Pär Lagerkvist

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The Swedish author Pär Fabian Lagerkvist (1891-1974) was concerned with the meaning of life in a world without God and the existence of good and evil in such a world. Leif Sjöberg, in "Pär Lagerkvist" summarized the man: "Pär Lagerkvist more vigorously than any other professional writer explored religious concerns of both the modern heretic, influenced by modern science, and the modern brooder-searcher, an alienated outsider, desperately wanting to believe in traditional values. Persistently he came out as a nonbeliever, yet always with other possibilities open." In 1951 the Swedish Academy of Letters honored him with the Nobel Prize for literature.

Pär Lagerkvist was born on May 23, 1891, in Växjö, Sma°land, the youngest of seven children in a traditional and deeply religious family. His father, a railroad employee, refused to join his trade union because he believed that it contradicted God's established order. Despite his parents' devout beliefs and daily readings from the bible at home, Lagerkvist developed an alternative view of religion at a tender age, becoming in his own words, "a believer without faith, a religious atheist." He formed a group called "The Red Ring" with four friends and they discussed topics such as religion, anarchy, socialism, and evolutionism. Darwin's Origin of Species profoundly influenced the young group; Lagerkvist later wrote that it disturbed, "the very foundation of the transcendental view of the world."

Proposed a Simple Approach to Writing

Between 1911 and 1912 Lagerkvist studied the history of art at the University of Uppsala, but he was not satisfied and turned to writing. In 1912 he published his debut work, entitled Human Beings, but it was his next publication, Word Art and Pictorial Art that established him on Sweden's literary scene as a young writer with evolutionary ideas. He criticized contemporary Swedish literature for its lack of integrity and commercialism and prescribed both a Cubist theoretical approach to writing and a learning of the great ancient works. He propounded simplicity, writing that authors should use, "simple thoughts, uncomplicated feelings in the face of life's eternal powers, sorrow and joy, reverence, love, and hatred, expressions of the universal which rises above individuality."

Lagerkvist's Work

His early work - Anguish (1916; poems), Chaos (1919; poems, stories, and the play The Secret of Heaven), and Theater (1918; three plays) - evokes in powerful expressionistic images man's cosmic loneliness and his fear of life and death in an indifferent world. In two important essays on literature during this period, he attacks the prevailing psychological realism and calls for new literary forms more suited to the modern situation.

In the early 1920s Lagerkvist passed through a brief period of reconciliation to life, reflected especially in the remarkable story The Eternal Smile (1920). This mood did not last long, however, as seen in the play The Invisible One (1923) and the nightmarish stories in Evil Tales (1924). In 1925 appeared Guest of Reality, a novel about childhood, one of the few glimpses Lagerkvist gave into his life.

A new stage in Lagerkvist's development began with The Triumph over Life (1927), where in visionary passages he proclaims his philosophy. He rejects "life" - biological life - and declares his faith in the "divine," which consists in man's restless search for meaning, goodness, and justice. Like Albert Camus after him, Lagerkvist advocates "rebellion" against despair as a creative act in the face of life's incomprehensibility. In the 1930s Lagerkvist's work deals with the growing totalitarian threat in Europe. The most important of his works in these years are the play The Hangman (1933), the humanistic manifesto The Clenched Fist (1934), and a play about political assassination, The Man without a Soul (1936).

After World War II Lagerkvist turned often to the novel form. The Dwarf (1944) takes place in the Italian Renaissance, yet is also about World War II and about man in all places and times. With Barabbas (1950), perhaps his most famous work, he began a series of novels dealing with man's encounter with the divine and his quest for understanding and salvation. This theme was continued in The Sibyl (1956), The Death of Abasuerus (1960), Pilgrim at Sea (1962), and The Holy Land (1964). His final novel, Mariamne (1967) makes use of a symbolic constellation that appears often in his books, here the brutal, power-sick Herod and his wife Mariamne, whom he must kill when he realizes he can never understand the love she represents.

Lagerkvist's strength lies in his ability to create memorable figures that symbolize eternal forces in man: the hangman, the dwarf, and Herod are men in despair; Barabbas, the sibyl, and Tobias represent the seekers who have experienced the divine and can never be at peace again. Mariamne, the hangman's wife, and Asak in Barabbas, who do good without question, can be obliterated by man's brutality or by life's indifference but represent an enduring quality that Lagerkvist believes will never perish.

Received the Nobel Prize for Literature

In 1951 the Swedish Academy of Letters awarded Lagerkvist the Nobel Prize for literature, explaining that it gave the prize, "For the artistic power and deep-rooted independence he demonstrates in his writings in seeking an answer to the eternal questions of humanity." Never a public man, Lagerkvist said only a few words to the public, "I have no particular message; it is all in my books." After suffering a stroke the week before, he died on July 12, 1974.

Further Reading

Most of the prose work mentioned above has been translated into English. For more information on Lagerkvist's life and work see Alrik Gustafson, A History of Swedish Literature (1961), which also contains an excellent bibliography of magazine articles in English and studies in Swedish. Other sources include: The New York Times (July 14, 1974); and Leif Sjöberg, Pär Lagerkvist, Columbia University Press (1976).

Lagerkvist, Pär (1891–1974), Swedish Nobel Prize winner, started as an expressionist playwright, but went on to become one of the most famous Swedish novelists of the 20th century. Dvärgen (The Dwarf, 1944) and Barabbas (1950) are parables of the modern human being's moral and religious dilemmas.

In Onda sagor (1924, included in The Marriage Feast), Lagerkvist uses the form of the parable and tends to give the folk tale a nasty intertextual twist. One text is tellingly called ‘Prinsessan och hela riket’ (‘The Princess and All the Kingdom’), and makes the point that life continues in all its complexity and ambiguity after the formulaically happy, but shallow, ending of the magic tale.

In other texts, Lagerkvist tends to revise legends by giving them surprise endings, such as in ‘Den onda änglen’ (‘The Evil Angel’), in which an angel of darkness, who hatefully announces that human beings will perish, is simply met with the laconic response that they are perfectly aware of their mortality. In ‘Kärleken och döden’ (‘Love and Death’), a young couple walk down the street when suddenly Cupid appears—a brutish, hairy fellow who shoots an arrow into the young man's chest. As the man's blood runs in the gutter, until none is left, his sweetheart walks on unaware of what has happened to him. Lagerkvist's texts play with metaphysics and religion, but without a belief in anything beyond the present reality. His texts are funny, bleak, and artistically well‐wrought.

Bibliography

• Lipman‐Wulf, Barbara Susanne, ‘Die Zwergfiguren in Par Lagerkvists Dvargen und Gunter Grass' Die Blechtrommel’ (Diss., State University of New York–Stony Brook, 1979).
• Schwab, Gweneth B., ‘Herod and Barabbas: Lagerkvist and the Long Search’, Scandinavica, 20.1 (May 1981).
• Scobbie, Irene, ‘The Origins and Development of Lagerkvist's Barabbas’, Scandinavian Studies, 55.1 (1983).

— Niels Ingwersen

Pär Fabian Lagerkvist
Born	May 23, 1891(1891-05-23) Växjö, Sweden
Died	July 11, 1974 (aged 83) Stockholm, Sweden
Occupation	poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, short story writer
Nationality	Swedish
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1951

Pär Fabian Lagerkvist (May 23, 1891—July 11, 1974) was a Swedish author who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1951.

Lagerkvist wrote poems, plays, novels, stories, and essays of considerable expressive power and influence from his early 20s to his late 70s. Among his central themes was the fundamental question of good and evil, which he examined through such figures as the man who was freed instead of Jesus, Barabbas, and the wandering Jew Ahasuerus. As a moralist, he used religious motifs and figures from the Christian tradition without following the doctrines of the church.

Contents 1 Biography and works 2 Works 3 English Translations 4 References

Biography and works

Lagerkvist was born in Växjö (Småland).

Lagerkvist received a traditional religious education - he would say, with little exaggeration, that he "had had the good fortune to grow up in a home where the only books known were the Bible and the Book of Hymns". In his teens he broke away from christian beliefs, but unlike many other writers and thinkers in his generation he did not become vehemently critical of religious beliefs as such. Though he was politically a socialist for most of his life, he never indulged in the idea that "religion is the opium of the people". Much of his writing is informed by a lifelong interest in man and his symbols and gods and in the position of Man (both as individual and mankind) in a world where the Divine is no longer present, no longer speaking.

In his early years Lagerkvist supported modernist and aesthetically radical views, as shown by his manifesto Ordkonst och bildkonst (word art and picture art) (1913) and the plays Den Svåra Stunden ("The Difficult Hour").

One of the author's earliest works is Ångest (Anguish, 1916), a violent and disillusioned collection of poems. His anguish was derived from his fear of death, the World War, and personal crisis. He tried to explore how a person can find a meaningful life in a world where a war can kill millions for very little reason. "Anguish, anguish is my heritage / the wound of my throat / the cry of my heart in the world." ("Anguish", 1916.) "Love is nothing. Anguish is everything / the anguish of living." ("Love is nothing", 1916.) This pessimism, however, slowly faded, as testified by his subsequent works, Det eviga leendet (The Eternal Smile, 1920), the autobiographical novel Gäst hos verkligheten (Guest of Reality, 1925) and the prose monologue Det besegrade livet (The defeated Life, 1927), in which the faith in man is predominant. From The Eternal Smile on, his style largely abandoned the expressionist pathos and brusque effects of his early works and there was a strong striving for simplicity, clasical precision and clean telling, sometimes appearing close to naivism. The content, however, was never truly naive. A Swedish critic remarked that "Lagerkvist and John the Evangelist are two masters at expressing profound things with a highly restricted choice of words".

Ten years after Ångest, Lagerkvist married for the second time, a union which was to provide a pillar of safety in his life until the death of his wife forty years later. Hjärtats sånger (Songs of the Heart) (1926) appeared at this time, bearing witness to his pride and love for his consort.. This collection is much less desperate in its tone than Ångest, and establlished him as one of the foremost Swedish poets of his generation.

His prose novella Bödeln ("The Hangman", 1933), later adapted for the stage, (The Hangman, 1933; play, 1934) shows his growing concern with the totalitarianism and brutality that began to sweep across Europe in the years prior to World War II. Nazism was one of the main butts of the work and Der Stürmer responded with a very dismissive review. Criticism against Fascism is also present in the play Mannen utan själ (The Man Without a Soul, 1936).

Lagerkvist's 1944 novel Dvärgen (The Dwarf), a searching, ironic tale about evil, was the first to bring him positive international attention outside of the Nordic countries. The work was followed in 1949 by the unusual, lyrical play Låt människan leva (Let Man Live).

Barabbas (1950), which was immediately hailed as a masterpiece (by among others fellow Nobel laureate André Gide) is probably Lagerkvist's most famous work. The novel is based on a minor Biblical story. Jesus of Nazareth was sentenced to die by the Roman authorities immediately before the Jewish Passover, when it was customary for the Romans to release someone convicted of a capital offense. When the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate offers to free Jesus or Barabbas, a convicted thief and murderer, a Jerusalem mob demands the release of Barabbas, who spends the rest of his life trying to come to terms with why he was chosen to live.

The novel was filmed in 1962, with Anthony Quinn playing the title role.

Lagerkvist died in Stockholm.

Works

• Människor (1912)
• Ordkonst och bildkonst (1913)
• Två sagor om livet (1913)
• Motiv (1914)
• Järn och människor (1915)
• Ångest (1916)
• Sista människan, play ("The Last Man", 1917)
• Teater (1918)
• Himlens hemlighet, play ("The Secret of Heaven", 1919)
• Kaos (1919)
• Det eviga leendet, three stories ("The Eternal Smile", 1920)
• Den lyckliges väg (1921)
• Den osynlige, play (1923)
• Onda sagor (1924)
• Gäst hos verkligheten ("Guest of Reality", 1925)
• Hjärtats sånger (1926)
• Det besegrade livet (1927)
• Han som fick leva om sitt liv, play ("The Man Who Lived his Life Over", 1928)
• Kämpande ande (1930)
• Konungen, play ("The King", 1932)
• Vid lägereld (1932)
• Bödeln, play (1933)
• Den knutna näven ("The Clenched Fist", 1934)
• I den tiden ("In the Terms", 1935)
• Mannen utan själ, play ("The Man Without a Soul", 1936)
• Genius (1937)
• Seger i mörkret, play (1939)
• Den befriade människan (1939)
• Sång och strid (1940)
• Midsommardröm i fattighuset, play ("Midsummer's Dream in the Workhouse", 1941)
• Hemmet och stjärnan (1942)
• Dvärgen ("The Dwarf", 1944)
• De vises sten, play ("The Philosopher's Stone", 1947)
• Låt människan leva, play ("Let Man Live", 1950)
• Barabbas (1950, filmed in 1953, 1962)
• Aftonland ("Evening Land", 1953)
• Sibyllan ("The Sibyl", 1956)
• Ahasverus död ("The Death of Asahuerus", 1960)
• Pilgrim på havet ("Pilgrim at Sea", 1962)
• Det heliga landet ("The Holy Land", 1964)
• Mariamne ("Herod and Mariamne", 1967)
• Antecknat (diaries and notes, 1977)
• Den svåra resan (written in 1926, published in 1985)

English Translations

• "Literary Art and Pictorial Art" [Ordkonst och bildkonst], Rainbow Press, 1991, ISBN 0-9518535-0-3.

References

• Fulvio Ferrari, introduction to Italian edition of Gäst hos verkligheten and Det eviga leendet, Oscar Narrativa #1242, Mondadori, Milan, June 1992
• Everett M. Ellestad, "Lagerkvist and Cubism: A Study of Theory and Practice," Scandinavian Studies 45 (1/1973), S. 38–53.

Preceded by Verner von Heidenstam

Swedish Academy, Seat No.8 1940–1974

Succeeded by Östen Sjöstrand

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Literature Pär Lagerkvist (1951) · François Mauriac (1952) · Winston Churchill (1953) · Ernest Hemingway (1954) · Halldór Laxness (1955) · Juan Ramón Jiménez (1956) · Albert Camus (1957) · Boris Pasternak (1958) · Salvatore Quasimodo (1959) · Saint-John Perse (1960) · Ivo Andrić (1961) · John Steinbeck (1962) · Giorgos Seferis (1963) · Jean-Paul Sartre (declined award) (1964) · Michail Sholokhov (1965) · Shmuel Yosef Agnon / Nelly Sachs (1966) · Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967) · Yasunari Kawabata (1968) · Samuel Beckett (1969) · Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970) · Pablo Neruda (1971) · Heinrich Böll (1972) · Patrick White (1973) · Eyvind Johnson / Harry Martinson (1974) · Eugenio Montale (1975) Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

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