The Nobel Prize in Literature 1974
Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
Presentation Speech by Karl Ragnar Gierow,
of the Swedish Academy
Translation from the Swedish text
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies
and Gentlemen,
Eyvind Johnson's education - that is, the education provided by
society at that time - ended when he was thirteen and was
imparted to him at a little village school north of the Arctic
Circle. The future awaiting the young Harry Martinson opened up
to him when, at the age of six, as a so-called child of the
parish, he was sold by auction to the lowest bidder - that is, to
the person who took charge of the forsaken boy for the smallest
payment out of parochial funds. The fact that, with such a start
in life, both of them have their places on this platform today,
is the visible testimony to a transformation of society, which,
step by step, is still going on all over the world. With us it
came unusually early; it is perhaps our country's biggest
blessing, perhaps, also, its most remarkable achievement during
the last thousand years.
Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson did not come alone, nor first.
They are representative of the many proletarian writers or
working-class poets who, on a wide front, broke into our
literature, not to ravage and plunder, but to enrich it with
their fortunes. Their arrival meant an influx of experience and
creative energy, the value of which can hardly be exaggerated. To
that extent they are representative also of the similar
breakthrough that has later occurred in the whole of our cultural
world. A new class has conquered Parnassus. But if, by a
conqueror, we mean the one who gained most from the outcome, then
Parnassus has conquered a new class.
To determine an author and his work against the background of his
social origin and political environment is, at present, good
form. And what is good form is seldom particularly to the point.
"Eyvind Johnson's literary achievement is one of the most
significant and characteristic of a very fruitful period in the
whole of Europe." This last sentence is not mine; it was written
thirty years ago by Lucien Maury. Even then, the boy from a
primary school in a remote village in the far north of Sweden was
an experienced and self-assured European, never forgetful of his
origin (of which his autobiographical stories provide a lasting
document), but still less bound and inhibited by the environment
where he took his first steps. International perspective
distinguished Eyvind Johnson's further writings, and it is
matched by an equally wide outlook in time, over the destinies
and ages of the human race. The renewal of the historical novel
which he has carried out on his own, and perhaps exemplified most
clearly in great works like Days of His Grace and Steps
Towards Silence, is based not only on extensive research but
also on a clear-sightedness which, expressed briefly, sets out to
show that everything that happens to us has happened before, and
everything that took place once in the world is still taking
place, recognizable under changed signs, a constant simultaneity
of epochs which may be the only wisdom the past can teach us in
our attempts to survey the present and divine an era which we
have not yet seen.
If, nevertheless, we are to point to a special phase and one
particular mental environment whose traces are ineffaceable in
Eyvind Johnson's work with his pen, it is that very period when
Lucien Maury discovered that in this Nordic writer, Europe had
one of its important intellectuals. The French time analyst
described this epoch as very fruitful. What was it that made it
so productive? Not favourable conditions, but the indomitable
resistance to the conditions that prevailed. D-day had not yet
dawned; Nazism still had a stranglehold on Europe. It was in that
predicament that Eyvind Johnson spoke out. His attitude was so
passionate that its fervour has never since vanished from what he
wrote. He retained his European perspective, but, naturally, it
was Scandinavia's liberty that was dearest to him just then. He
endorsed his conviction with a handshake across the border.
Together with a co-editor on the Norwegian side he was
responsible during the occupation years for a mouthpiece of the
new Scandinavianism, called - "A Handshake". As from today the
two publishers of that little paper are both Nobel Prizewinners.
The name of Eyvind Johnson's co-editor on the Norwegian side of
the frontier was Willy
Brandt.
Both Eyvind Johnson and, still more, Harry Martinson have a lot
in common with the oldest, and perhaps, greatest of all
proletarian writers, the subtly wise and charming author of
ingenious fables, Aesop. Like him, they spin webs, capturing you
with beguiling words that always contain other, and more, than
what they literally say. But the differences between this year's
two literary prizewinners are greater than the similarities.
Beside Eyvind Johnson, whose writing is based so very much on his
fiercely defended citizenship in a free society, Harry Martinson
may appear to be almost a purely asocial individual, the
incorrigible vagrant in our literature. No one has succeeded in
putting him under lock and key. The philosophic tramp, Bolle, in
The Road is, in many ways, the author's spokesman, and he
is not homeless at the gate. He is homeless only when he gets
inside four walls. He is the bearer of asocialism as a wish and a
principle that brings good luck; he is a vagabond of his own free
will, in agreement with life's sound instincts and in spontaneous
revolt against what is trying to stifle them - that which is
governed by calculation and established by force. He already has
his home; it is beyond and outside, and he is always on the way
towards it. From this starting point, though in a different key,
we can also conceive the tragically beautiful vision of Aniara,
of the spaceship which heads away from an increasingly hostile
existence on a frozen earth and itself loses its rudder, cut off
from its home port and with its destination lost.
"I don't want to have real that most people want to have real",
Bolle remarks. In saying this he has also said quite a lot about
Harry Martinson's writing. Realism is to be found there to the
extent that it can be called elemental: it is based on the
closest familiarity with the four elements. Harry Martinson got
to know earth and air as a tramp on the roads, fire and water as
a stoker at sea. Yet the world of imagination is more important
and more real to him than that of reality. Where realism plods
methodically along, his imagination races with the swallow-winged
glide of the skater. However, it is not a flight from truth; on
the contrary. "We must learn the essential difference between
what is factual and what is truth", he has said. "We have facts
everywhere. They whirl in our eyes like sand." But it is truth we
are concerned with, and that is something else. It is a state in
nature and in the receptive human being; it is
the good will with presence and peace of mind
to keep watch and to be.
For Harry Martinson fact and fiction are
one, and, without any aphoristic hair-splitting, an entire
outlook on life is summed up in these pregnant words. The last
two, most emphasized, form the simple verb of mere existence: to
be. But existence is only fit for human beings if it gives them
pleasure, and for that, good will and vigilance are needed. So,
in the end, the truth to which this wanderer's path has led him
is a gratitude, round-eyed as a child's, for the generous life
that has constantly given him trials, riddles and joy in good
measure.
After this quickly cut-out silhouette of two remarkable literary
profiles, it is my very pleasant duty to express the heartfelt
congratulations of the Swedish Academy to Eyvind Johnson and
Harry Martinson and to ask them to receive the emblems of the
1974 Nobel Prize for Literature from the hands of His Majesty,
the King.
From Les Prix Nobel en 1974, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1975
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1974
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