Might-Have-Beens: The North and the Nobel Prize, 1967-1987

Abstract

bel Prize symposium of twenty years ago,1 Richard B. Vowles reflected on twelve awards that had been made to authors from North since establishment of prize: Bj0rnstjerne Bj0rnson (1903), Selrna Lagerlof (1909), Verner von Heidenstam (1916), Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan (1917, a shared prize whose genesis Knut Ahnlund has analyzed in a brilliant essay),2 Knut Hamsun (1920), Sigrid Undset (1928), Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931, single instance of a posthumous award), Frans Eemil Sillanpaa (1939, with award's air of being a gesture of support to Finland, about to be attacked by Russia in Winter War), Johannes V. Jensen (1944, a belated sign of recognition to Danish author, born in 1873 and very near end of his career), Par Lagerkvist (1951), and Halldor Kiljan Laxness (1955). There is no need to mention vagaries, real and apparent, of these prize-givings once more; omission of Ibsen and Strindberg has been subjected to more than sufficient comment, while case of Georg Brandes often a bridesmaid with an immoral reputation but never a bride has been treated, at last, by Carl Fehrman;3 concluding his essay, Fehrman notes that, in Brandes's instance, die absence of both a regular professorship in Denmark and Nobel Prize constitutes highest distinction Brandes was too great a man for such honors, which had often gone to mediocrities. Viewed by our contemporary eyes, record of Scandinavian prizes is in truth not particularly impressive: we should agree that Hamsun certainly was deserving (if not necessarily for Marhens gr0de (1917; Eng. Growth of Soil), but in every other case, opinions might be mixed. Lagerlof, Undset, Pontoppidan, Jensen, and Laxness still have their special pleaders, and Americans in particular have been hypnotized by Lagerkvist's mysteries, or mystifications, although some perspicacious readers remain skeptical. The awards to Heidenstam and Karlfeldt smack a little of Swedish local patriotism, and latter gift as well might have been made by Swedish Academy to a degree for good and faithful service. All winners, to be sure, even unreadable Gjellerup, appeared to meet at second, idealistic part of Alfred Nobel's much-debated and murky requirement of finding author who has produced the most distinguished work of an ideal tendency.4 The national distribution of prizes during years from 1901 to 1967 merits some passing attention: Sweden got four, Norway three, Denmark two shared awards and one fall, Iceland one, and Finland one a probably unintentional symmetry which reflected literary centrality of three core Nordic countries and peripheralism of two new republics, Atlantic saga island and sometime czarist Grand Duchy. (A kind of addendum can be made to totting-up: Nelly Sachs, writing in German but resident in Sweden, shared 1966 prize with Samuel Agnon.) The absence of Scandinavian (or Nordic) names from Nobel table of honor during last two decades does elicit concerned thoughts. The sole Scandinavian appearance, exception proving non-Nordic rule, has been as everyone knows shared prize of 1974 to Sweden's Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson. The award had something of air of Jensen prize (of just thirty years before) about it, a farewell salute to two literary careers winding down: Johnson was born in 1900 and survived until 1976; Martinson was born in 1904, dying in 1978. The works of both surely have an ideal tendency: novels of Johnson pondering fate (not least political fate) of man, Martinson incorporating ambiguities of man's freedom in his feckless tramps and also penning excruciatingly germane epic Aniara (1956) about a spaceship that leaves a doomed earth, itself doomed to wander until its own death in space. The double award was thus as readily defensible as those made to such more obvious idealists as Bj0rnson and Lagerlof and Undset, although idealism of 1974 winners had a darker hue, with good cause: Johnson had seen depredations of totalitarianism close up; Martinson rightly and frighteningly predicted horrors to be wrought by technology. It is interesting to wonder too how much award to Johnson and Martinson was a bow in direction of democratization of Swedish life not least intellectual life in 1960s, when a proletarian background became, more than ever before, a literary merit. In his presentation speech Karl Ragnar Gierow made a great deal of extremely simple beginnings of both authors, reaching a rhetorical climax with a special claim: Both Eyvind Johnson and still more Harry Martinson have a lot in common with oldest and perhaps greatest of all proletarian writers . . . Aesop.