From afar, Bob Dylan muses on honor and surprise of Nobel prize
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Nobel laureate Bob Dylan sent a message on Saturday thanking the Swedish Academy for awarding him the Nobel Prize for Literature, an honor the American singer and songwriter believed was about as likely as “standing on the moon.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize,” Dylan said in a speech read by Azita Raji, the US ambassador to Sweden, at the Nobel banquet.
He also expressed his huge surprise at receiving the award.
“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon,” he said.
The media-shy Dylan finally accepted the $870,000 prize after frustrating the awards academy with weeks of silence following the announcement of the award on October 13. But he chose not to attend the festivities.
His absence has been widely debated in Sweden in recent weeks, where the Nobel prizes are a huge source of pride. One member of the academy accused Dylan of being “arrogant” and “rude” as the singer remained silent after the award was announced.
In his place singer Patti Smith performed Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” at the award ceremony earlier in the day. A nervous Smith forgot the lyrics and had to start over but still received emphatic applause at the end.
While Dylan was absent, all other laureates, which include Japan’s Yoshinori Ohsumi for medicine and Britain’s Duncan Haldane for physics, accepted a medal and a diploma from the hand of the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf before attending the banquet at Stockholm’s City Hall for about 1,300 people.