Absent Dylan accepts Nobel (with a nod to Shakespeare)

BOB Dylan expressed awe at receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature – and compared his creative approach to Shakespeare’s.

The singer, 75, was absent from the award ceremony in Stockholm, but in remarks read by the US ambassador, he alluded to the debate about whether the award should go to a songwriter.

Dylan said that when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, he was probably thinking about which actors to pick and where to find a skull rather than on creating great works of literature.

He added: ‘I’m sure the farthest thing from Shakespeare’s mind was, “Is this literature?”.’

The songwriter said he too focuses on ‘mundane matters’ such as recording in the right key, not on whether his songs are literature.

He thanked the Academy for considering the question and ‘providing such a wonderful answer’.

Also during Saturday’s ceremony, singer Patti Smith, who represented the music star, needed two attempts to perform Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall as she could not remember the lyrics.

Saying she was ‘nervous’, the 69-year-old singer-songwriter forgot the words to the second verse and third verse and had to pause to regain her composure.

After he was announced as the winner in October, Dylan took two weeks to publicly acknowledge the award – which comes with prize money of £734,000 – leading one Academy member to call him ‘impolite and arrogant’.