Published posthumously after Dag Hammarskjöld's death in 1961, Markings is neither autobiography nor philosophy in any conventional sense. W. H. Auden recognised that this was not a politician's memoir but a work of literature, and his translation with Leif Sjöberg remains the standard English edition.

It is the private spiritual journal of a man who spent his public life as Secretary-General of the United Nations while quietly conducting an exacting interior dialogue with himself. Written across more than three decades, these fragments, poems, aphorisms and prayers trace a relentless attempt to live ethically within political power without surrendering to ambition, vanity or despair.

Its reputation as a book of wisdom has sometimes obscured how strange and demanding it really is. Hammarskjöld writes in compressed flashes that owe as much to Christian mysticism, the Stoics, Meister Eckhart and Zen as they do to modern poetry. The entries refuse consolation. Again and again they return to self-scrutiny, discipline, silence, sacrifice and the difficult distinction between humility and self-abasement. 

A remarkable companion for readers of Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, Etty Hillesum or Pascal, and for anyone interested in how an inner life survives the demands of history. Few books so convincingly demonstrate that spiritual writing can also be psychologically acute.

Faber paperback edition, 1975 reprint (first published in English, 1964). Translated by W. H. Auden and Leif Sjöberg, with a foreword by Auden. Very good condition. Moderate shelf wear and rubbing to the wraps with light toning to the pages. Binding remains tight and sound.