Pär Fabian Lagerkvist was a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 author who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 in 1951.

Lagerkvist wrote poems

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, plays

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

, novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s, stories, and essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

s 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

Barabbas

Barabbas or Jesus Barabbas is a figure in the Christian narrative of the Passion of Jesus, in which he is the insurrectionary whom Pontius Pilate freed at the Passover feast in Jerusalem.The penalty for Barabbas' crime was death by crucifixion, but according to the four canonical gospels and the...

, and the wandering Jew

Wandering Jew

The Wandering Jew is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming...

 Ahasuerus. As a moralist, he used religious motifs and figures from the Christian

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 tradition without following the doctrines of the church

Christian Church

The Christian Church is the assembly or association of followers of Jesus Christ. The Greek term ἐκκλησία that in its appearances in the New Testament is usually translated as "church" basically means "assembly"...

.

Biography and works

Lagerkvist was born in Växjö

Växjö

Växjö is a city and the seat of Växjö Municipality, Kronoberg County, Sweden with 64 200 inhabitants in 2010. It is the administrative, cultural and industrial centre of Kronoberg County. Furthermore it is the episcopal see of the Diocese of Växjö. It has a population of about 64 200, out of a...

 (Småland

Småland

' is a historical province in southern Sweden.Småland borders Blekinge, Scania or Skåne, Halland, Västergötland, Östergötland and the island Öland in the Baltic Sea. The name Småland literally means Small Lands. . The latinized form Smolandia has been used in other languages...

).

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

Violence

Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...

 and disillusioned collection of poems. His anguish was derived from his fear of death, the World War

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, 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, classical 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

John the Evangelist

Saint John the Evangelist is the conventional name for the author of the Gospel of John...

 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

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 Bödeln ("The Hangman", 1933), later adapted for the stage, (The Hangman, 1933; play, 1934) shows his growing concern with the totalitarianism

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...

 and brutality that began to sweep across Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 in the years prior to World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Nazism

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 was one of the main butts of the work and Der Stürmer

Der Stürmer

Der Stürmer was a weekly tabloid-format Nazi newspaper published by Julius Streicher from 1923 to the end of World War II in 1945, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of the Nazi propaganda machinery and was vehemently anti-Semitic...

responded with a very dismissive review. Criticism against Fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 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

Barabbas (novel)

Barabbas is a 1950 novel by Pär Lagerkvist. It tells a version of the life of Barabbas, the man whom the Bible relates was released instead of Jesus.-Plot:...

 (1950), which was immediately hailed as a masterpiece (by, among others, fellow Nobel laureate André Gide

André Gide

André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...

) is probably Lagerkvist's most famous work. The novel is based on a Biblical story. Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 of Nazareth

Nazareth

Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...

 was sentenced to die by the Roman authorities immediately before the Jewish Passover

Passover

Passover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt...

, when it was customary for the Romans to release someone convicted of a capital offense. When the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate

Pontius Pilate

Pontius Pilatus , known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate , was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus...

 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

Anthony Quinn

Antonio Rodolfo Quinn-Oaxaca , more commonly known as Anthony Quinn, was a Mexican American actor, as well as a painter and writer...

 playing the title role.

Lagerkvist died in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

.

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
  Barabbas (novel)
  Barabbas is a 1950 novel by Pär Lagerkvist. It tells a version of the life of Barabbas, the man whom the Bible relates was released instead of Jesus.-Plot:...
  
  (1950, filmed in 1953, 1962)
• Aftonland ("Evening Land", 1953)
• Sibyllan ("The Sibyl", 1956)
• Ahasverus död ("The Death of Ahasuerus", 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.
• "The Dwarf" [Dvärgen], Hill and Wang, 1958, ISBN 0374521352.
• "Barrabas", Vintage, 1989, ISBN 067972544X.
• "The Sibyl" [Sibyllan], Vintage, 1963, ISBN 0394702409.