The novelist, poet and playwright Pär Fabian Lagerkvist, was born on May 23, 1891, in Växjö, Sweden. Lagerkvist He was one of the leading Swedish literary figures of the first half of the 20th century. and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1951.
The future writer was raised in a traditional religious way in a small town. The influence of his early years remained strong despite his introduction to modern scientific ideas and his eventual break with the religion of his ancestors. He became involved with socialism and soon began to support artistic and literary radicalism, as demonstrated in his manifesto titled Ordkonst och bildkonst (1913; “Literary and pictorial art”). On Teater (1918; “Theater”), the three one-act plays Den Svåre Stunden (“The difficult hour”) illustrate a similar modernist point of view.
The extreme pessimism that permeated the works of Lagerkvist during World War I, such as Ångest (1916; “Anguish”), slowly diminished, beginning with Det eviga leendet (1920; The eternal smile) and his autobiographical novel Gäst hos verkligheten (1925; Guest of Reality), until he finally declared his faith in man with the great prose monologue Det besegrade livet (1927; “The triumph over life”), which became a positive starting point for much of his later work.
When the new creeds of violence were proclaimed in the early 1930s, he quickly recognized their danger. His prose work Bö deln (1933; The Executioner), later dramatized, is a protest against eternal brutality in the world. The play Mannen utan själ (1936; The man without a soul) is also an expression of the indignation of Lagerkvist with fascism.
During the 1940s, he wrote his most unusual work, sometimes called “stage oratorio”, Låt människan cam (1949; Let the man live), which deals with the disposition of man throughout history to judge his companions and even condemn them to death.
It wasn’t until his novel appeared Dvärgen (1944; The Dwarf) who had unconditional success with Swedish critics; this became his first best-seller. With Barabbas (1950) achieved world recognition.
In 1951 Lagerkvist he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature; the Academy’s motivation in naming him the winner was “for the artistic vigor and the true independence of the mind with which he tries in his poetry to find the answers to the eternal questions that confront humanity“.
Lagerkvist He passed away on July 11, 1974 in Stockholm.