Dag Hammarskjold and the Journey Inwards

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

     I first “met” Dag Hammarskjold in late 1981, a few months before my graduation from San Pablo Seminary.  I am enclosing the word met in quotation marks because, to state the obvious (Mr. Hammarskjold having died on September 18, 1961, more than a year before I was born), our “encounter” was not actual but virtual.  I met him through a stationery,  half the size of a short bond paper.   

     I no longer remember exactly how that stationery got to me, but I do remember that it came from one of my seminary mentors (an Assumption nun who had become a very close friend of mine).  She must have used the stationery to write down a note for me – an unimportant one, I suppose, otherwise I would not have forgotten what she scribbled.  Anyway, what etched that stationery in my memory was the quotation that was printed on its bottom margin.  It read: 

     I don’t know Who – or what – put the question.

I don’t know when it was put.  I don’t even remember answering.

But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something –

and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and

that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

-- Dag Hammarskjold¹

     I knew nothing about Dag Hammarskjold, but his words struck me as coming from someone who knew and understood quite well what I was going through at that particular point in my life.  Here was a man who seemed to be speaking directly to me about an issue I had been trying to grapple with as I neared my graduation from college:   “What do I really want to do with my life?  Do I truly want to become a priest?   Is that really my calling in life?  Will I be happy as a priest?  Or, will I be happier being something else?  Does my true calling perhaps lie elsewhere, outside the priesthood?”   I was nineteen years old, and the question of  what “path” to pursue after my graduation from college was of utmost importance to me.  And yet, here was this man suggesting to me that the real question was not “What path should I  pursue?” but “What for?”; that, in the end, it didn’t really matter what you were doing with your life but What – or Whom -- you were living it for.  He was, in effect, telling me:  Unless you find Something – or Someone – to live for, your existence will be meaningless.  Unless you “surrender” yourself to an Other much bigger than your Self (a cause, an ideal, or God, by whatever name you call Him) your life will be devoid of any true worth.

     Consequently, I wanted to know more about the man behind the words.  So, one of the first things I did when I set foot in theology school was to go to the library and see what I could find about Dag Hammarskjold. 

     I can still remember my increasing fascination as I went over the pages of Hammarskjold’s posthumously published diary, Markings.  My fascination turned to admiration as I placed his entries against the backdrop of his life history.  From W.H. Auden’s Foreword and from entries in encyclopedias, I learned that Hammarskjold was a man whose life was one of “uninterrupted success” – in the outward, worldly sense, at least.   The son of the Swedish Prime Minister during World War I, Hammarskjold was a brilliant student who finished law and a doctorate in economics at the universities of Uppsala and Stockholm.  He entered government service at the age of 25 and rapidly rose from one important post to another.  He eventually became chairman of the board of the Bank of Sweden at the age of 36, secretary-general of the Foreign Ministry at 43, deputy foreign minister at 46, and secretary-general of the United Nations at 48.   And yet – in spite of his enviable worldly success – he remained, as his spiritual journal showed, a man who was in close and constant touch with his soul.  He was a man of action.   But, unlike many so-called “men of action,” he was at the same time a “man of contemplation.”  Auden was right when he wrote that Markings should be read as an “attempt by a professional man of action to unite in one life the via activa and the via contemplativa.”²   Hammarskjold was a man who continued his spiritual search in spite of  -- nay, in the midst of -- his active engagement in the affairs of the world.   And, as C.P. Snow observed, “the really remarkable thing is that Hammarskjold was engaged in this search at all – while he was managing, in the world’s eyes, great affairs…  Great world figures have sometimes communed with their souls when they have finished acting:  but [in Hammarskjold’s case] this was done right in the thick of the active life.”³

     Not everyone, of course, admires Dag Hammarskjold’s “negotiations” with his soul in Markings.   Some say that the journal’s entries reveal too much of the man’s inner struggles, thereby giving a rather unflattering picture of Hammarskjold as a man with an overly scrupulous conscience.  They argue that such a quality is, to say the least, not an admirable one when found in a public servant.   The political theorist, Niccolo Machiavelli, pleaded for the freeing of  political action from moral considerations, arguing that the political imperative is essentially unrelated to the moral imperative.⁴   A politician/public servant who communes too much with his soul (the Machiavellian view contends) will surely vacillate in the face of political decisions that are laden with  serious moral considerations – and many political decisions are, unfortunately, of that nature.   Although no one has accused Hammarskjold of vacillating in his major decisions as U.N. secretary-general, one reading his diary cannot help but imagine the intense moral and spiritual ordeal he must have gone through whenever he made those decisions. 

     When one reviews other people’s recollections of Hammarskjold, however, it appears that his moral and spiritual self-negotiations in no way made him a vacillating decision-maker.  On the contrary, they made him a very courageous and determined leader – strong enough, at least, to stand up to someone like Nikita Krushchev.  I.E. Levine’s account of how Hammarskjold responded to Krushchev’s “malicious personal abuse” (as Levine describes it) in the very hall of the U.N. General Assembly during the Congo crisis⁵ shows the incredible inner strength of the man – the kind of strength that can only come from a solidly grounded soul. 

     But, I have run ahead of my story.  

     After borrowing Markings from the seminary library too many times, I decided to buy my own copy.   It wasn’t easy to find a copy of the book in the local bookstores then (internet bookstores were still science fiction at that time).  When I finally got my own copy (with the help of my younger sister, Maris), it became the most important book on my shelf – next only to the Holy Bible.  I took it with me wherever I went and read its pages whenever I found myself in situations where I had to “negotiate” with my own soul.  My inner journey as a young man had been guided, in no small measure, by such unforgettable passages as:

     The only value of a life is its content – for others.   Apart from

     any value it may have for others, my life is worse than death.⁶

     And:

     You have not done enough, you have never done enough,

     so long as it is still possible that you have something 

     of value to contribute.⁷

     And:

     Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding

     something to live for, great enough to die for.⁸

       And:

     The longest journey

     Is the journey inwards.⁹

     In the summer of 2002, I had the chance to visit New York City on a weekend break from Boston University where I was attending a summer seminar on a fellowship from the University’s Institute on Religion and World Affairs.  It was my first time to be in New York City,  but I could not stay too long there.  I had to go back to Boston Sunday night for the resumption of my summer seminar the following day.  So I had to “prioritize” the places I would visit.  Naturally, next to Ground Zero, the U.N. Headquarters was one of my top priorities.  I wanted to see, among others, the Meditation Room that Hammarskjold built during his term at the U.N.   Unfortunately, the Meditation Room was closed when we got there,  and so were most of the other important sites of the U.N. Headquarters.   But the hallway where one could find the portraits of former Secretaries-General of the U.N. was open.   I spent several minutes examining Hammarskjold’s portrait and wondering how it must have been like to meet him in person.

     The original Swedish title of Hammarskjold’s journal is Vagmarken.  According to W.H. Auden, a more or less literal English translation of that word would be “trail marks” or “guideposts.”  Auden settled for its present title (Markings) since, according to him, the literal translation “immediately conjures up in a British or American reader an image of a Boy Scout, or of that dreadful American college phenomenon, Spiritual Emphasis Week, at which talks are given entitled Spiritual Guideposts.”¹⁰

     I believe Hammarskjold would not have minded that mental association.  After all, his diary entries can indeed serve as helpful “trail marks” and “guideposts” for young people trying to navigate terrains and territories they have never before seen.   That’s what they were to the young man I once was.   And I know I was neither the first nor the last young man to benefit from Hammarskjold’s thoughts in that manner.

NOTES

¹Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, Leif Sjoberg & W.H. Auden, trans. (New York:  Ballantine Books, 1983), 180. 

²W.H. Auden, foreword to Hammarskjold’s Markings, xx.

³C.P. Snow, Variety of Men (New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), 220, words in brackets mine.

      ⁴See Daniel Donno’s introduction to The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, Bantam Classic edition (New York:  Bantam Books, 1981), 6.

      ⁵I.E. Levine, Dag Hammarskjold:  Champion of World Peace (London and Glasgow:  Blackie, 1964), 158-177.

      ⁶Hammarskjold, 144.

      ⁷Hammarskjold, 137.

      ⁸Hammarskjold, 72.

      ⁹Hammarskjold, 48.

      ¹⁰Auden,  xxiii.