Dr. Class

Author's name: Hilmar Söder Perry

"Doctor Glass" was published in Sweden in 1905, causing a stir among readers and a public outcry due to its bold, and sometimes scandalous, analyses of many sensitive topics. However, its author, Hjalmar Söderberg (1869–1941), was caught off guard by this reaction because he had not written an offensive work; his lines were not violent. Rather, he had composed an elegant novel that is now a classic of Swedish literature. It breathes deeply, reflects, and maps the psychological landscape of its characters with precision and skill, while ringing themes that are not far removed from the music of the novel as a whole: the relationship with the opposite sex, religion, desire, birth and death, city and country, state and law, youth and old age. We have access to the diaries of Dr. Glass, a physician who treats his patients in his home clinic. That's why we don't read it, but rather spy on it, on secret papers that no one is supposed to read, especially when that blonde, Helga, steps into the doctor's solitude, fed up with her madly infatuated priest husband, requesting medical relief from her marital duties. This strange request takes Klass by surprise, and his mind becomes preoccupied with balancing the right and the wrong actions, between an idea and its opposite, between waiting and playing an active role. He returns to writing his diaries, which he had stopped writing for many years, keeping track of everything that happens until the end. Margaret Atwood wrote in her introduction to the English translation of the book that whenever a literary movement emerges in the world, she finds in "Dr. Glass" an application of her new concept, as if the novel never ages but is written every day. The novel arises from the realist school of literature founded by the French in the nineteenth century, but it freely transcends its boundaries. Some of Soderbergh's techniques in the book, such as the mixing of writing styles and literary collages, are found in Ulysses; there are surreal scenes that no one can ignore; had its publication been a little later, no one would have noticed it, but had it been published a little earlier, it would have kept pace with the rise of the stream of consciousness, and it would have been considered one of his best books.