THE SCREEN: I Am A Conjurer

Monday, Mar. 14, 1960

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(10 of 10)

In the last ditch of despair, Bergman finds the courage to be. Life, he cries, is the meaning of life. "Step by step you go into the darkness. The movement itself is the only truth . . . The most dangerous ways are the only passable ones." It is an existentialist statement, and Bergman is a passionate existentialist, but more in Christian Kierkegaard's than in Atheist Sartre's sense. "Man's essence," wrote Sartre, "is his existence." Man's essence, says Bergman, is God's existence. "Somehow life goes on. I believe in life, in this life, a life after death, all kinds of life . . . And death is a part of life."

^{* Zosimos of Panopolis was an alchemist and Gnostic of the
3rd century who suffered some remarkable visions from which he derived
the arcane principle: "Nature applied to nature transforms
nature." * Bergman's domestic milestones: married at 25 to Dancer
Else Fisher, divorced after two years, one daughter; married at 27 to
Stage Director Ellen Bergman (no kin), divorced after five years, two
sons, two daughters; married at 32 to Journalist Gun Grut, divorced
after nine years, one son; married at 41 to Pianist Kaebi Laretei, his
present wife.}