Mystery surrounds Nobel prize handover as ‘intimate’ Dylan gigs in Sweden

STOCKHOLM: Details of Bob Dylan’s receipt of his Nobel literature prize were being kept under close wraps on Saturday leaving those wanting to know more about it blowin’ in the wind.

It’s not that the times kept a-changin’, it was that no one would say what was happening.

The Swedish Academy, which hands out the Nobels, said on Wednesday Dylan will receive his diploma and medal while in Stockholm, but in a “small and intimate setting” according to Dylan’s wishes.

The prize-givers also said they planned to show up at one of Dylan’s performances — on Saturday and Sunday in Stockholm and on April 9 in Lund.

But that was it. A blackout. Probably until someone says it’s all over now.

The decision to give the bard the literature prize caused controversy that only deepened when Dylan was silent about the award for weeks afterwards. He then said he would be a no-show at the annual banquet in December.

“Getting ready for Dylan’s concerts in Stockholm this weekend,” Academy Secretary Sara Danius said in a blog post on Friday.

Danius said earlier this week that the notoriously media-shy Dylan would not hold the traditional Nobel lecture this weekend, but that a taped version would probably be sent at a later point.

In order to receive 8 million Swedish crown ($903,000) prize, Dylan needs to give a lecture within six months from December 10. It does not necessarily need not be delivered in Stockholm.

When British novelist Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel literature prize in 2007, she composed a lecture and sent it to her Swedish publisher, who read it at a ceremony in the Swedish capital.

The decision to award the prize to Dylan, whom the Academy said had “created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” was seen by some as slap in the face by some mainstream writers of poetry and prose. But others saw it as an affirmation of a generation of cerebral lyrics that often stand alone without the music.