Literature

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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Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the on December 10, 1902 The second paragraph of the Nobel statutes states that «Literature» should include not only belles-lettres, «but also other writings that in form or content show literary value». This definition sanctions the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to philosophers, writers…

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Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by Hjalmar Gullberg, Member of the , on December 10, 1945 One day a mother’s tears caused a whole language, disdained at that time in good society, to rediscover its nobility and gain glory through the power of its poetry. It is said that when , the first of the two poets bearing…

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Poetry

The Haw Lantern The wintry haw is burning out of season, crab of the thorn, a small light for small people, wanting no more from them but that they keep the wick of self-respect from dying out, not having to blind them with illumination. But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost it takes…

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