Nobel Prize for Literature

The 2023 Nobel prize for literature went to a Norwegian playwright. It has been the fourth time that the coveted distinction favored Norway.

This specific prize has been plagued with smelly incidents that seriously tarnished its luster. In 2018, the Nobel Committee decided not to award the Nobel Prize for literature. Whatever the stated — and the many rumored — reasons for such a radical step, the decision was a sensible one, following the controversies that surrounded some awards in the recent past. Especially as far as the literature and the peace prizes are concerned, many voices have charged the Committee of a strong pro-Western bias, taking any opportunity to try and cast dark shadows on the adversaries of the Western order. On a few occasions, critics went as far as to label those awards as the NATO-Nobel prizes. Be that as it may, the Committee would be wise to make a pause, assess the situation, and ponder the ways and means to restore their dented credibility.

Literature is the intellectual field where Nobel prizes are most widely shared by the world nations, large and small. Nationals of 42 states and one stateless person have been honored. The category is the only one to acknowledge and recognize a stateless person. It is also one of the only three world most prestigious awards that have been spontaneously declined by the recipient. In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre from France did not accept the Nobel for literature. In 1973, Le Duc Tho from Viet Nam refused the Nobel for peace. In 2006 Grigori Perelman from Russia declined the Fields medal for mathematics. There have been other instances of renunciation to Nobel awards, but apparently not voluntary. The 1958 literature Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak from the Soviet Union also declined the award, but allegedly he did not do so of his own free will. The Germans Kuhn in 1938 and Butenandt in 1939 were forced by the Nazi regime to decline their Nobel prizes for chemistry.

The Nobel for literature has been given to authors better known for their professional achievements than for their literary artistic talent. Take Winston Churchill, who prolifically wrote about his own career activities. Better known as a hard-boiled conservative, imperialist, jingoistic British politician, he made himself quite a warmonger reputation in the South African Boer war. He eventually shone as the United Kingdom's leader against Nazi Germany during World War II. He was given the prize in 1953. Henri Bergson, the French philosopher and 1927 laureate, is still a thinker to be reckoned with, but few would consider him a creative, pure literary artist ... although Bertrand Russell opines that Bergson's philosophy is more literature rather than sound philosophy. Other controversial instances include the 2006 (Orhan Pamuk, of Turkey), 2012 (Mo Yan, of China), and 2015 (Svetlana Alexievich, of Ukraine) awards, some critics insisting that the choice has been motivated on the grounds of international diplomacy and political bias, rather than by the sheer literary value of the recipients' works.

The 2016 prize given to Bob Dylan, a US pop singer, pushed things a bit farther. The Nobel people surely felt like giving the finger to the eggheads that take literature too seriously. Why not — it is their privilege, they are also entitled to have a good time. But it makes things look messy. Songs, whether art songs (Lieder), love songs by troubadours and bards, or folk songs (work songs, lullabies, etc.) are normally classified under music, not literature. Surely, literature as we know it developed upon the scion of oral literature as sung by the ancient Greek aiodos and rhapsodos, and their native African, American and Asian colleagues. However, it is quite a stretch to include pop song lyrics among the likes of Gilgamesh, Iliad, Odyssey, Mahabharata and other classic epic poems.

One suggestion. Suppose you want to know more about Dylan's output. If your spontaneous first thought is to buy the paperback edition of his text, supposing it exists, then he is likely a literary artist. But if your first idea is to buy the disc or download his songs to your music device, then no, it is not literature that we are dealing with. The Nobel committee have just made a practical joke at our expenses.

With the benefit of hindsight, the work of several prize winners seems rather trivial and bound to fade into oblivion. The acid test is to browse the list and ask yourself how many names you recognize, let alone made a lasting impression on you. On the other hand, influential artists such as Beckett, Joyce, Proust, Céline, Orwell, Pessoa, Borges, Musil, Ngugi, Yasar Kemal, Mía Couto or Abdel Rahman Munif, not to mention other literary creators less known in western circles were not deemed "deserving" enough to be honored. Of course they worked in languages unfamiliar to most western readers in general, and to Nobel lobbyists in particular. But it is also likely that they offered little value as power-politics levers, Such a combination of oversight, misjudgment, public opinion manipulation, and sheer flattery, casts serious doubts on the works of the Nobel committee members.

Sources: Nobelprize