NOBEL WORDS

Like many grand aspirations this one came while in the Peace Corps.  I went to Kenya right out of college and loved the place.  When the time came to retire I could think of nothing I would sooner do than return to Africa.  My wife, MaryAnn, and I found ourselves in a fabulously beautiful valley high in the mountains of Lesotho, a small kingdom completely surrounded by The Republic of South Africa.  Our home was about a mile from the nearest dirt road.  No electricity, no car, and no close neighbors allowed lots of time to read.  In this respect we were fortunate as MaryAnn’s job was to set up libraries in local schools.  Thanks to generous contributions by friends and family we had books in abundance.  On occasional trips to Bloemfontein, S.A., the closest large city, we stocked up at the bookstores.   On one of these expeditions I came across Nadine Gordimer who received the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.  Her unusual style captivated me and I realized I had no idea who other Nobel winners were and more importantly why they received the prize.  I went to the rather primitive reference section of MaryAnn’s Malealea Secondary School Library and found an out dated copy of The World Almanac.  It told me that I had never heard of the vast majority of the authors whom the Nobel Committee felt worthy of the world’s most prestigious literary prize.  This would not do.  I resolved to read at least two works by each of the 102 authors.  That was in 2005 and as with all big projects it got put off while we readapted to life in the United States.  I have regained my resolve and with this first installment in the journal I have begun.

First I needed to arm myself with a little background; ain’t the Internet wonderful?  Why would a chemist, engineer, and fellow who specialized in blowing things up sponsor a prize in literature?  Physical science, medicine, chemistry, and even economics (added later) made sense and fit with the personality type.  Considering the destructive power of the dynamite and gelignite he created the Peace Prize as a bit of pay back.  But why a prize in something so romantic and artsy as literature?  A bit of research showed that under the scientific surface was a roaring romantic.  When Alfred was a young man his father, Immanuel, moved the family to Russia where he started a munitions factory.  Alfred met and fell madly in love with Alexandra, a Russian beauty.  He proposed and she rejected him out of hand.  In 1876 after he held the patent for dynamite and had invented gelignite, a safer form of explosive, he took Bertha Kinsky as a secretary.  There was a brief but intense relationship until she left him to marry an old flame with an exalted name, Baron Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner.  Their feelings for one another were sufficiently deep for them to continue corresponding until Alfred Nobel died in 1896.  It is believed her prompting resulted in the Peace Prize.  In 1905 the same Bertha von Suttner received the Nobel Peace Prize “for sincere peace activities”.   And then there was Sofie Hess, a flower girl from Vienna.  This fling lasted 18 years.  The letters which he exchanged with his three loves were considered by his heirs as sufficiently torrid to be gathered and locked in the Nobel Institute in Stockholm until 1955 when they were released to authorized biographers.  In his letters to his last love she was addressed as “Madame Sofie Nobel”.   Although Alfred Nobel never married he knew romance.

Since their inception the Nobel Prizes have raised controversy.  This is natural as when there is a winner there is also a “loser” who will find reasons the decision should have been reversed.    The Prize in Literature is no exception.  First, there is the wording of the will; “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.”  The Swedish word ideaisk can mean either ideal or idealistic.  For the early awards the Swedish Academy adopted a strict interpretation of the term, leaning toward scholars, poets, and idealists at the expense of innovators like Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Emile Zola, Mark Twain, Henry James, and James Joyce.  In the later half of the Twentieth Century the word was interpreted more broadly. 

When appearing on a world stage inevitably there will be charges of political nepotism.  There can be no doubt that until very recently the Prize has been very Eurocentric.  Of the 206 Nobel Laureates 81 are European (39.3%), 13 are Scandinavian (6.3%) and beginning with Sinclair Lewis in 1930 eight are from the United States (3.8%).   These numbers are striking when compared with two Laureates in all of Asia (0.97%), three in Africa (1.4%) and four in South America (1.9%).  On several occasions members of the selection committee awarded themselves the prizes.  There can be no doubt during periods of conflict the prize is skewered.  During the Second World War it was not given at all.  During the First World War it was missed twice.  The political position of several authors has been sited as reason for them receiving or being denied the prize. 

The current manner of selection does much to screen out these complications.  Nominations are requested of members of the Swedish Academy, members of literary societies, literature academies, professors of language, former Nobel literature laureates, and the presidents of writer’s organizations.  From thousands of requests posted about 50 proposals are returned to the Swedish Academy by the deadline of February 1.  The Academy narrows the field to 20 by April and to five by June.  The works of these five are reviewed by members of the Academy who vote in October. 

I am sure every reader has an author who is a shoo in for the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Mine is Salman Rushdie, who I understand has been considered on several occasions.  Hopefully he will win before I finish this adventure in reading.

OK, the time has come.  I will play a CD of Jacques Offenbach on the stereo, put an espresso and some brie by the chair and start to read the works of Sully Prudhomme, French scientist turned poet who received the first Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901.

I started sharing these ramblings with a few friends and family.  It was suggested I offer them to a wider audience through a blog.  I plan to post one Nobel winner on the first Wednesday of each month for the next ten years.  I hope you enjoy this project as much as I have.  It is my sincere wish you are motivated to read those you have never encountered and reread your old friends. 

Do Good;

J. Phillip Eisemann