Artur Lundkvist

Artur Lundkvist (3 March 1906 in Perstorp Municipality, Skåne County – 11 December 1991 in Solna, Stockholm County) was a Swedish writer, poet and literary critic. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1968.

He wrote around 80 books, and his works have been translated into some 30 languages. Lundkvist published a number of poems, including Om natten (In The Night). He is also noted for having translated many works from Spanish and French into Swedish. Several authors he translated were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He married the poet Maria Wine in 1936.

Political activism

During the Cold War, Lundkvist was an adherent of the so called "third stance" (Swedish: tredje ståndpunkten) in Swedish public debate, which advocated a neutral stance in the conflict between the two superpowers. Despite this, he served on the board of the pro-communist Sweden-GDR Association. He was also a member of the Swedish Peace Committee, the Swedish section of the World Peace Council.^[1] In 1958 he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union.^[2]

Lundkvist was strongly prejudiced against Roman Catholicism and used his position to repeatedly block attempts to award the Nobel Prize for Literature to Graham Greene ^[3].

References

1. ^ Häggman, Bertil (1991) (in Swedish). Medlöparna. Stockholm: Contra. p. 74. ISBN 91-86092-22-7. 
2. ^ (in Russian) Yearbook of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Moscow: Sovetskaya Enciklopediya. 1959. 
3. ^ America Magazine review of Greene's letters

Cultural offices
Preceded by Gunnar Ekelöf	Swedish Academy, Seat No.18 1968-1991	Succeeded by Katarina Frostenson

Persondata
Name	Lundkvist, Artur
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	3 March 1906
Place of birth
Date of death	11 December 1991
Place of death