Par Lagerkvist, translated by Alexandra Dick
****
The dwarf is the embodiment of human aggression. This is not hard to fathom: he cuts off the heads of little kittens, despises the weak and innocent, is proud to have strangled another dwarf, Jehoshaphat, making him the last dwarf at the court, and eventually poisons the Prince's best friend. Written in the form of diary entries, the story is entirely from the dwarf's point of view. He is thoroughly an unreliable and limited narrator: he can't understand the Princess Angelica's love for the son of the Prince's bitterest enemy, her mothers love for the Prince's best friend (not to mention why the Prince "puts up with" such a thorough rake), nor the court's Renaissance man's interest in learning and art for their intrinsic interest. He values war, revenge, and power intrinsically.
This would seem almost flat-footed (and sometimes is) except that the limited perspective forces the reader to consider how aggression affects relationships, identity, values, and meaning. Most of the time the dwarf embodies the Prince's aggression, but there are times when he acts upon the Queen and Angelica -- encouraging the Queen's self loathing and abasement upon the murder of her lover, and Angelica's suicide upon the murder of her lover. As the embodiment of the Prince's aggression, he is almost completely destructive to his best interests, destroying his friendships, love relationships to his wife and daughter, and his country. Eventually he is sent to the dungeon (repressed) where, in the last sentence of the book, he reflects "on the day when they will come and loosen my chains, because [the Prince] has sent for me again." So the dwarf will live on and be active again.
So what positive bit can we take away from this book? Maybe to be alert and aware to how our own aggression affects us? That some other course between total repression and total inhibition has to be found, what ever that might be? It seems to me it was no accident that The Dwarf was written during World War II.
