[Pyuvjzwf]

Let my shadow disappear into yours.
Let me lose myself
under the tall trees,
that themselves lose their crowns in the twilight,
surrendering themselves to the sky and the night.
-From Eveningland

Lagerkvist is my favorite Swedish writer (Above Strindberg, yes. I rate him no higher in "artistic merit" then any of hundreds of great writers but the feeling of something awesome in Lagerkvist corresponding to the aloneness of a man before the cosmos appeals to me, as he might of put it "a man with a desert soul pierced by the spheres of the stars".)

He was also a playwright (I think better known for this then his novels in Sweden), know best for political works such as The Hangman 1933 which keenly anticipated not so much the ideological atmosphere but the emotional vortex which led up to the Holocaust. This is not the stuff that I like best though. My favorites include the collection of short stories The Eternal Smile the play The Philosopher's Stone and his last novel written around his eightieth year, Herod and Mariamne.

Reading the Norwegian Newt Hamsun's (Known best for the Dostoevsky like short story Hunger {which is unlike his other work}) Growth of the Soil has led me to believe Lagerkvist greatly admired this writer and made homage to him in his latter novels.