Nobel Prize

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, As we all know, this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Eugenio Montale, from Italy. He comes from Eastern Liguria, a coastal landscape whose harsh character is reflected in his poetry. In…

Presentation Speech by Karl Ragnar Gierow, of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, When Saul Bellow published his first book, the time had come for a change of climate and generation in American narrative art. The so-called hard-boiled style, with its virile air and choppy prose, had…

  Speech by Professor Sture Allén, Permanent Secretary of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Nobel Prize awarded by the Swedish Academy is, as we know, a literary prize. This year it has been granted to Toni Morrison, making her the ninetieth Nobel Laureate in Literature.…

Presentation Speech by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the , on December 10, 1907 The suggestions for names of suitable recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature have been numerous, and there has been no dearth of exceedingly well-qualified candidates for this honourable and coveted distinction. From these candidates, the Swedish Academy has…

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the The great work on Western philosophy which Bertrand Russell brought out in 1946, that is, at the age of seventy-four, contains numerous characteristic reflections giving us an idea of how he himself might like us to regard his long and arduous life. In one place, speaking…

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Ph.D., of the (Translation) The recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, the Japanese Yasunari Kawabata, was born in 1899 in the big industrial town of Osaka, where his father was a highly-cultured doctor with literary interests. At an early age, however, he was deprived of this favourable growing-up…

Presentation Speech by Professor Kjell Espmark, Member of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, In his novel The Silent Cry, Kenzaburo Oe describes a scene which casts light over his entire œuvre. The narrator, Mitsu, living in a marriage which has not survived the birth of a…

Swedish Presentationstal av författaren Per Wästberg, ledamot av , den 10 december 2005. Per Wästberg presenterar Nobelpriset i litteratur 2005 i Stockholms Konserthus. Eders Majestäter, Eders Kungliga Högheter, Ärade Nobelpristagare, Mina damer och herrar, Harold Pinter är det engelska dramats förnyare under 1900-talet. “Pinteresque” är ett adjektiv i Oxford Dictionary. Likt Kafka, Proust…

Presentation Speech by , Permanent Secretary of the , on December 10, 1930 This year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is a native of a part of America which for a long time has had Swedish contacts. He was born at Sauk Centre, a place of about two or three thousand inhabitants in…

Presentation Speech by Claes Annerstedt, President of the , on December 10, 1909 History tells us that there was a time when Sweden fought for a world prize on the field of martial honour. The time of arms has passed, but in the international competition for peaceful prizes our people have for a long time…