Nobel Laureate in Literature 1933

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (stateless domicile in France) 1870 (in Voronezh, Russia) to 1953

Here are the opening paragraphs of Bunin’s novel The Life of Arseniev: Youth: Such things and deeds as are not written down are covered in darkness and given over to the sepulcher of oblivion, while those that are written down are like unto animate ones . . .

I was born a half-century ago in Central Russia, in the country, on my father’s estate.

We lack a sense of our beginning and end. And it is a great pity that I was told exactly when I was born. Had I not been told, I would have no idea of my age—the more so as I do not as yet at all feel its burden—and would therefore be spared the absurd thought that I must supposedly die in ten or in twenty years’ time. And had I been born and lived on a desert island, I would not have suspected even the existence of death. “What luck that would have been!” I am tempted to add. Yet who knows? Perhaps, a great misfortune. Besides, is it really true that I would not have suspected it? Are we not born with the sense of death? And if not, if I had not suspected it, would I be so fond of life as I am, and as I used to be?

Of the Arseniev stock and its origin, I really know nothing. What, after all, do we know? I only know that in the Armorial our family is included among those “whose origins are lost in the mists of time.” I know that our family is “noble though impoverished,” and that all my life I have sensed that nobility, feeling proud and glad that I am not one of those who have neither kith nor kin. On the day dedicated to the Holy Spirit, the church invests us at mass to “do homage to the memory of all who died since time began.” It offers up on that day a beautiful prayer full of deep meaning: “O Lord, let all Thy servants rest within Thy courts and in Abraham’s bosom—from Adam even to those among our fathers and brethren, friends and kinsmen, who have served Thee this day in purity!”

Is it accidental that service is mentioned here? Is it not a joy to feel one’s connection, one’s communion, with “our fathers and brethren, friends and kinsmen” who have sometime done that service? Our remotest ancestors, too, believed in the doctrine of the “pure, continual Path of the father of all that is,” handed on from mortal parents to mortal offspring through immortal “continual” life, they believed that it was commanded by the will of Agni to watch over the purity, the continuity of blood and stock, in order to prevent the desecration of that Path, lest it should be interrupted; they believed that every birth must further purify the blood of those born, and enhance the closeness of their kinship with Him Who is the sole father of all that is.

Among my ancestors there were probably many bad men too. And yet from generation to generation my ancestors enjoined one another to remember and watch over their blood. And how shall I express the emotions with which I sometimes look at our family crest? A knight’s armor, coat of mail, and helmet with ostrich feathers; and beneath, a shield; and on its azure field, in the middle—a ring, emblem of loyalty and eternity, toward which, from above and below, point three rapiers with cross-shaped hilts.
………………………..
Translated by Gleb Struve and Hamish Miles

Nobel Laureate in Literature 1932

John Galsworthy (United Kingdom, 1867-1933)

Galsworthy won the Nobel prize for his distinguished art of narration in The Forsyte Saga. Here are the opening paragraphs of the series, written in three novels: Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forstyes have seen that charming and instructive sight—an upper middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family—no brach of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy—evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unite of society, so clear a reproduction of society in minature. He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of nations. He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its planting—a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and persistent—one day will see it flourishing with bland, full foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its efflorescence.

Nobel Laureate in Literature 1931

Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Sweden, 1864-1931)

Here are remarks by Charles Wharton Stork on Karlfeldt’s poetry from the forward to Arcadia Borealis: Selected Poems:

The most striking characteristic of this poet’s production as a whole is its unity. At eighteen Karlfeldt was contributing verse to newspapers and magazines, at sixty-five he brought out the last six volumes published in his lifetime; and throughout this period the subject matter, even to a considerable degree the style, were the same. He always wrote in rhyme and in fairly regular meters; he always wrote of the landscape, the animals, the plants, the people of his native Dalecarlia. In the interval he had risen from a poor country boy of the wilds to an accomplished scholar, head of the Swedish Literary Academy. Surely few writers, least of all in modern times, can show similar tenacity of purpose.

And yet, I think, few lovers of poetry will be inclined to complain of monotony in Karlfeldt. Is it true that he has written no long poems and but few narratives in verse, and that, in contrast with Froding, he has created no individual characters. He does not as a rule tell stories or paint portraits; he interprets a way of life, but this he does with a richness of color and an intimacy of feeling that are well-nigh inexhaustible in charm….

Is it, it then, wholly fanciful to speak of Dalecarlia as a northern Arcadia? Karlfeldt himself did not think so. He felt more keenly the idyllic character of his homeland, the nature piety of its people. He delighted in the legended long-ago. And to him the past was not a vague memory, it was a living force. Fridolin, the peasant of today, who can talk in Latin to men of degree, is full of the berry’s juice and the wheat field’s dower. When he dances at the harvest home, he is at one with

… his sire and his grandsire who danced there long
Before to that old melody.

For he is a man of that stalwart mold. When he sings of

The surge of the storm, the cataract’s fall,
Or a sigh of the woodland vast,

he is impelled to add,

You sang in silence through ages past
That song by your cart and your plough.

The tradition has not broke off, it is continuous. Karlfeldt thus realized the dream of Keats by

Leaving great verse until a little . . .
Right in the simple worship of a day.

In him, as in Theocritus and the Vergil of the eclogues, the classicist and the pastoral warbler of native woodnotes wild were again united.

Nobel Laureate in Literature 1930

Sinclair Lewis (USA, 1885-1951)

Lewis was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was awarded the prize for his “vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create with wit and humour, new types of characters.” Here are a few paragraphs from his novel Babbitt, published in 1922:

His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.

His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon the khakicolored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appeared this sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectable grass-plots, a cement driveway, and a corrugated iron garage. Yet Babbitt was again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romantic than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.

For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others saw but Georgie Babbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in the darkness beyond mysterious groves. When at last he could slip away from the crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends, sought to follow, but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they crouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait for him, that they would sail—

Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.

Babbitt moaned, turned over, struggled back toward his dream. He could see only her face now, beyond misty waters. The furnace-man slammed the basement door. A dog barked in the next yard. As Babbitt sank blissfully into a dim warm tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and the rolled-up Advocate thumped the front door. Babbitt roused, his stomach constricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiar and irritating rattle of some one cranking a Ford: snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist, Babbitt cranked with the unseen driver, with him waited through taut hours for the roar of the starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again began the infernal patient snap-ah-ah—a round, flat sound, a shivering cold-morning sound, a sound infuriating and inescapable. Not till the rising voice of the motor told him that the Ford was moving was he released from the panting tension. He glanced once at his favorite tree, elm twigs against the gold patina of sky, and fumbled for sleep as for a drug. He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day.

He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seventwenty.

Nobel Laureate in Literature 1929

Thomas Mann (German, 1875-1955)

Mann won the Nobel prize for his novel Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family, published in 1900 when Mann was 25 years old. It is the story of a wealthy, bourgeois family in northern Germany centered around middle-class life, the births and christenings, marriages, divorces, deaths, successes and failures in the family. These occurrences vary little from one generation to the next. As the Buddenbrooks family gives in to the seductions of modern life, the downfall of the family occurs quickly. The exploration of decadence in the novel is attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer who knew Mann during his youth. The three generations of the family depicted in the book experience a continuous economical, physical and spiritual decline, with true happiness becoming increasingly unavailable to all the members of the family. The characters who sacrifice their lives for the sake of the family firm meet unfortunate ends, just as those who do not.

Here are some clips from the 2008 film:

Nobel Laureate in Literature 1928

Sigrid Undset (Norway, 1882-1949)

Instead of posting a portion of one of Undset’s novels, I’m posting part of a letter she wrote to the novelist Willa Cather. The two writers met and corresponded with each other in the 1940s. I’ve also included a paraphrased portion of a letter from Cather to Undset. These letters can be found in Willa Cather and Sigrid Undset: The Correspondence in Oslo by Sherrill Harbison. 

Undset’s letter of 17 March 1946: Very often I think of you and wonder, how are you now? Meeting you was one of the happiest things that happened to me in America, and I cherish the memory of those evenings with you and Miss Lewis so much. When my books returned from that church basement out in the country, where kind friends had hidden my library, and I unpacked your books, it was quite a different thing to handle them (I have not been able to put them up yet, as the German females who lived here during the occupation had used my bookshelves for firewood, and it takes time and a lot of money to get new ones, material being wanted in the first place to rebuild our burn-out towns and places), thinking of you as a friend I know now. Your picture, which Alfred Knopf sent me from you years ago I also unearthed from the attic, where my “roomers” had put away pele-mele all the things they did not want, which was not much. It is a little broken and soiled, but all the more dear to me.

Willa Cather (1873-1947)

Cather’s letter of May 18, 1941: Thanks Undset for the deep pleasure of the lilies of the valley she had sent. How interesting that the Norwegian name for the flower is so like the English, whereas the German name bears little resemblance to the flower itself. Undset’s letter of the previous day had made her very happy. How wonderful that they, who had known one another so long, finally knew one another in person, and discovered how many loves, beliefs, and pleasures they shared.

Cather’s own desire to live had dropped considerably since Undset’s visit; at Hitler’s agreement with the Vichy government she had completely lost heart. Though no one knew the agreement’s terms, it made everything taste bitter; she wanted to escape from herself, because any such agreement and terms must be evil. She was sick at heart at this German victory.

She hoped Undset would come for another quiet evening with her and Miss Lewis, as it was good to escape crowds and arguments; she was very glad that Undset found it restful and sympathetic there. Signed, she explains, with her [wobbly] left hand: With all the old admiration, and with my love which is both old and new, yours, . . .

Duino Elegies: The Third Elegy

To sing about someone you love is one thing; but, oh,
the blood’s hidden guilty river-god is something else.
Known to her only from a distance, what can her lover,
even, say about the lord of passion, who often out of
loneliness, before she could comfort him, often as if
she didn’t exist, raised his godhead, oh, who knows from
what depths, came streaming, and incited the night to riot.
Oh that Neptune of the blood and his terrible trident!
Oh the dark wind of his chest from that twisted conch!
Listen, how the night carves itself out and grows hollow.
You stars, doesn’t a lover’s longing for his loved one’s
face come from you? Doesn’t his most intimate insight
into her purest face come from your own purest constellation?

No, it really wasn’t you, nor was it his mother
who arched his brow with so much expectation.
Girl who’s holding him now, not for yours,
not for your lips did his thicken with passion.
You who wander like the morning breeze, do you really
think your gentle coming could convulse him so?
True, you scared his heart; but more ancient terrors
rushed into him with your shocking touch. Call him . . .
you can’t quite call him back from that dark circle.
Yes, he tries, he does escape; relieved, he starts
to feel at home in your comfortable heart and takes
and begins himself. But did he ever begin himself?
Mother, you made him small, you started him once;
he was new to you; over those new eyes you arched
the friendly world and shut the strange one out.
Oh, where are the years when you simply stood between
him and the surging chaos with your slender body?
You hid so much from him then; at night you made
the threatening room harmless; your heart’s sanctuary
mingling a more human space with his own night-space.
No, you didn’t put the night-light in that darkness
but in your own nearer presence, and it glowed, friendly.
There wasn’t a creak you couldn’t explain with a smile,
as if you’d always known just when the floor would do that . . .
And he listened and was comforted. Coming to him quietly,
you could do so much; his tall, cloaked destiny stepped
behind the wardrobe, and his restless future that got out
of hand so easily molded itself to the curtains’ folds.

And lying there, relieved, mingling the sweetness
of your slight body with the first taste
of approaching sleep under his heavy lids,
he seemed protected . . . But inside: who could
stop or turn the floods of Origin in him?
Oh, there was no caution in that sleeper; sleeping,
but feverish and dreaming; what he dared!
So young and shy, how he entangled himself
in the spreading roots of events inside him,
twisted patterns, strangling tendrils, shapes
of preying animals. How he surrendered. Loved.
Loved his interior world, the jungle in him, that
primal inner forest where his pale green heart stood
among the fallen and mute ruins. Loved. Then left it,
going out from his own roots into violent Beginning
where his own tiny birth was already outlived. Loving,
he stepped down into the older blood, into the canyons
where terror lurked, still gorged with fathers.
And every horror knew him, winked, and seemed to understand.
Yes, the hideous smiled at him . . . O mother,
you hardly even smiled at him so tenderly.
How could he help but love whatever smiled at hm?
He’d loved it before you; even while you carried him, it was
already dissolved in the water that makes the seed light.

Look, we don’t love like flowers
with only one season behind us; when we love,
a sap older than memory rises in our arms. O girl,
it’s like this: inside us we haven’t loved just someone
in the future, but a fermenting tribe; not just one
child, but fathers, cradled inside us like ruins
of mountains, the dry riverbed
of former mothers, yes, and all that
soundless landscape under its clouded
or clear destiny–girl, all this came before you.

And you yourself, how could you know–you’ve stirred
up prehistoric time in your lover. What feelings
welled up from beings no longer here.
What women hated you. What sinister men
you incited in his young veins. Dead children
reached for you . . . Gently, oh, gently
do a good day’s work for him each day, with love,
lead him toward the garden, give him those compensating nights . . .
Hold him back . . .

Die dritte Elegie

Eines ist, die Geliebte zu singen. Ein andcres, wehe,
jenen verborgenen schuldigen Fluß-Gott des Bluts.
Den sie von weitem erkennt, ihren Jüngling, was weiß er
selbst von dem Herren der Lust, der aus dem Einsamen oft,
ehe das Mädchen noch linderte, oft auch als wäre sie nicht,
ach, von welchem Unkenntlichen triefend, das Gotthaupt
aufhob, aufrufend die Nacht zu unendlichem Aufruhr.
O des Blutes Neptun, o sein furchtbarer Dreizack.
O der dunkele Wind seiner Brust aus gewundener Muschel.
Horch, wie die Nacht sich muldet und höhlt. Ihr Sterne,
stammt nicht von euch des Liebenden Lust zu dem Antlitz
seiner Geliebten? Hat er die innige Einsicht
in ihr reines Gesicht nicht aus dem reinen Gestirn?

Du nicht hast ihm, wehe, nicht seine Mutter
hat ihm die Bogen der Braun so zur Erwartung gespannt.
Nicht an dir, ihn fühlendes Mädchen, an dir nicht
bog seine Lippe sich zum fruchtbarern Ausdruck.
Meinst du wirklich, ihn hätte dein leichter Auftritt
also erschüttert, du, die wandelt wie Frühwind?
Zwar du erschrakst ihm das Herz; doch ältere Schrecken
stürzten in ihn bei dem berührenden Anstoß.
Ruf ihn … du rufst ihn nicht ganz aus dunkelem Umgang.

Freilich, er will, er entspringt; erleichtert gewöhnt er
sich in dein heimliches Herz und nimmt und bcginnt sich.
Aber begann er sich je?
Mutter, du machtest ihn klein, du warsts, die ihn anfing;
dir war er neu, du beugtest über die neuen
Augen die freundliche Welt und wehrtest der fremden.
Wo, ach, hin sind die Jahre, da du ihm einfach
mit der schlanken Gestalt wallendes Chaos vertratst?
Vieles verbargst du ihm so; das nächtlich-verdächtige Zimmer
machtest du harmlos, aus deinem Herzen voll Zuflucht
mischtest du menschlichern Raum seinem Nacht-Raum hinzu.
Nicht in die Finsternis, nein, in dein näheres Dasein
hast du das Nachtlicht gestellt, und es schien wie aus Freundschaft.
Nirgends ein Knistern, das du nicht lächelnd erklärtest,
so als wüßtest du längst, wann sich die Diele benimmt …
Und er horchte und linderte sich. So vieles vermochte
zärtlich dein Aufstehn; hinter den Schrank trat
hoch im Mantel sein Schicksal, und in die Falten des Vorhangs
paßte, die leicht sich verschob, seine unruhige Zukunft.
Und er selbst, wie er lag, der Erleichterte, unter
schläfernden Lidern deiner leichten Gestaltung
Süße lösend in den gekosteten Vorschlaf – :
schien ein Gehüteter… Aber innen: wer wehrte,
hinderte innen in ihm die Fluten der Herkunft?
Ach, da war keine Vorsicht im Schlafenden; schlafend,
aber träumend, aber in Fiebern: wie er sich ein-ließ.
Er, der Neue, Scheuende, wie er verstrickt war,
mit des innern Geschehns weiterschlagenden Ranken
schon zu Mustern verschlungen, zu würgendem Wachstum, zu tierhaft
jagenden Formen. Wie er sich hingab – . Liebte.
Liebte sein Inneres, seines Inneren Wildnis,
diesen Urwald in ihm, auf dessen stummem Gestürztsein
lichtgrün sein Herz stand. Liebte. Verließ es, ging die
eigenen Wurzeln hinaus in gewaltigen Ursprung,
wo seine kleine Geburt schon überlebt war. Liebend
stieg er hinab in das ältere Blut, in die Schluchten,
wo das Furchtbare lag, noch satt von den Vätern. Und jedes
Schreckliche kannte ihn, blinzelte, war wie verständigt.
Ja, das Entsetzliche lächelte … Selten
hast du so zärtlich gelächelt, Mutter. Wie sollte
er es nicht lieben, da es ihm lächelte. Vor dir
hat ers geliebt, denn, da du ihn trugst schon,
war es im Wasser gelöst, das den Keimenden leicht macht.
Siehe, wir lieben nicht, wie die Blumen, aus einem
einzigen Jahr; uns steigt, wo wir lieben,
unvordenklicher Saft in die Arme. O Mädchen,
dies: daß wir liebten in uns, nicht Eines, ein Künftiges, sondern
das zahllos Brauende; nicht ein einzelnes Kind,
sondern die Väter, die wie Trümmer Gebirgs
uns im Grunde beruhn; sondern das trockene Flußbett
einstiger Mütter – ; sondern die ganze
lautlose Landschaft unter dem wolkigen oder
reinen Verhängnis – : dies kam dir, Mädchen, zuvor.

Und du selber, was weißt du -, du locktest
Vorzeit empor in dem Liebenden. Welche Gefühle
wühlten herauf aus entwandelten Wesen. Welche
Frauen haßten dich da. Wasfür finstere Männer
regtest du auf im Geäder des Jünglings? Tote
Kinder wollten zu dir … O leise, leise,
tu ein liebes vor ihm, ein verläßliches Tagwerk, – führ ihn
nah an den Garten heran, gieb ihm der Nächte
Übergewicht ……
Verhalt ihn ……
……………………………………..
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926),
translated by A. Poulin Jr.

Nobel Laureate in Literature 1927

Henri Bergson (France, 1859-1941)

Normally, I post something written by the laureate, but today I’m posting a summary by Alex Scott of Bergson’s book published in 1946, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics: This is a collection of essays and lectures concerning the nature of intuition, explaining how intuition can be used as a philosophical method. Intuition is described as a method of “thinking in duration” which reflects the continuous flow of reality. Bergson distinguishes between intuitive and conceptual thinking, explaining how intuition and intellect may be combined to produce a dynamic knowledge of reality.

Bergson distinguishes between two forms of time: pure time and mathematical time. Pure time is real duration. Mathematical time is measurable duration. Real time is continuous and indivisible. Mathematical time is divisible into units or intervals which do not reflect the flow of real time.

According to Bergson, real time cannot be analyzed mathematically. To measure time is to try to create a break or disruption in time. In order to try to understand the flow of time, the intellect forms concepts of time as consisting of defined moments or intervals. But to try to intellectualize the experience of duration is to falsify it. Real duration can only be experienced by intuition….

To summarize some of the principles of Bergson’s philosophy, as outlined in The Creative Mind: 1) ultimate reality is changing, rather than unchanging; 2) ultimate reality is knowable by direct intuition; 3) intellect and intuition provide two different kinds of knowledge, which can be integrated to produce a unified knowledge of reality; 4) intellectual knowledge is relative knowledge, intuitive knowledge is absolute knowledge; 5) intuition is a direct perception and experience of the continuous flow of reality, without the use of any intellectual concepts; 6) the flow of time as real duration can be experienced only by intuition; 6) the intellect may falsify the perception of reality by substituting stability for mobility, and by substituting discontinuity for continuity; 7) many philosophical problems are caused by the use of conceptual instead of intuitive thinking, and are resolved by the use of intuition as a philosophical method.

Nobel Laureate in Literature 1926

Grazia Deledda (Italy, 1875-1936)

Here are the opening paragraphs of Deledda’s novel Cenere (Ashes), published in 1904, and below is footage from the silent-film movie based on the novel: It was the night of Midsummer Eve. Oli came forth from the white-walled Cantoniera on the Mamojada road, and hurried away across the fields. She was fifteen, well-grown and beautiful, with very large, very bright, feline eyes of greenish grey, and a sensuous mouth of which the cleft lower lip suggested two ripe cherries. She wore a red petticoat and stiff brocade bodice sustaining and defining her bosom; from the red cap tied under her prominent chin, issued two braids of glossy black hair twisted over her ears. This hair-dressing and the picturesque costume gave the girl an almost Oriental grace. Her fingers were heavily ringed, and she carried long streamers of scarlet ribbon, with which to “sign the flowers of St John,” that is, to mark those bunches of mullein, thyme, and asphodel which she must pick tomorrow at dawn for the compounding of charms and drugs. True, even were the signing omitted, there was small danger of anyone’s touching Oil’s selected plants; the fields round the Cantoniera, where she lived with her father and her little brothers, were completely deserted. Only one tumble-down house was in sight, emerging from a field of corn like a rock out of a green lake.

Everywhere in the country round, the wild Sardinian spring was on its death-bed; the flowers of the asphodel, the golden balls of the broom were dropping; the roses showed pale in the thickets, the grass was already yellow; a hot odour of hay perfumed the heavy air. The Milky Way and the distant splendour of the horizon, which seemed a band of far-off sea, made the night clear as twilight. The dark blue heaven and its stars were reflected in the scanty waters of the river. On its bank, Oil found two of her little brothers looking for crickets.
……………………………….
by Grazia Deledda,
translated by Helen Hester Colvill

Nobel Laureate in Literature 1925

George Bernard Shaw (Ireland, 1856-1950)

Below is a scene from My Fair Lady, based on Shaw’s play Pygmalion, published in 1913: