SOURCE: Scobbie, Irene. “The Origins and Development of Lagerkvist's Barabbas.” Scandinavian Studies 55, no. 1 (1983): 55-66.

In the following essay, Scobbie traces Lagerkvist's creative process through an examination of Barabbas.

During his lifetime Pär Lagerkvist was extremely reticent about his work and about how he experienced the creative process. One gains the impression that he was inspired in the old-fashioned sense of that word, wrote when in an almost visionary state and that he then divorced himself from what he had created. On his death in 1974 when it was revealed that he had kept diaries, correspondence, drafts, manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs of many of his works, both published and unpublished, it became possible to examine Lagerkvist's method of writing. What emerges is the image of a painstaking craftsman as well as an inspired author.

One of his most successful novels, Barabbas, provides an excellent example. If we trace this...