Ingmar Ernst Bergman (e Ingrid e Maria von Rosen)
Tre Diari

THE REVIEW

The mystery of life, love, and death.

The book-diary is very beautiful, although written in a style that reflects the three different "hands" of the three authors and does not resemble at all the other books for which Bergman was also an excellent author.

Here, the style is deliberately more concise, almost telegraphic, dry in form, but not at all in content.

I find it difficult to write a true literary review of the "Three Diaries"; I can only warmly recommend reading it with great attention: from those densely packed lines emerge, if one knows how to extract them, many extremely useful insights into the biography, family and interpersonal relationships, conflicting feelings, artistic career, psychology of the Master of Uppsala, his life, and his most intimate divisions.

Therefore, I limit myself to saying a few things, making some notes, recounting some sensations I received from a first voracious reading (which will surely be followed by another and yet another), which seem very pertinent and interesting to me: the first is that although Bergman navigates territories and themes that are largely, but only theoretically, addressed in his numerous films: death; the afterlife; the transcendent; the dramatic end of human life; the physical pain of historical man; etc., he seems inexorably inadequate at managing the practical daily emergency; the second is that in such a dramatic practical daily emergency, love is surely not enough, in fact, it seems almost an obstacle to the healthy management of illness. Perhaps there is a need for true compassion and greater altruism, but evidently even a Genius can lack such qualities; the third is that the futile attempt to establish a daily routine clashes with the enormity, gravity, exceptionality, and inevitability of the mortal illness; the fourth is that although the words of the three narrators significantly convey the approach to the "supreme moment," the "mystery" of life and death will never be revealed and even never approached.