SOURCE: Algulin, Ingemar. “Pär Lagerkvist: Modernist of Timelessness.” In A History of Swedish Literature, pp. 183-91. Sweden: The Swedish Institute, 1989.

In the following essay, Algulin offers an overview on Lagerkvist's life and career.

With Pär Lagerkvist (1891-1974), awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1951, Swedish literature got its first modernist, i.e. the first writer to link up more directly with the international movements. He was, however, only to a limited extent a pioneer and leading figure of the new artistic ideas. He went his own way, and the great existential questions always interested him more than contemporary literary life. When he formulated his modernistic program in 1913 in Ordkonst och bildkonst (Word Art and Pictorial Art) he tied in with modern art, in particular with Cubism and Expressionism. However, typically enough, he also cited as models the very oldest forms of literature: Homer, the Greek tragedies...