The ‘Noble’ Prize in Literature
Suneetha Balakrishnan
As you read this, Stockholm would have just concluded the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony that happens annually on the 10th of December. The various winners who have chosen to attend would have given their acceptance speeches and walked away with their Nobel Medal and Diplomas.
Every year around midyear, there starts a guessing game on the Nobel nominations. The bookies start taking bets, and there’s a frenzy of publicity, which rises to a peak in October, when a name is announced and a new literary star created. But, as one may guess, that’s not how the Nobel Prize in Literature is decided. There is a definite process that’s set in motion each year which culminates in the announcement from the Swedish Academy the next October. Yes, a whole year ahead.
Here’s what happens
Come September, and the Swedish Academy sends out nomination forms to 600-700 individuals and organizations qualified to nominate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. They are required to submit their choices by the following January 31, which list is screened by the Nobel Committee and 15-20 names are submitted to the Academy by April. This is again cut down to five final names by May. The work of the finalists is assessed by the members of the Academy from June to August. Come September again, the Academy members meet to discuss the finalists. And in October, the Nobel laureate is chosen and announced.
And you will never know you have been nominated, unless you win! The statutes of the Nobel Foundation restrict disclosure of information about the nominations, whether publicly or privately, for 50 years. The restriction concerns the nominees and nominators, as well as investigations and opinions related to the award of a prize. So as it is, we are still in the mid-sixties, concerning access to authentic information on Nobel nominations.
Impressive and grandiose?
Indeed, and that was what I thought till I read popular writer Irving Wallace’s book, The Writing of One Novel, where he reveals how his basic idea for a novel about the Nobel Prize evolved into The Prize, his 1962 best-seller novel. Wallace, who is known for his thorough pre-writing research had stumbled upon stunning snippets about the selection process for the Nobel Prize.
Wallace had been discharged from the U.S. Army and in 1946 was in Stockholm as a freelance writer; meeting people, gathering information, and keeping an eye out for new stories. He met one Dr. Sven Hedin listed as one of Sweden’s twenty greatest scientists in the last three hundred years, and a writer too, among many other things. Dr. Hedin turned out a loyal and open fan of Hitler and came across to Wallace as a self-important, publicity-crazy guy, who was ‘a cobweb of prejudices and misinformation and intolerance on many subjects from the sciences to the arts” as also ‘ill-informed”. And in the midst of their rendezvous, Dr. Hedin made a stunning revelation: he was a Nobel Prize judge, and on three committees.
Wallace found that Dr Hedin had been elected to the Royal Swedish Academy in 1913 and had been one of the eighteen judges to vote on the yearly Nobel Prize for literature, and had been on the committees for physics and chemistry before that. He told Wallace, how, in 1938, Pearl S Buck’s name had been opposed by ten of the judges, but had won the Nobel by his vociferous support. (He added that Pearl S Buck and her husband had been his publishers.)
Other things he revealed casually were why important writers didn’t win. Maxim Gorki: “He died too soon. His name came up several times, he would have got it eventually”. Somerset Maugham: “Too popular and undistinguished”. And to James Joyce’s name, he responded, “Who is he?”
Dr.Hedin’s revelations further documented in the book mentions how personal prejudices of a single judge, Dr. Carl David af Wirsen, worked against genuinely deserving writers and they never ever got the Nobel. Wirsen resented Tolstoy “for advocating anarchism and for denouncing all money prizes as harmful to artists.” Ibsen was rejected for “not having written anything worthy in eleven years”. Wirsen also led the decision against Strindberg, damning the latter’s works as ‘old-fashioned’ and reminding the others how Strindberg had once announced that he would accept only the anti-Nobel Prize. Wirsen’s colleagues also resented Tolstoy for being a Russian.
Then there was D’Annunzio who lost his Nobel because of his ‘flagrant immorality’; and Gide’s prize was delayed many years because of his homosexuality. Dr Hedin also mentioned how a judge, Hjalmar Gullberg, in 1945 would bypass Hesse, Romains, Croce and Sandburg, among others to confer the prize on Gabriela Mistral, because he loved her verse and translated it into Swedish to convince the judges single-handedly. Of course, Dr Hedin must have been on the committee when Tagore won it in 1913, that’s a grace mark in his favour.
And in non-Literature awards, anti-Semitism on part of a judge delayed the prize for Einstein. Einstien’s Theory of Relativity was reported by a judge, a German scientist Dr. Philipp Lenard, as ‘unproved and valueless’ and so Einstein would be conferred the Nobel for his work on the photoelectric effect only later, in 1926. I am sure there are more skeletons in the cupboard, but I stopped reading the gossip with Wallace’s book.
The Writing of One Novel was published in 1971, and is still in circulation. It exposes some of what may happen behind the closed doors of a prize which is looked upon by the world as judged by the Gods on Mount Olympus. And the Nobel Prize for Literature has not been without its controversies. But considering the huge task at hand, where the oeuvre of multiple writers in several languages is being evaluated, elimination could be one way to a decision, rather than selection.
And I would not envy a Nobel Prize judge.