Swedish Translation of Buber to Become Memorial to Hammarskjold

The Stockholm publishing firm of Bonniers notified the United Nations headquarters today that, as a memorial to the late United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, it planned to publish a Swedish translation of “I and Thou,” a basic book by the Israel philosopher Prof. Martin Buber which Mr. Hammarskjold wanted to translate.

The Stockholm publishers said that they received a letter from Mr. Hammarskjold, shortly before his death ten days ago, informing them that he was translating “I and Thou” into Swedish, Mr. Hammarskjdd had also informed Prof. Buber of his work on the translation; Prof. Buber received the last Hammarskjold letter, at his home in Jerusalem, the very day the late Secretary-General met his tragic death in an airplane crash in Africa.

Bonniers said it will carry through the Hammarskjold plan for the translation and publish the book in memoriam to the late Secretary General “in the very near future.” Mr. Hammarskjold’s plan to translate Prof. Buber’s work was believed, by persons here who knew the former UN chief well, to have been preliminary to proposing Prof. Buber for a Nobel Prize in literature.

Two recent Nobel Prize laureates in literature, Albert Camus and St. John Perse, had their works translated into Swedish by Mr. Hammarskjold before they were given the coveted Nobel prize. Mr. Hammarskjold was a member of the Swedish Academy, the body which officially designates the Nobel laureates in the field of literature.