Gertrud (1964)

Nina Pens Rode: Gertrud Kanning

Photos 

Quotes 

• Gertrud Kanning : There's no happiness in love. Love is suffering. Love is unhappiness.

• Axel Nygen : Have you ever thought of writing poetry?

  Gertrud Kanning : Yes, I have. Actually, I've written a poem. One poem, when I was 16. Here it is. Should I read it to you? It has three verses.

  Axel Nygen : Read.

  Gertrud Kanning : "Just look at me. Am I beautiful? No, but I have loved. Just look at me. Am I young? No, but I have loved. Just look at me. Do I live? No, but I have loved." Sixteen-year-old Gertrud. My gospel according to love.

• Gertrud Kanning : I was thinking about your creed, remember?

  Gabriel Lidman : I don't know what you mean.

  Gertrud Kanning : No, one never remembers everything, but the creed went: 'I believe in the pleasure of the flesh and the irreparable loneliness of the soul.'

  Gabriel Lidman : Oh yes. That sounds like me.

• Gertrud Kanning : The gardener has been told that only grass shall grow on my grave and in springtime I shall have anemones. You'll come by one day, pick an anemone and think of me. Take it as a word of love that was thought, but never spoken.

• Gertrud Kanning : When I understood it all, then my heart grew old.

• Gustav Kanning : I love you, Gertrud.

  Gertrud Kanning : Love. Such a big word. There's so much you love. You love power and honor, you love yourself, your intellectual life, your books, your Havana cigars... and I am sure you love me at times.

• Gertrud Kanning : One always loses the thing he cherishes the most.

• Erland Jansson : Who are you, really?

  Gertrud Kanning : I am many things.

  Erland Jansson : Who?

  Gertrud Kanning : The morning dew dripping from the leaves of the tree. White clouds sailing, no one knows where.

  Erland Jansson : Who else are you?

  Gertrud Kanning : I am the moon. I am the sky.

  Erland Jansson : Are you anyone else?

  Gertrud Kanning : Yes, I am a mouth. A mouth seeking another's mouth.

  Erland Jansson : Sounds like a dream.

  Gertrud Kanning : It is a dream. Life is a dream.

  Erland Jansson : Life?

  Gertrud Kanning : Yes. Life is a long, long chain of dreams, drifting into one another.

  Erland Jansson : And the mouth you spoke of?

  Gertrud Kanning : A dream.

  Erland Jansson : And the mouth you seek?

  Gertrud Kanning : Also, a dream.

  [kiss] 

• Gertrud Kanning : I've known all along it was madness, but I had so little to lose, Gabriel. My life was so terribly lonely and empty.

• Gertrud Kanning : Don't think I've forgotten everything I owe you. You taught me love's wonderful miracle. You made me a woman with every drop of life's blood. I belonged to you with all my senses. We grew together and became one. There was no shame between us. Love cleansed me of everything, of what was low and miserable. It opened me up to the good and beautiful. I found in you a man with whom I could share life. I asked myself whether I truly deserved so much happiness.

• Axel Nygen : Remember what you said. There's nothing else in life but love. Nothing. Nothing else. Do you still stand by those words? Do you regret them?

  Gertrud Kanning : No, I don't regret them. I stand by what I said. There's nothing else in life, but youth and love, unending tenderness and quiet happiness, Axel.

• Gertrud Kanning : Yesterday, I ordered my headstone for my grave and I decided what will be on it.

  Axel Nygen : Your name, of course?

  Gertrud Kanning : No, just two words, amor omnia.

  Axel Nygen : Love is all.

  Gertrud Kanning : Yes, love is all.

• Gertrud Kanning : I dreamed something last night.

  Erland Jansson : What did you dream?

  Gertrud Kanning : I was running naked through the streets, dogs chasing me, and when they caught me, I awoke. And I realized we two are completely alone in the world.

• Gertrud Kanning : Give me your mouth

  [kiss] 

  Gertrud Kanning : Your wonderful mouth.

  Erland Jansson : Where do we go now?

  Gertrud Kanning : Your place. Come.

• Gustav Kanning : It gets dark early now.

  Gertrud Kanning : I should probably go.

  Gustav Kanning : I seek your lips and you give me your cheek. And the door to your room has been locked to me for more than a month. I used to be welcome there. I often lie awake, thinking of you. I've thought you might be in love with someone else and I've wondered who it could be.

  [Doorbell rings] 

  Gustav Kanning : Damn it, Mamma's here.

• Gertrud Kanning : You look as if something unpleasant has happened to you.

  Gabriel Lidman : Yes. I was in bad company last evening, but it was my own fault. I don't want to think about it. It's over. Everything is nothing.

  Gertrud Kanning : In the older days, you always spoke of your life's work. You've become a great and famous man and now everything is nothing. What's the matter, Gabriel?

  Gabriel Lidman : Oh, I'm feeling old.

• Gabriel Lidman : Nothing's like one thinks.

  Gertrud Kanning : No. nothing's ever like one thinks.

• Gabriel Lidman : He bragged about his lovers.

  Gertrud Kanning : No, that wasn't nice.

  Gabriel Lidman : No. In this mixed company, in this atmosphere of drinking, playing and whoring around, he spoke aloud of his latest conquest. And he named her, her beloved name.

• Gertrud Kanning : A woman loves her husband above all, but for him, work comes first.

  Gertrud Kanning : Isn't that the nature of the universe?

  Gertrud Kanning : Naturally, it's a man's nature to work, to create. But work mustn't exile the woman from his thoughts. I feel this way often, as if I have no husband at all, as if I'm just atmosphere for you.

• Gertrud Kanning : The man I'm with must be completely mine. I must come before everything. I don't want to be an occasional plaything.

• Gertrud Kanning : Your work divided us, and honor and fame and money. You desired these. Love had become a burden for you. You wanted pleasure of the flesh, not love.

  Gabriel Lidman : It's the terrible truth.

• Gertrud Kanning : You are as cold as stone. I want pure, warm blood.

• Gertrud Kanning : You are my everything to me, my life of desire and sorrow.

• Gertrud Kanning : Remember our first kiss?

  Erland Jansson : I remember many kisses, a rain of kisses, kisses that went through my bones, kisses that made me gasp for breath.

• Gertrud Kanning : I couldn't get you out of my mind. When I saw you at the concert, I had to have you.

• Erland Jansson : I'm tired. I went out on the town last night.

  Gertrud Kanning : As usual. Is that necessary to be an artist?

• Gertrud Kanning : Erland, there's so much music in you that wants to get out into the world, out among people. The way you live, it will die, perhaps soon, perhaps sooner than you think. Your inspirations from a smelly bar after a sleepless night - Erland, they're worthless. Erland, I beg you. I beg you as if I were begging for my life. Don't go.

  Erland Jansson : I live as I want to and as I must live. It's in my blood. Even if I did promise you to stay home, I'd do anyway.

  Gertrud Kanning : Then it is better that you promise nothing.

  Erland Jansson : I live hard because I like to. Tomorrow is a new beginning.