An intellectual’s life strategies in the time of war and under dictatorship in the novels by Eyvind Johnson

Abstract

The article examines conceptual and artistic issues of the most seminal novels written by Eyvind Johnson (1900–1976), one of the most renowned Swedish writers of the 20th century. Johnson, born in the north of Sweden, was of low origin, and he started his career as an amateur proletarian writer, a typical representative of the Swedish “proletarian literature,” a movement that was largely instrumental in shaping the form and substance of prose fiction in Sweden in the first half of the last century. His obligatory education ended at the age of fourteen, but his insatiable yearning for self-education, books, foreign languages, as well as his broad and hard-earned experience, gradually made him one of the most erudite and intellectually intricate Swedish novelists of the last century. From the 1940s on, the writer had gone far beyond the borders of “proletarian literature” and created works that won him international acclaim and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1974. Yet, the works of this humanitarian writer, who kept condemning totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, are practically unknown in our country, in translations of his novels and research papers. This article analyzes the cycles on Ulof and Krilon, which are devoted to Sweden, and written after the Second World War: the novels The Surge of the Shores, Dreams of Roses and Fire, and The Days of His Grace are based on subjects of the classical literature and the events of the European history. The object of our study is protagonists in the above-mentioned works. The subject of the research is the evolution of the types and images of humanitarian intellectuals in their clashes with authoritarian power, dictatorship and war. The article focuses on characters who, when placed in such condition, have to make up their minds and choose a life strategy which would conform with Johnson’s ethical and philosophical position, and on the evolution of describing circumstances and results of these choices throughout the whole life of the writer.