Times are a-changin’ for Nobel honour
Outrage and joy alike meet this year’s choice for global bard
WHERE does literature live? That seems to be the question opened up by the Nobel committee’s decision to award its prize for literature to Bob Dylan.
The news was met with outrage by some, with delight by many, and with resignation by a few. Dylan’s name has often been mentioned as that of a future Nobel winner: the committee hasn’t done anything avant-garde. The only prickle of discomfort arises from the passing suspicion that this might be their idea of risqué. Had they awarded the prize to someone under the age of 60 they’d have been breaking with their own tradition far more (the youngest winner was Rudyard Kipling, who was given the Nobel in 1907, at the age of 42; the average age is 65).
No one applies for the Nobel. A writer’s eligibility is dependent on how she or he is seen. Though Dylan may always have thought of himself as a singer or a songwriter, he has been interpreted as a poet. Poets — let’s call them fellow poets — such as Paul Muldoon and Simon Armitage have written about him. The literary critic Christopher Ricks has spent a large proportion of his professorial life analysing Dylan’s lyrics, and comparing them favourably to those of Andrew Marvell and John Keats.
“Literature” is the world of letters; its etymology began with words, and only later came to be seen as related to printed matter. Dylan is without a doubt a giant of the English language. Compared with former Nobel winners, he has more range than Patrick Modiano, more political fervour than Alice Munro, and more global influence than, say, Sweden’s own Tomas Tranströmer.
Last year, the Nobel laureate was a journalist: the Belarussian, Svetlana Alexievich.
It was the first time a journalist had won the prize and the decision appeared to say something about the urgency of words.
“A time full of hope has been replaced by a time of fear,” she said in her acceptance lecture, which was given in Russian.
To address the barbarism of our times, she said, a “super-literature” was required. To write fiction in the MUSIC’S POET LAUREATE: Bob Dylan’s Nobel prize has sparked controversy over how to define ‘literature’ face of it would be sacrilege — instead, she said, “the witness must speak”.
Dylan, too, is a great capturer of the times, and if anything, the move to praise him in these terms seems to be a continuation of the gesture made by rewarding Alexievich — a gesture that says: look what words can do.
The remaining question is whether Dylan’s literary work is its own final draft.
He is the author of a wonderful, multi-volume autobiography, Chronicles, but the prize is for his poetic contribution to song.
So when thinking of his lyrics, one has to ask whether, without music, they are finished works. In that, he might be best compared to the playwrights in the Nobel’s history — Maeterlinck or Beckett or Pinter — whose plays were designed to be brought to life by human intervention.
That only confirms the Nobel committee’s message: that literature can burst beyond the boundaries of books; that literature is part of our lives.
That can only be good news. — FOREVER YOUNG: Bob Dylan in his early years was an anti-establishment figure
A timely reminder of a living, breathing literature that bursts beyond boundaries of books