Both forward and backward

Portrait of Villy Sørensen's authorship

Like shadows of antique picture supports, the past is present in Villy Sørensen's writing. "The past is only for now", he is quoted here in the book as having said. In doing so, he refreshes an obviousness that as a modern person easily goes over. The past stands with Villy Sørensen in the present, and there it stands with its demands on us - unless it is displaced.

The displacement of the past and what follows from it is a major theme in Villy Sørensen's writing. His relevance today, where progress is at a dead end, lies not least in his systematic forward and backward movement - philosophical, artistic, political. It lies in his extended concept of economy, man does not live by bread alone, there is a cultural household to take care of. It lies in the breaking of the fronts between rationality and soul life, without loss of radicality or depth, and thus in the understanding of enlightenment as that which has no meaning if it does not confront the darkness, also in its own body.

Both back and forth, a number of authors - fiction and non-fiction - gather to draw a portrait of the author Villy Sørensen and his efforts. The book goes to Villy Sørensen's texts to find its way in the details and in the big picture. The way forward does not follow by itself, it is a task. In a comment to Marx in the year 1968, he says that "either there is no line of thought between the past and the future or there is a period", - a period both before and after the future, which is still ours.

"Thereby, Both Forward and Back fulfills its ambitious goal of including everything without displacing anything essential and thus emerges as a perspective-rich review of one of the post-war era's most significant and debated writings." C. Dahl, Information.