This is an essay about the swedish modernist writer and poet Gösta Oswald’s novel En privatmans vedermödor. The essay focuses on the question about how he uses the modernist language to portray the subject and main character Mr O. Oswald’s novel and his portrayal of the subject is compared and contrasted to earlier ideas about the subject in the modernist and pessimistic traditions presented by philosophers, e g Friedrich Nietzsche. Oswald’s literary style and ideas are also compared to his contemporary modernist writers, for instance Stig Dagerman. Through a psychoanalytical reading of Oswald’s novel using mostly Jacques Lacan’s theories about language the essay argues that it is a story about the nothingness of the subject. It’s also argued that the environment in the novel and Oswald’s use of mythological and classical motifs from Orpheus, Virgil and Dante enhances the themes of nothingness and the bleak outlook on life in the nihilistic post World War II cultural climate. / <p>Slutgiltigt godkännandedatum: 2023-05-30</p>