For Easter and Passover

Time, Place

To celebrate Holy Week in Christian tradition and Passover in Jewish tradition, a very few words of Dag Hammarskjöld’s from public statements and his private journal, without interpretation as none is needed. For linguists seeking exercise—and of course for Hammarskjöld’s fellow Swedes—the last text appears in both English and the original Swedish.

Hammarskjöld wrote:

You cannot grip the world and shape it as a material thing. You can only influence its development if you recognize and respect it as a thing of the spirit.


The nerve signals from a wound are felt at once all through the body of mankind.


It is…said that our time is the age of the decisive fight between freedom and tyranny. It is true that such a fight is going on. But it has always been fought and I don’t believe that I could justifiably be called a pessimist for expressing my belief that this fight will never be over. It will go on, generation after generation, as long as human beings are human beings…. This is…not a struggle between political systems and ideologies, but a struggle within and for the hearts of men, including our own….


Beyond the attentiveness of obedience to the goal: freedom from fear.
Beyond fear: openness.
And beyond that: love.

Bortom lyndadens samling under målet: frihet från fruktan.
Bortom fruktan: öppenhet.
Och därbortom: kärlek.


(Sources: PP II, 1953, pp. 90 and 102; 1954, p. 256. Markings, 1956, p. 129, translation slightly revised; and Vägmärken [first Swedish edition], p. 103)

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