The politics of the Nobel Prize
Many towering writers, like Ibsen, Chekhov and Tolstoy, never made the cut
The Golden Globes awards from Hollywood launched the razzamatazz season in muted style by videolink. Next up will be the Oscar ceremony that will no doubt have the usual recriminations about who got left out and why. The Oscars are a bit like the Nobel Prize for literature; there’s no definitive method for assessing the winners. Scientific work is easier to judge. And with literature, you’ve a better chance of winning if you write stories, novels and poetry, preferably all combined. Not many of the 117 Nobel literature prizewinners have got it for drama alone.
Tolstoy, Ibsen and Bob Dylan were all nominated for the literature award: but only Dylan
‘I got to wondering exactly how my songs are related to literature’
actually got the Prize. Chekhov, whose plays including The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya, along with his short stories were always popular, was never even nominated for the Prize. Tolstoy (inset, right) was nominated four times, Ibsen three times, but possibly for political or social reasons, they never made the cut.
Even Dylan himself wasn’t sure why he got the Prize. In his Nobel lecture, he said: ‘I got to wondering exactly how my songs are related to literature.’ He traced his songs back to Buddy Holly and the influence of books: Moby Dick,
All Quiet on the Western Front and Homer’s Odyssey among others. And he finished by saying: ‘Songs are unlike literature. Lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page.’ Which is what a lot of writers said about the prize going to a songwriter. The citation was, ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’.
Nobel, in his will, stated that the literature prize should go each year to ‘the person who produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction’–words that are wide open to interpretation.
In the early years of the award, the Swedish Academy obviously didn’t consider Ibsen (inset, left) a suitable candidate, especially after the critical comments about his work. One English critic compared Ghosts to ‘a dirty act done in public…an open drain.’ His Doll’s House has a woman walking out on her husband and children, and the just-married Hedda Gabler shoots herself after her would-be lover has shot himself in the stomach, castrating himself in the process.
The English censor declared that Ibsen’s females were ‘all dissatisfied women in a chronic state of rebellion against all the duties and obligations of mothers and wives. And the men are all rascals or imbeciles.’ Not much idealistic direction there. Much more to the liking of the Swedish Academy was the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck, who won the award ‘in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, especially his dramatic works…distinguished by a poetic fancy … sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale … which in a mysterious way… appeal to the readers’ own feelings.’ And Maeterlinck, an enthusiastic beekeeper even wrote a little masterpiece on the Life of the Bee.
But even the author’s poetic fancy and mysterious ways hit problems when his play Monna Vanna was proposed for London. The censor declared the play was immoral and ‘not proper for the stage,’ despite a public protest signed by a group of distinguished English writers, praising its ‘exquisite sense of feminine purity’.
The problem was a scene in which Monna goes to the tent of a commander of the invading army, naked under her cloak. Her noble intention is to save the inhabitants of the town, but she actually leaves the camp unsullied and unharmed. Maeterlinck himself had previously replied to a similar criticism in Germany by reflecting that, ‘all men and women might be nude under our last garment, without the modesty of anyone being alarmed’.
Sam Goldwyn risked signing up Maeterlink in the hope of getting classy Nobel writing for an investment of 5,000 dollars. The poetic symbolist was lost in Hollywood, but Goldwyn told him: ‘Don’t worry Maurice. You’ll make good yet.’