{"id":12319,"date":"2016-08-10T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T16:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12319"},"modified":"2016-08-08T09:26:54","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T16:26:54","slug":"lit-matters-of-dwarfs-and-princes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/08\/10\/lit-matters-of-dwarfs-and-princes\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Matters<\/em>: Of Dwarfs and princes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHuman beings need flattery; otherwise they do not fulfill their purpose, not even in their own eyes,\u201d said Piccoline, a 26-inch-tall dwarf who is the strange and misanthropic anti-hero of P\u00e4r Lagerkvist\u2019s 1944 novel The Dwarf<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Lagerkvist\u2014who was a Swedish poet, novelist, and playwright in the first half of the 20th century\u2014won the Nobel Prize in 1951. Confronted by the horrors of two world wars and the rise of totalitarianism in many countries in Europe, Lagerkvist\u2019s response was to delve deeply into the nature of evil and the question of how it can reside side by side with good in human nature.<\/p>\n

Much of his work takes a dark view of the world. His first book of poems, Anguish<\/i>, contains lines like \u201cAnguish, anguish is my heritage\/the wound of my throat\/the cry of my heart in the world.\u201d But in The Dwarf<\/i>, Lagerkvist takes a more light-hearted approach.<\/p>\n

Piccoline\u2014sold into slavery by his mother when she found out he was a dwarf\u2014serves an Italian prince who rules a city-state in Renaissance Italy. From his vantage point as a social outcast who is also an \u201cinsider,\u201d Piccoline comments on the vain hopes, the absurd beliefs, and the foolish wars (which he happens to think are glorious) that the humans around him (he believes that dwarfs are another race from humans altogether) engage in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have noticed that sometimes I frighten people,\u201d he writes in his diary, noting that \u201cwhat they really fear is themselves. They think it is I who scare them, but it is the dwarf within them, the ape-faced manlike being who sticks up his head from the depths of their souls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written during the height of WWII, The Dwarf<\/i> is not just a political analogy of the horrors of war, but also an insightful look at human nature itself.<\/p>\n

Lagerkvist must-read:<\/b>
\nThe Dwarf<\/i>
\n(UVic library code: PT9875-L2D93)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHuman beings need flattery; otherwise they do not fulfill their purpose, not even in their own eyes,\u201d said Piccoline, a 26-inch-tall dwarf who is the strange and misanthropic anti-hero of P\u00e4r Lagerkvist\u2019s 1944 novel The Dwarf. Lagerkvist\u2014who was a Swedish poet, novelist, and playwright in the first half of the 20th century\u2014won the Nobel Prize […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-august-10-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12321,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12319\/revisions\/12321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}