In the following essay, Swanson traces Lagerkvist's literary development and delineates the defining characteristics of his work.

In the following essay, Brantly explores the religious influences on Lagerkvist's poetry.

In the following essay, Polet discusses how Lagerkvist's characters mirror his own search for eternal peace and the Kingdom of God, by exploring the connection between social order and freedom and the deepest questions of what he called “human destiny.”

In the following essay, Weiss traces Lagerkvist's use of mythology in his work.

In the following essay, Schwab asserts that in his novels Barabbas and Herod and Mariamne Lagerkvist “depicts mankind with reference to one of the most significant events in religious history and reveals the same turmoil, confusion, and incompleteness that has always defined man.”

In the following essay, Nilsson finds historical, biographical, and religious similarities between Czeslaw Milosz's poem “Father in the Library” and Lagerkvist's untitled poem from his collection The Road of the Happy Man.

In the following essay, Sondrup considers the influence of Lagerkvist on the poetry of Artur Lundkvist.

In the following essay, Linnér notes the religious language and imagery in Lagerkvist's work.

In the following essay, Rovinsky determines Henrik Ibsen's influence on Lagerkvist.

In the following essay, Bloch investigates the role of the mythical female in Lagerkvist's fictional works.

"I constantly conduct a dialogue with myself," Pär Lagerkvist once said in a talk on his works, "one book answers the other". Despite the constant varying of the answers, the dialogue is always concerned with the same thing, a search for the meaning of existence. Lagerkvist has experienced more intensely than most the central dilemma for twentieth-century man within the Christian sphere of influence: where can we find a foothold when we no longer believe in God?

In the following essay, Bloch finds similarities between the main influences on and themes found in the work of Lagerkvist, Thomas Mann, Nikos Kazantsakis, and Jacques Roumain.

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

Lagerkvist has apparently called himself a "religious sceptic." His novels have a curious unfinality about them, for their characters never come to their proper reward, never gain the solace suffering is supposed to bring. In manifestly Christian fiction, the main characters seem completed by their faith, whether that faith has temporal reward or not. In explicit existential fiction, generally the protagonist achieves some sort of pride, even happiness, in his incompleteness. But for the relig...

[The story Det eviga leendet is Lagerkvist's] first successful attempt at utilizing the architectonic principles of cubism. Instead of the parallel, static reflections found in his earlier works, we now find a "simultaneous dichotomy" of aspect, a process of "cubist dialectics" which is necessary for the total synthesis of perspective…. [Cubist perspective, according to Braque,] purposely perpetrates an ambiguity through the juxtaposition of two opposing aspects. (p...

Throughout most of his creative life Pär Lagerkvist has given artistic form to an inner conflict, a struggle between on the one hand a pessimistic view of life and man, and on the other a belief in man's ability to overcome the restrictions imposed upon him by life and gradually evolve into a truly spiritual being. (p. 128) In many respects Mariamne (1967) reads like the antithesis of the Pilgrim trilogy, Ahasverus död (1960), Pilgrim på havet (1962) and Det heliga landet (1964)&...

One of Lagerkvist's earlier books was called Angest, (Anguish) and it might be thought from this that he was influenced by Kierkegaard. On the contrary, his dominant influence was Left Socialism…. Anguish was published in 1916 and its emotional and moral subject is the profound anguish that overwhelmed the revolutionary Socialist movement with the betrayal of the Second International and the participation of the Socialist Partys in the capitalist war they had unanimously vowed to prevent. It w...

Although Pär Lagerkvist will no doubt remain best-known for his fable-like fictions, his poetry is an important part of his output and it is a pity so little has been done to make it accessible to English readers. To that extent we should welcome the British edition of Aftonland [Evening Land]…. As the title suggests, the awareness of approaching age is present (Lagerkvist was sixty-two) but this should not lead us to expect any simple form of resignation, for his exploration of the enigmas of...