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J. Gill Holland, ed. The Private Journak of Edvard Munch, Madison: U Wisconsin P, 2005. Pp. 192. $29.95.
The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch had a complex and lifelong relationship to the written word. He took the first commandment of the Kristiania Bohême that "thou shall write thine own life" to heart. A prolific letter writer, selections of his correspondence have been published sporadically over the sixty-two years since his death. The letters to the Norwegian art critic Jappe Nilssen were published in 1946. His exchange with his patron Max Linde appeared in 1974. And his letters to the Hamburg jurist and art connoisseur Gustav Schiefler were published in two volumes in 1987 and 1990.
Munch's diaries, journals, autobiographical musings, and occasional forays into prose poetry and drama are not as well known to the wider public. Nor have they been accessible. This situation is explained in part by the fact that his handwriting is notoriously difficult to read and his punctuation was extremely...