Lars Gustafsson

Gustafsson was born in Västerås, completed his secondary education at the Västerås Gymnasium and continued to Uppsala University, where he studied literature, aesthetics, sociology and philosophy. In 1960, he received a licentiate degree in philosophy. In 1978, he was awarded a PhD in theoretical philosophy with a dissertation on speech and literature. He later served for four years on the university's board of regents (1994–1998).^[1]

Already by 1960, Gustafsson was publishing novels and poetry regularly. In addition to his literary work, he was editor-in-chief of Bonniers Litterära Magasin (BLM), Sweden's leading literary journal, from 1962 to 1972. Under his editorship, BLM became a vital forum for the intersection of literary criticism, philosophy, and intellectual debate, bridging Swedish letters with international literary and academic currents. His tenure at the magazine was widely regarded as transformative, combining rigorous literary criticism with questioning and exploratory approaches to science and ideas. He soon established international contacts, notably with the German authors in Group 47. In 1972, through a DAAD fellowship he came to West Berlin, where he lived for two years. During this period, he also traveled extensively, among other places to Australia, Singapore, Japan, Israel, and the United States. Throughout his career, he attended and participated in many international academic and cultural events. John Updike described Gustafsson as "the enviably ideal conferee, a red‑bearded fish never out of water, loving books, ideas, and discourse equally, and everywhere adept."^[2]

Having been invited to visit the University of Texas at Austin by its Germanic Studies department in 1972 and again in 1974, and because Austin was his wife's hometown^[3] he moved there in 1983, where he served at first as adjunct professor in Germanic Studies, later as professor, then Distinguished Professor, in the Plan II Honors^[4] program, teaching philosophy and creative writing. He returned to Sweden in 2003 while continuing to hold a research professorship at the university; in 2006, he retired. He lived in Stockholm, spending summers in Västmanland. He died at the age of 79 on 3 April 2016.^[5]

Gustafsson was married three times: in 1961 to Madeleine Gustafsson (two children); in 1982 to Alexandra Chasnoff (two children); in 2005 to Agneta Blomqvist. In 1981 Gustafsson converted to Judaism.^[6]

In May 2009, Lars Gustafsson declared that he would vote for the Pirate Party in the upcoming elections for the European Parliament.^[7][8] However, in August 2010 he left the Pirate Party in protest of its cooperation with the WikiLeaks portal, which he accused of delivering death lists for the Taliban.

Gustafsson died on 3 April 2016. He is buried at Katarina kyrkogård in Stockholm, a cemetery notable as the resting place of many prominent Swedish cultural figures.^[9] His grave is situated next to that of his close friend, Nobel laureate poet Tomas Tranströmer.^[10] This part of the graveyard has therefore come to be known as the "Poets Corner."^[11]

Gustafsson published poetry, novels, short stories, critical essays, and editorials. He gained international recognition as a Swedish writer. By 1990, he had already received a dozen major literary awards including the Prix européen de l'essai Charles-Veillon [fr] in 1983, Una Vita per la Letteratura in 1989, as well as the Swedish Bellman Prize in 1990. He won a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for poetry in 1994. Among later awards were the Gerard-Bonnier-Preis ^[de] in 2006, the Goethe Medal in 2009, and the Thomas Mann Prize in 2015. He won the 2016 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

Gustafsson's novels and poetry have been translated into fifteen languages, the most often translated being the novels The Death of a Beekeeper (En biodlares död), Bernard Foy's Third Castling (Bernard Foys tredje rockad), and Afternoon of a Tiler (En kakelsättares eftermiddag). Harold Bloom includes Gustafsson in The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (1994, p. 557).^[12]

The Death of a Beekeeper, published in 1978, is Gustafsson's best-known novel.^[13] John Updike praised it as "a beautiful work, lyrical and bleak, resonant and terse."^[14] Ia Dübois has called it "one of his greatest works."^[15] Eva Stenskar has written that it "seems so effortless yet lyrical that only an artist at the height of his powers could've produced it."^[16] Its main theme is the agony of disease, as it follows Vesslan—a beekeeper who is dying of cancer—through entries he makes on notepads. The book's innovative structure allows Gustafsson to explore identity through its expression in a variety of forms: imagination, memory and even the mundane details of life. The book's central theme is revealed by the repeated motto of the protagonist, "We never give up. We begin anew." Gustafsson himself has described it as "A book about pain. It describes a journey into the centre where pain rules—and pain can tolerate no rivals."^[17] The novel was re-published in 1984 as the last in a five-novel sequence Sprickorna i muren (The Cracks in the Wall), the other volumes being Herr Gustafsson själv, Yllet, Familjefesten, and Sigismund.

Bernard Foy's Third Castling (1986) is nearly as well known as The Death of a Beekeeper. Its settings are Sweden; Paris; Worpswede, Germany; and Texas. The overt genre is the detective story, but there are three plots, and Bernard Foy is three separate characters: a Houston rabbi, an old Swedish poet, and a Swedish teenager. Each gradually turns into a character in the writing of the succeeding Foy. Gustafsson said that he was prompted by a “connection to Descartes' dream argument: You start with a story and it proves to be the story of a completely different person who is dreaming up the story which proves to be the story of a third person and it is all written by one or another person.”^[18]

In 1989, Gustafsson ventured into the field of science fiction and published Det sällsamma djuret från norr och andra science-fiction-berättelser. The book takes place 40,000 years into the future, when humans are extinct and the galaxy is populated by artificial intelligences. It is a philosophical exploration of life and existence and can be seen as an homage to Stanislav Lem.

Gustafsson's two major fields of interest interacted from the start of his career. In 2003, he wrote that "sometimes I cannot see any sharp boundary between [my literary work] and [my philosophical work]. I tend to regard myself as a philosopher who has turned literature into one of his tools."^[19] When asked where he finds his inspiration, Gustafsson answered "I listen. I listen and I look. Creativity knows no rules. You can get an idea for a novel from a little something someone says, or just a face you see. A rabbi once told me that when God spoke to Moses in that bush, it wasn't in a thundering voice but in a very weak voice. You have to listen carefully for that voice. You have to be very sharp."^[16]

In 2003, Yllet, the second novel in The Cracks in the Wall (Sprickorna i Muren) series was made into a feature film, directed by Jimmy Karlsson and starring Magnus Krepper.^[20]

While the problem of identity has been the defining theme of Gustafsson's writings, his social criticism often vexed the Swedish cultural elite. As a result, he is seen as a controversial writer in Sweden rather than as one embraced by the establishment.^[21]

In 2016, he received the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award.^[22]

• 1960 – Svenska Dagbladets litteraturpris [sv] for Bröderna
• 1962 – Aftonbladets litteraturpris [sv]
• 1979 – Litteraturfrämjandets stora romanpris
• 1983 – Carl Emil Englund Prize [sv] for Världens tystnad före Bach
• 1983 – Prix International Charles Veillon des Essais [fr]
• 1986 – Signe Ekblad-Eldh Award [sv]
• 1986 – Heinrich Steffens Prize (Germany)
• 1986 – Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France)
• 1987 – Övralidspriset [sv]
• 1989 – Una Vita per la Letteratura (Italy)
• 1990 – Samfundet De Nios Stora Pris [sv]
• 1990 – Sveriges Radios Lyrikpris [sv]
• 1990 – Bellman Prize
• 1993 – International Swede of the Year
• 1994 – Guggenheim Fellowship for poetry
• 1996 – Pilotpriset [sv]
• 1996 – Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italy)
• 2003 – Aniarapriset [sv]
• 2006 – Gerard Bonniers pris [sv]
• 2006 – Tomas Tranströmer Prize [sv]
• 2006 – Litteris et Artibus
• 2008 – John Landquist Prize [sv]
• 2009 – Selma Lagerlöf Prize
• 2009 – Goethe Medal (Germany)
• 2012 – Nils Ferlin Prize [sv]
• 2014 – Swedish Academy Nordic Prize
• 2015 – Thomas Mann Prize (Germany)
• 2016 – International Nonino Prize (Italy)
• 2016 – Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award
• Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

• International Dublin Literary Award
• Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award