Literature

Biographical

Henri Bergson (1859-1941), the son of a Jewish musician and an English woman, was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied philosophy. After a teaching career as a schoolmaster in various secondary schools, Bergson was appointed to the École Normale Supérieure in 1898 and, from 1900 to 1921, held…

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Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the , on December 10, 1901 When Alfred Nobel decided to make the great donation which has justly received much attention, his entire life’s work led him to favour the study of nature and to reward discoveries in some of the sciences concerned with it. Likewise,…

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Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the The Nobel Prize laureate in literature for this year bears a name of unusual sound, which he chose at first to protect himself from the curious. Saint-John Perse is the poet’s name that was to be made internationally famous by a private man who in civil…

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Press release

Swedish Academy The Permanent Secretary Press release October 8, 1992 The Nobel Prize in Literature 1992 Derek Walcott “for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment” This year the Swedish Academy has decided to award the Nobel Prize for Literature to Derek Walcott. Walcott, who…

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Award ceremony speech

Swedish Presentationstal av Professor Horace Engdahl, Ständige Sekreterare, ledamot av Svenska Akademien, i Stockholms Konserthus 10 december 2004. Horace Engdahl presenterar Nobelpriset i litteratur 2004 i Stockholms Konserthus. Eders Majestäter, Eders kungliga högheter, Mina damer och herrar, Det första man förundras över när man läser Elfriede Jelinek är den egendomliga, blandade stämma som…

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Poetry

Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication For Mary Heaney I. Sunlight There was a sunlit absence. The helmeted pump in the yard heated its iron, water honeyed in the slung bucket and the sun stood like a griddle cooling against the wall of each long afternoon. So, her hands scuffled over the bakeboard, the reddening stove…

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