Käbi and Ingmar - in the name of love...

From a review on Käbi Laretei's last book about her marriage and love affair with Ingmar Bergman you can read:

”Käbi Laretei writes insightfully about her relation with Ingmar Bergman.“

The title of the book would be something in the style “Where did all this love disappear?”

“In the foreword Käbi Laretei gives a brief afterward perspective (where she with touching empathy tells about a couple of visits 2007 to the dying Ingmar Bergman).

As to the rest this fragmentary but nevertheless suggestive book is based on chronologically lined up letters between the lovers, and some extracts from a diary Käbi Laretei seems to have written in secrecy (reminding about Ingmar Bergman's mother, who also wrote a diary in secrecy about her problems living together with the strict father).

Käbi Laretei stands out as a clear-sighted and reflecting human being, where the difficulties combining art (piano-playing) and married life in many respects resemble Ingmar Bergman's.

Even though those two artist natures immediately are drawn to each other and feel a deep attraction and kinship, one have a feeling already early – in both parts – more or less articulated trials to protect oneself from a too complete association (or fusion) with the other.

The marital troubles are there built-in from the first moment. More and more it stands out that Käbi and Ingmar are engulfed by each other – as if they paradoxically enough were suffocated by the love they both are longing for.

Time and again light is shed upon how Ingmar Bergman both is longing for and avoiding nearness.

Käbi Laretei writes motherly in one of her letters: 'My little son, have confidence, assurance (??), patience – you have it in your art, also have it in love.' Ingmar Bergman replies with describing his demons and his struggle to get rid of them.”

Käbi Laretei was my piano-teacher for four years in all... She stimulated my intellectual interests (whether you notice it or not). Käbi mentions Alice Miller in one of her books!!! I wonder if her son with Bergman, Daniel, introduced Miller to her??

Scenes from a marriage - Ingmar Bergman and love...

Käbi Laretei in a TV-programme last Monday on her new book about her marriage with Ingmar Bergman coming next month and the TV-series “Scenes from a marriage” from 1973.Also see here and here about this series.

The contracting parties were described as “the self-absorbed Johan and the self-effacing Marianne”.. Illustrated with a scene where Johan and Marianne met a therapist for the first time, and the therapist asked them to describe themselves. Johan started and expatiated himself about how fantastic he was, as a father, husband, employed, citizen etc, though with a a mix of slight self irony and seriousness. Marianne tried to intervene, lame and feeble:

“But...No... But listen...”

When it was Marianne's turn she had almost nothing to say about herself:

"Well... I am mariied to Johan... And we have two children... And... Well... I don't know what to say more..."

It was also established that the children don't exist in this series (from 1973), except from the beginning of it, compared to today when the children are at the center.

Something other people have established. Earlier (for those born 40-50 years ago or more) it was the dad who decided what the family should do: The mom helped realize and support this. Today the children decide, what to eat (parents make different dishes to the children and the parents), where to go on holidays etc.

Erland Josephson characterized the series with the words “being shut in” and “egocentricity”, not being seen by each other..

Käbi's new book has the title “Where did all this love disappear?”

When she had returned home after the funeral of Ingmar Bergman, almost two years ago now, she started to wonder “how it actually was” and recalled that she had almost 250 letters from Bergman lying somewhere, letters they wrote to each other from everywhere after their first meeting till they broke from their marriages and got married.

Bergman had visited a rehearsal in Malmö with Käbi playing the fourth piano-concerto by Beethoven, and he immediately fell in love, the start point for their relation.

Reading those letters made her surprised over the passion, a passion she had forgotten for the most part, and she got inspired writing a second book about her love relation and marriage with Bergman.

The reading of those old letters was also quite peculiar she said.

They met 1959 and broke up ten years later.

Käbi thought her pianist career was a main reason for this divorce. She couldn't think of giving her profession up and just be Bergman's wife. Not just support the genius.

The young male programme-leader also pointed out to Käbi and the audience that those letters are remarkable, that he and his generation-mates don't know how to write such paper-letters. It's quite different writing emails to each other...

I had Käbi as my piano-teacher for four years in all during my education and she awoke my "intellectual interests," and made me interested in Ingmar Bergman. She didn't only stimulate my piano-playing, but also other things...

I was struck by her continued admiration of him, an admiration that to a great part was mutual.

Their relation came to a fantastic friendship Käbi means, a friendship with both Ingmar and his last wife Ingrid.

Girlishness - a defence?

Practician…

The letter
(which one of our students is going to sing in the church at the concert tomorrow evening).

According to a test on what blog type you are the result for me was that I am a practician! I was moderately flattered by his.

I have been out for a bike-ride before lunch, sneezing and coughing, recovering from a cold.
Yesterday I watched a TV-programme (I had a TV-evening yesterday!) about a new book on Ingmar Bergman. The author, Michael Timm (in my age I guess), said about Bergman, with whom he had developed a fairly close friendship, that he was lively, changeable, energetic, quick, very curious, after an interview on half an hour Bergman got tired and started to ask the interviewer a lot of questions instead of the opposite.

I also came to think of how extremely organized Bergman was. He was always extremely well prepared in his work. He had a fixed schedule every day for his writing at Fårö; for his walks, when he visited his cinema and watched films each evening and so on. He needed to keep his demons (or “dämoner” as he called them in Swedish) in check.

And he avoided psycho therapy (but what sort would he have gotten then?) because I guess he believed that his neurosis was the prerequisite for his creativity, that he would loose it if he came to terms with them. As I think many creative people thought then (and maybe still think too often). But what was he actually afraid of? The truth lay just under the surface and he was aware of it, on an unconscious or subconscious level, and was in touch with the panic connected with it?

During the tax-affair (round 1975) he got a psychic breakdown and landed on a psychiatric clinic and was heavily medicated, so he walked there like a zombie. But he decided to quit all medication, and did that abruptly too, and met all the anxieties. He has described this in one of his books. And left Sweden with his wife Ingrid (by the way the author of the new book on Bergman thinks Bergman had had women who could measure up to him actually, and contribute to his work. Know that he and the pianist-wife Käbi Laretei inspired each other a lot, but they had a mutual respectful fear or each other? And Bergman later said that they played roles to each other, didn’t dare to meet as real, genuine human beings, meetings between two genuine , true selves, or how one shall express it).

Yes, maybe one has to be organized with artistic works struck me. Boundaries are more important there than in many other works and occupations? We need limits, in our work. And all artists aren’t bohemians, as maybe many thinks? Because for the first you need a lot of discipline to come where you have come! To develop the skill you have developed. And for this you can’t be too bohemian? If you aren’t lucky having someone a housekeeper and mommy?

k. – the spontaneous! Not always weighing the words, hmmm… Spontaneously expressing things, thoughts etc. Behind a certain amount of shyness. Not having a censurer - and having one. Blushing red sometimes (or rather often): but what did I say? And how? How childish! How stupid! How stupid, childish ideas!

Also struck me the other day about an older friend who has known me for long, who said she thought that people maybe could react on my quick thinking… That they didn’t really keep up with it. I don’t know if this was so good telling me however.

Yes, only a word or expression can trigger a lot of thoughts and feelings. And when I write I can start in one end and end in an entirely different, with a million sidetracks?

And after having worked with young people for so many years my language has also got coloured by that sort of language? When I studied pedagogy once (beside full time work) I expressed myself differently, adapted a bit to that language? The same when I was student at a tutor-education at the Royal College of music in Stockholm (5 years ago, 7, 5 international academic points).

No, now I need to practice for 2, 5 - 3 hours. And it would be nice getting time on the balcony with a cup of tea with honey (need that for my cold). Have thought of taking the bike to town and the pharmacy to buy something for my nose, Renaissance I had thought of.

Torment....

from the movie "Torment" or "Hets".

Time to blog after a hectic work period, but there are so many things I am reacting at… Listening to Stabat Mater (the recording with Claudio Abbado), the sun is shining and it was minus-degrees this morning. I don’t have anything booked today. Can do what I want.

Yesterday two of my siblings children (10 and 17 years) “borrowed” my apartment, but I didn’t meet them, unfortunately.

When I wrote on my other blog I was reminded about the movie “Torment” or “Hets” in Swedish where the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman made his début as script writer.

In the Swedish introduction on the site about this movie it stood something which didn’t stand on the English site, namely that this movie is a classic about a rebellious student of secondary school (gymnasist in Swedish).

On this site it stands in the end:

“’Torment’ provoked intensive debate in the press. Aftonbladet published a letter from Henning L. Håkanson of the Palmgren School where Ingmar Bergman had been a pupil (the statement referred to in the following quotation was made by Bergman and published the day after the premiere of ‘Torment’, on 3 October 1944):

‘Mr Bergman's statement, that his entire time at school was hell, surprises me. I clearly recall that he, his brother and his father were all very satisfied with the school. After his final examinations, Ingmar Bergman came back to school to attend our Christmas party, bright and cheery as far as one could tell, and not seeming to harbour any grudge, either against the school or its teachers. In all probability, the fact of the matter lies elsewhere. Our friend Ingmar was a problem child, lazy yet rather gifted, and the fact that such a person does not easily adapt to the daily routines of study is quite natural. A school cannot be adapted to suit bohemian dreamers, but to suit normally constituted, hard working people.’

A few days later Bergman replied: ‘Let us start with the '12-year hell' (coarsely expressed, by the way. Not a word used by me, but by the person who interviewed me. I recall using a milder term, which is somewhat different). Indeed…I was a very lazy boy, and very scared because of my laziness, because I was involved with theatre instead of school and because I hated having to be punctual, having to get up in the morning, do homework, sit still, having to carry maps, having break times, doing tests, taking oral examinations, or to put it plainly: I hated school as a principle, as a system and as an institution. And as such I have definitely not wanted to criticise my own school, but all schools. As far as I understand it, and as I clearly pointed out in that unfortunate interview, my school was neither better nor worse than other institutions with the same purpose.

My revered headmaster also writes (somewhat harshly): 'A school cannot be adapted to suit bohemian dreamers, but to suit normally constituted, hard working people'.

Where should the poor bohemians go? Should pupils be divided up: You're a bohemian, you're a hard-working person, you're a bohemian, etc. Would the bohemians be excused?

There are teachers one never forgets. Men one liked and men one hated. My revered headmaster belonged and still belongs (in my case) to the former category. I also have the feeling that my dear headmaster has not yet seen the film. Perhaps we should go and see it together!’”

Bergman was the second child in line. He had a four year older brother Dag (who died in a disease which "suffocated" him to death literally?). He was allowed to rebel a little more than his oldest sibling, and as his four year younger sister Margareta? A sister which was really "crushed"?? All these siblings hard held by their mom (and a father who worked himself to exhaustion, to measure up to his parents in law, being good enough to them. Bergman's parents probably married in rebellion in the first place, and as a protest? And the life in their home was about hypocrisy really? They showed a facade to the environment, as a perfect priest-family, but the life inside the house's walls was stormy and neurotic. Bergman's mom had a love-affair with a ten year younger priest-colleague to her husband... And in the middle of this the children grew up...).

I had one of Ingmar Bergman's wives as piano-teacher for four years, Käbi Laretei, she has written books, quite honest books about herself and her professional and personal life, and her last book is about her stormy life with Bergman (though a fairly "kind" book it felt to me!!?? She is less open in this than in her other books I think). Käbi writes in Swedish, despite she moved here from Estonia (where her father was diplomat) as 18-year-old, during WW2, and uses the Swedish language much better than many Swedes!! She is probably VERY talented in many areas (even language matters). She speaks German and English fluently too??

Bergman was very impressed by her and her intelligence he has admitted, so he put up a mask he thinks, playing a role... He did to her he thinks - the woman he was married to!! He thinks they played roles to each other. There was a kind of wall between them? As if he was afraid of not measuring up to her, as he wasn't good enough!? And Käbi in turn admired Bergman a lot, and went on admiring him a lot after they were divorced. She reffered to Bergman when we had lessons for her. Bergman had said this and that, for instance about body-language. I think Käbi awoke my intellectual interests - and my curiosity of Bergman?? (how it is with them now!! Quite self-ironically).

Both these two persons suffered from severe sleeping-problems... Laretei walked in her sleep, even when she was pregnant with their son Daniel (even fell in a stair during her pregnancy?), and she still walks in her sleep now in her eighties.

Yesterday we had a masterclass with six of our students from the Higher Music Course (only boys or young men, no girls struck me!!) with the Swedish violinist Nilla Pierrou. She wondered whom I had studied with. I mentioned Käbi.

"How was she?"

Nilla asked.

"She worked on the music and interpretation, not on technical things..."

"I saw a TV-program with her (long ago) where she was taught (probably a form of masterclass), and she was no good pupil!"

"??? Did she argue against the teacher?"

I asked, a bit surprised (or not) and a little amazed.

"Yes she did."

Nilla replied. But we didn't argue with her as students I think (the very well-mannered girl! Trying to measure up, really, straining my whole body to do as she wanted, as I did to all teachers, the model-pupil/student really!!??)... But I think Käbi isn't (and wasn't) easy to live with? Not Bergman either (with all his women! And children here and there)...

A blogposting about people who aren't performing on top - who aren't performing MORE than on top, this person gets a diagnosis explaining why she (he) isn't perfect and more than perfect. There was an article in a Swedish paper about a woman releived getting the diagnosis ADHD...

This diagnosis gave her an explanation to why she for instance was cronically late to everything... But as the blog-owner wrote: but then she was on time in a way, because she was ALWAYS late!?? Why was she never too early?? The blogger wondered if there couldn't lie something deep down... I just sigh... Yes, can't it?? (you can and/or shall "cure" everything that stands out?? Or that is standing out too much?? Not being so visible, but not invisible either!? Clever, but not too clever! Being enough clever and visible? What I have tried my whole life? Yes, if you are depressed you have to take medicine to "cheer up", and if you are the opposite you have to take medicine to calm down! A female colleague, 9 years older than I, takes, or took, calming medicine! She doens't drive car, which is very unpractical in our work *, but have drivers-license. You have to be enough you know!! Not too much or too little!)

The blogger went on describing her own small habits quite ironically and in fact quite fun, so I had to laugh... The laugh not reaching my eyes though??

I would like to draw a blanket over me and disappear totally...

* Driving here and there with all my working-material with me (NOT a piano though, thank goodness!!), using my own, private car, sitting in all sorts of "rooms"... Glad and grateful that we are allowed to work with this... Think of all freedom we have... Yes, and despite all this I am still interested in this (fooling myself?).

Horowitz playing...

Sonata in C major and Rondo in D-major (I think). Played by Vladimir Horowitz. He was silent for many years… Couldn’t play. A great pianist really...

The Swedish pianist Käbi Laretei couldn't play either during a period of her life, when she had just passed 50 (she was round 52 or older?), a period when her parents died (a year between)... Her first book has the title "Who am I playing for?" Yes, who was she playing for and whom did she go on playing for later? To earn her parents love?

She also seemed to have had a relatively extensive love and sexual life. Her first love was a much older man. And she got her first child, Linda when she had passed 30, in her first marriage with a Swedish conductor... And I wonder if some of these experiences have marked her? Or she hasn't been able to process them and what's maybe underneath?

She has written quite openly about all those things, so they are no big secrets!? Yes, she has (and is) a bit diva-like, but at the same time she sat at a fire-place where we lived and drank tea in cups of all shapes and sizes and forms... She was quite self-centered, but could also show interest in us!? So there was and is both/and in her?

We, young women (over 30 years younger), admired her a lot, when she, a middle-age woman (56 years or something?), came in a sari a warm summer's day to the classes. Colorful and beautiful still in her middle-age. She looked better by the years (but was good-looking as young too).

But I guess she wasn't easy to live with!?? I don't think I should have wanted to live with her, even as a woman, and even if I am not drawn to women...

In her last book she is mentioning Alice Miller, but I don't think she has understood Miller really... Maybe it's some of her kids that have introduced Miller to her? Daniel or Linda? Käbi was no good mother, least to her oldest child, a daughter. She abandoned her for Ingmar Bergman. Bergman wanted to have Käbi for himself (needed a mother?) and no kids around really!! Not even his own?? And Käbi found herself in this!! I am not sure I would have...