Nobel Prize

Kenzaburo Oe delivering his Nobel Prize lecture at the Swedish Academy on 7 December 1994. English* Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1994 Japan, The Ambiguous, and Myself During the last catastrophic World War I was a little boy and lived in a remote, wooded valley on Shikoku Island in the Japanese Archipelago, thousands of miles away…

Nobel Lecture December 7, 1993 “Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise.” Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures. “Once upon a time there was an…

Excerpt from Sula Excerpts selected by the Nobel Library of the . (Pages 56-57 and 134-137) T hen summer came. A summer limp with the weight of blossomed things. Heavy sunflowers weeping over fences; iris curling and browning at the edges far away from their purple hearts; ears of corn letting their auburn hair wind…

Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1992 The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory Felicity is a village in Trinidad on the edge of the Caroni plain, the wide central plain that still grows sugar and to which indentured cane cutters were brought after emancipation, so the small population of Felicity is East Indian, and on the afternoon…

Octavio Paz delivering his Nobel Prize lecture at the Swedish Academy on 8 December 1990. English Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1990 (Translation) In Search of the Present I begin with two words that all men have uttered since the dawn of humanity: thank you. The word gratitude has equivalents in every language and in each…

Spanish Conferencia Nobel 1990 La búsqueda del presente Comienzo con una palabra que todos los hombres, desde que el hombre es hombre, han proferido: gracias. Es una palabra que tiene equivalentes en todas las lenguas. Y en todas es rica la gama de significados. En las lenguas romances va de lo espiritual a lo físico,…

Spanish Conferencia de Nobel 1989 Elogio de la Fabula Señores académicos Mi viejo amigo y maestro Pió Baroja, que se quedó sin el Premio Nobel porque la candelita del acierto no siempre alumbra la cabeza del justo, tenía un reloj de pared en cuya esfera lucían unas palabras aleccionadoras, un lema estremecedor que señalaba el…

French Conference Nobel le 9 décembre 1985 Mesdames, Mesdemoiselles, Messieurs, Sur les sentiments que peut éprouver un lauréat distingué par l’Académie Suédoise, l’un de mes « confrères Nobel », comme nous appelle le docteur dans une lettre qu’il a eu la gentillesse de m’adresser, s’est on ne peut mieux expliqué : « La recherche étant un jeu, écrivait-il…

English Nobel Lecture 9 December 1985 (Translation) Ladies and gentlemen. The feelings of a laureate honoured by the have been perfectly expressed by one of my “Nobel colleagues”, to use Dr. André Lwoffs expression in a letter he has been so kind as to write to me: “Research being a game or a gamble,” he…

Nobel Lecture 7 December, 1983 Those of you who have some knowledge of your present speaker as revealed by the loftier-minded section of the British Press will be resigning yourselves to a half hour of unrelieved gloom. Indeed, your first view of me, white bearded and ancient, may have turned that gloom into profound dark;…