marriage with the woman which became his last wife Ingrid von Rosen. She then lived in a marriage where she already had three children...

Käbi and Ingmar Bergman got a son, Daniel, which is also director, but not at all as famous as his father...

Now some fixing up...

-//-

Fastnade vid datorn innan jag hunnit börja städa härhemma! Hade egntligen tänkt skriva ett mejl till en vän om något jag tänkte på i duschen, men tappade den tråden när jag började läsa några bloggar och googla!! Pust! Googlade på en av mina f.d. pianolärare Käbi Laretei och hittade denna site, med en massa länkar på henne.

PS. I haven't tried to get visitors or readers of this blog really yet... Don't know yet where I want to go with it...

-//-

In the midst of fixing up here: their life was no dance on roses though, despite success and fame... For none of them!! They have been writing quite openly about this in their books... So...

In a way I get an impression that Käbi behaved like a diva... Spoiled. In many ways... When she at the same time also could sit with us at the fire and drink tea in cups of all different colors and sizes (maybe not even so well-washed either :-)).

They were and still are very interested in their own childhoods... But I think influenced by Freud to that degree that they haven't shaken this off yet? But Käbi mentions Alice Miller in her last book!! I think either her daughter (in my age) or her son has raised this interest?!

Käbi turns 85 July 14 and Bergman 89 the same day!!! So artists gets old??

And Freud was sort of idol for many artists back then when they were active? His ideas led to endless fantasies and of course probably creativity!? Ideas that never ends!? For instance about unanswered love to a mother/father!? The competition with the parent with the same gender... I just sigh over this... And of course ideas from Freud what art is expression for... Phew!! Sublimination... And they were afraid of loosing their creativity if they "got free" from neurosis... I have in a way experienced this time, even if I was very young then, and also a child... So I think I remember the atmosphere then.

To say it very quietly, but from deep in my soul and feelings: what rubbish!!??

So both these two are still very neurotic - no wonder... Which is so sad... They have got stuck with these ideas?? Not been able to shake them off? So indoctrinated with them?

Behind what they have written and told you can imagine how it actually was, quite lively... In a way Bergman is very aware I can think...

Bergman donated all his writings to a foundation (I don't remember what foundation, maybe the Film institute in Stockholm?) and a woman Maaret Koskinen has written a book, using this material, called "I begynnelsen var ordet" ISBN 91-46-18345-0 (something in the style as "In the beginning there was the word"). And she is very psycho analytically influenced too... If I ever would have written a book and a book with this material I would have written an entirely different book!!

Bergman was the second child in line of three. Had a four year older brother Dag (that died of a disease fairly early, in his 70s, in something that suffocated him) and has a four year younger sister Margareta, which is married to an Englishman and has four sons with him...

And I get the impression Bergman really had needs to "maintain his rights" * by really showing his geniality!! But there was no immediate success... His father, priest in the Swedish church, was very strict and could get enormous outbursts. His mother held her children very tied up!! There I guess one can talk of emotional incest...

And his mother Karin, met a ten year younger man, when the daughter Margareta was fairly small, he was also priest and colleague to her husband, and they had a love-relation which almost ended in catastrophe... Her husband Erik, got a nervous breakdown (I wonder if he wasn't what we today call burnt-out; because he worked enormously, probably to be good enough to his mother and father in law!!! And also tried to flee into work when he got to know about his wifes love-affair) and this put an enormous pressure on Karin, and the whole resulted in that she stayed with her husband. Also talked back by her, in turn, very dominating mother! Think of the shame!! To leave a husband and three kids in their position too! Out of question!

Even if Karin's mother in the first place didn't like this alliance between her daughter and Erik Bergman! Now she had to bite in the sour apple!

And how was this all for the children? All that happened in the shadows and as noone could talk about openly that time!?

Karin got cancer, abdominal, I think and died in her 60s if I remember right. And Erik grieved her till he died... Despite his psychological problems he got fairly old. Over 80 I think.

Their lives are in fact rather tragic I think... And Bergman live a very quiet life now and have done for many years on the isle Fårö near Gotland (since his wife died more than 10 years ago only 63 years in abdominal cancer)... A diligent concert-visitor when he still lived in Stockholm...

Their lives are absolutely nothing to wish for I think and feel... No... Not at all.

* And from where did these needs come? So strong needs as he had!? Yes, both his parents were very strict!! It was a lot of talk about sin and that God saw them... And on the surface they lived a very normal social life, with a lot of people home, hard and diligently working... Karin really lived like a priests wife and took all these duties, unpaid!! The house was big and so on...

Erik was even priest at the Royal court and had other employments too at the same time... To queen Victoria I think... He demanded good reports from the children, and sat boasting about them at the dinner-table? Or scolded the children (to say it mildly) if they had failed. In front of all the other family members!

But under the fine surface/facade a lot grew... Noone in the surrounding had the slightest idea about how it actually was? And didn't want to know either?? They wanted to believe in the model family, the happy family? Wanted and needed to look up on authorities? At successful and highly educated people with a high reputation and a fairly high position in society? Even with connections to the Royal Family!

Sitting here writing with rubber gloves - not so practical!!! :-) Half ways fixing up!!! And now I am starting to get hungry too, with this prolonged fixing up, interrupted by writing!!! :-)

The raising-method was to instill shame and guilt!? A burning shame (a shame that wasn't possible to experience consciously!?). Used to manipulate the children... Both consciously and unconsciously!? But as grown up Bergman give us a picture of one such occasion when he experienced and could remember how it actually was, the literally burning pain... Very expressively in his book "Söndagsbarn" ("Sunday child" if you were born on Sunday you was a blessed child...). This book his son Daniel made a film of...

Very authoritarian... Honor thy father and thy mother... And You shall have no Gods... The air they breathed... So of course they couldn't see through what was going on in Germany when they visited friends there. Later as adult Bergman could see this though... I wonder if Erik Bergman had Nazi-sympathies... It wouldn't surprise me from what I know...

This blog post started with Käbi and ended with Bergman. Maybe I should rename it to "From Käbi Laretei to Ingmar Bergman"? :-) I have never met Bergman. Not seen him in real life.

Now finishing the fixing up here. And get some food. My blood sugar is turning lower and lower!!! I need something in my stomach so I don't suddenly faint here!! :-)

-//-

While writing and fixing up at the same time something lifted from my soul and mind and shoulders??? Did I articulate something important?

Or is it that I am slowly realizing I have time soon... With other things? To relax, to read, to write, to do nice things??? With vacation in reach. And, too, it is summer warmth suddenly!! Hopefully to stay!

I wonder if I shall buy strawberries - wonder if they have come yet? And fresh potatoes and "matjessill", Matie herring in English!!! To a very late lunch! Think if they have rhubarb too?? Then making a rhubarb-cake and eat it with strawberries and whipped cream!? Delicious!!