The Eternal Smile and Other Stories [Hardcover]

'Philosophical parables' would describe these three short pieces more accurately, or perhaps 'moral prose poems'. Pär Lagerkvist, Sweden's preeminent 20th C writer, wasn't interested in literary entertainment; there's nothing frivolous or gallant or merely diverting in any of his works. Lagerkvist is closer to Friedrich Nietzsche than to his fellow Swede Astrid Lindgren, you betcha! But I'm sure the film director Ingmar Bergmann knew his Lagerkvist well. His early films like The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring embody the affect of Lagerkvist's writings unmistakably.

The three 'stories' in this volume were not written at the same time or assembled as a collection by Lagerkvist himself. The Eternal Smile (Det Eviga Leendet) was published in 1920, Guest of Reality (Gäst Hos Verkligheten) in 1925, and The Executioner (Bödeln) in 1933. "Bödeln" has also been translated under the title The Hangman. I've read all three in Swedish, long ago, but I ordered this translation for my wife and re-read the pieces in English. The translations are reasonably good, especially of The Executioner.

Guest of Reality comes closest to being a regular "story" with a narrative, so I'd suggest reading it first. Anders, a boy in 'Guest of Reality' (and a young man in the sequel 'The Difficult Journey') thinks about life more than he needs to, and about death more than he wants to, to thrive in the warm, busy, faith-bounded environment of his family and his farm-village life in rural Sweden. Evolution makes such mistakes at times; the boy is over-endowed with sensitivity, to which no one in his milieu can respond, and thus he feels misplaced and becomes rancorous. Anders is a boy who knows, from his earliest moment of self-awareness, that he can never be as happy as he feels he should be, though he is - to the reader's relief - ecstatically happy at times. Yet even in moments of rapture, he remembers death; that 'memento mori' doesn't make him a proper Lutheran Christian, however, no, not by any means, since the God his family adores seems to him a God of Darkness. The narrative of 'Guest of Reality' centers around the death of Anders's grandmother, a experience which leaves the boy terrified of his own mortality.

The God of the Executioner is also a God of Darkness. The Executioner, himself eternal according to his own account, is the true Messiah that humanity deserves and requires, rather than the gentle self-deceiving rabbi who called himself the Prince of Peace, whom the Executioner crucified. The story of The Executioner comes in two disparate sections. The first section depicts a scene in a tavern in perhaps the Middle Ages, where a motley crew of drinkers discuss the magical potency of evil to cure evil. The second section is set in a beer hall in modern times -- implicitly in Weimar Germany -- where excruciating violence against strangers and "others" is justified by adherence to the Righteousness of the Movement. That Movement, there's no doubt, is the rising Fascism of Europe, which Lagerkvist abhorred and denounced. At the end of the scene, when the 'believers' approach the silent Executioner to demand his support their conduct, they don't get the 'seal of approval' they expect.

The Eternal Smile can hardly be regarded as a narrative at all. It portrays the monologues of a series of "a few of the dead sitting together somewhere in the darkness. They didn't know where -- perhaps nowhere. They were sitting and talking to pass eternity away." Some of these Dead tell of their successes in Life, some of their distresses, some of their simple mediocrities. Mostly, nobody listens. Later, if timeless eternity can be early or late, the Dead get caught up in listening to charismatic speakers, so that they throng together in their million millions to search for God, to ask the eternal question Why? The God whom they visit turns out to be a worn-out decrepit God who silently mourns the imperfection of His work. Eventually, as the thronging Dead disperse back to their isolation, their temporary leader, a white-haired old man, says "I acknowledge you, dear life, as the one thing conceivable among all that is inconceivable." That, I think, is the central moral and philosophical message of all of Lagerkvist's writings.

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