Hello Gentle Reader,
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 1975 was awarded to the Italian poet Eugenio Montale with the citation:
“For his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions.”
The 1975 Nobel came off the heels of one of the Swedish Academy’s legendary missteps in 1974. The stakes were high, and if there was a collectively conscious effort to cleanse the palate and start off on the right foot, the members of the academy made no such inclination. Despite this, it is not a stretch of the imagination to consider that the previous years fallout had contaminated the deliberations, regardless if they were recorded in the minutes of debate and discussion or not. Afterall, the 1974 decision remains a lightning rod and shining example of the Swedish Academy falling face first into scandal. This award alone is routinely brought forward to besmirch and bring into question the academy’s credibility as literary connoisseurs and adjudicators. Naturally, the Swedish Academy is not the absolute authority on literary matters and what amounts to greatness. The Nobel Prize in Literature is dog eared with questionable decisions, obscure laureates and humiliating omissions. The archives themselves reveal the pettiness of the members own arguments and their eccentric rationale for dismissing some writers, be it age or in the case of Auden in 1964, because his best work was considered too far past.
The decision to award Eugenio Montale the Nobel Prize was at the time lauded as a remediating step. Eugenio Montale is considered a titan of Italian poetry alongside his countrymen and Nobel Laureate Salvatore Quasimodo (1959) and Giuseppe Ungaretti, who moved Italian poetry away from the baroque and rhetorical forms of the prevailing and previous generation, instead embracing a poetic language that is often described as intrapersonal and closed off, which would become known as hermeticism. A late modernist poetry school, which placed equal emphasis on the sound of the words in addition to their meaning, with a bent towards ambiguity. This being said, Eugenio Montale refuted the notion of hermeticism poetry and its continued association with his work.
In their press release, the Swedish Academy described Eugenio Montale as “[. . .] indisputably, as one of the most important poets of the contemporary west.” Yet, during the initial nomination process and preliminary discussions of contenders for the year, Eugenio Montale was second or third on the Nobel Committee members lists of proposals. It is reasonable to speculate that the years Nobel Committee and members were, if not divided in their thoughts, they were at the minimum indecisive.
During the spring meeting, the Nobel Committee presented an extensive longlist of potential writers to the academy, totaling at 11. The then Permanent Secretary Karl Ragnar Gierow, commented on the unusual length of the list, which showed a lack of cohesive certainty amongst the members, which again can be attributed to last years disastrous proceedings. A handful of the writers who were considered first in the deliberations included: Saul Bellow and Graham Greene; while sharing the prize between Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer, or, between Vicente Aleixandre and Jorge Luis Borges. It should be noted; the list of proposals was quite lengthy due to the number of nominations in favour of splitting the award between two writers.
The conversation of splitting the Nobel Prize became a contentious discussion. In the wake and aftermath of the 1974 decision, the Swedish Academy had enacted a convention that the Nobel Prize in Literature should not be split between writers in order to preserve the prize from being diluted and its prestige reduced to a glossy glimmer. This being said, since being elected to the academy, Artur Lundkvist was the main proponent of splitting the Nobel Prize in Literature between writers in order to broaden the prizes scope and appeal; while acknowledging the increased challenges of granting a singular writer the prize, who just happened to rise above the rest. Thankfully, Permanent Secretary Karl Ragnar Gierow disagreed with Lundkvist’s assessment and advocated for the conventional and now principled restricted purview. Whereby the award should not be cheapened for the sake of casting a broader net.
It was Henry Olsson who came through during a September meeting, and with hedge trimmers in hand sought to do battle with the Nobel Committee’s expansive list of potential writers, and a prevailing indecisive attitude. Perhaps due to a sense of respect of having sat on the Nobel Committee between 1959 – 1971, Olsson carried weight and respect within the Swedish Academy as a senior member, granting him the privilege to review the list on offer and finding them not quite up to snuff, and working through it to find the gold beneath the lead. Eugenio Montale, happened to be the gold in question, a common second in addition to third rate choice amongst the committee members. A defining feature of democratic committees is the belief in fairs fair in compromise. There’s a bit of a surprise to think that Eugenio Montale can be described as a compromise decision. The diamond buried beneath the heaping coal of possibilities. To loosely quote Henry Olsson regarding his conclusion, “Montale seems to measure up both as a poet and a person.”
In the end, the 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature fell on firm footing, despite the indecision and lengthy road it took to get there. After the previous years bruhaha, Eugenio Montale proved to set the prize back on course. Despite being the last Nobel announced that year, somewhat similar to 2016. Subsequent laureates which included Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Czesław Miłosz, affirmed the prize as being one of the most eccentric and interesting literary prizes in the world. A reputation the Nobel Prize in Literature continues to hold. As for Eugenio Montale, the poet described hearing the news of being awarded the Nobel Prize had made his life, “which was always unhappy, less unhappy.” Profound.
As for the prize nominations for 1975, the Swedish Academy received a total of 114 nominations. Of these 114, 28 were first time nominees, this included:
Chinua AchebFernand Braudel,Dobrica ĆosićMiloš CrnjanskMohammed DibGabriel García Márquez (1982)Wilson HarrisMasuji IbuseTove JanssonNaguib Mahfouz (1988)Desanka Maksimović,Vasko PopaChaim PotokMary Renault
1975 was also the first year the most female writers had been nominated for the award with a total of 13:
Simone de Beauvoir
Doris Lessing (2007)
Nadine Gordimer (1991)
Tove Jansson
Rina Lasnier
Desanka Maksimović
Kamala Markandaya
Victoria Ocampo
Mary Renault
Nathalie Sarraute
Anna Seghers
Marie Under
Future nominated laureated included the following and their year:
Vicente Alexandre – 1977
Isaac Bashevis Singer - 1978
Odysseus Elytis – 1979
Elias Canetti – 1981
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 1982
William Golding – 1983
Jaroslav Seifert – 1984 winner
Claude Simon – 1985
Naguib Mahfouz – 1988
Camilo Jose Cela – 1989
Octavio Paz - 1990
Nadine Gordimer – 1991
Ōe Kenzaburō – 1994
Günter Grass – 1999
VS Naipaul – 2001
Harold Pinter – 2005
Doris Lessing – 2007
Additionally,
Elie Wisel was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975, but would
go on to win the 1986 Peace Prize.
Of all the listed future Nobel Laureates in Literature, Doris Lessing would certainly have to wait the longest, becoming the oldest Nobel Laureate in Literature at 88 in 2007. During the sixties and seventies, Lessing’s reputation had moved from postcolonial critic, to a curious surveyor of the psychology and mindset of the mid-century mind. Lessing’s recent publications during the 70’s included “Briefing for a Descent into Hell,” “The Summer Before the Dark,” and “The Memoirs of a Survivor.” By the end of the decade however, Lessing would move from interior explorations to a science fiction and space-oriented exploration. It has long been speculated, once Doris Lessing began to write genre fiction (i.e. “Canopus in Argos: Archives,” series), the Swedish Academy lost interest in Lessing’s authorship alongside many of her readers and critics, who considered the author having lost her ‘rational worldview,’ whereby she explored social and psychological realism of the postwar period. During the Nobel announcement interview in 2007, the then Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Horace Engdahl, mentioned Doris Lessing’s autobiographies from the 90’s, had introduced a new peak in her bibliography, which encouraged the Swedish Academy to revisit her work once again. Though this will all need to be confirmed when those archives are opened in the subsequent decades.
Other future laureates such as: Ōe Kenzaburō, Günter Grass, VS Naipaul were only beginning to gain critical traction. While Harold Pinter had already established himself as a playwright, whose comedy of menace was competing with the absurd Beckettian tropes which had previously been considered theatre gold. Additionally, this marks the first time Gabriel Garcia Marquez was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, his magnum opus “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” already published, and “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” was published in 1975. It will be curious to see what deliberations will come in the following years, and if Artur Lundkvist strong armed the academy at all, as (if memory serves me correctly) Artur Lundkvist was considered the Spanish language expert for the Swedish Academy, during his tenure.
Another first-time nominee, Naguib Mahfouz should be noted. While there is no denying that Mahfouz is an undisputable giant of Egyptian literature, it had always been theorized when it came to his candidacy of the prize, he was weighted and evaluated alongside his countryman, Tawfiq al-Hakim. While, al-Hakim had been nominated in years past (1969 and 1972), he was once again not nominated in 1975, leaving room to speculate that perhaps, nominators turned towards nominating Naguib Mahfouz, whose famous work were grand realistic novels, which may have been looked upon favourably by the Swedish Academy. Only the future archives will tell, what these discussions hold, and when Naguib Mahfouz was given serious consideration. Afterall the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature remains a shining success of the prize, Mahfouz continues to endure as a marvelous writer.
One other significant and monumental playwright of the 20th century, who is often roped into the tent of ‘theatre of the absurd,’ Eugène Ionesco, was once again nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975 by the Nobel Committee, but it does not appear that any serious consideration was given to his candidacy at this time. To similar to Samuel Becket perhaps? Despite being a completely different and avant-garde writer. Additionally, Ionesco took a greater interest in writing theoretical texts for theatre, which allowed him to respond to his critics and reach out to audiences and members of the public directly, to help clarify any misunderstandings they may have regarding his work.
It is also interesting to see the Finnish-Swedish language writer, Tove Jansson nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though ultimately, she did not receive the prize. There does not appear to be any deliberations or review of Jansson has a contender for the prize in 1975. Though, I believe the author and artist would inevitably be phased out of never being considered, in the same fashion the academy had disregarded the nomination of Astrid Lindgren. Despite a small and loyal support within the academy for Lindgren’s candidacy, other members with severe attitudes towards the notion of children’s literature, ensured Astrid Lindgren would never be considered for the prize. Despite Tove Jansson writing a variety of novels and short stories, her career was often eclipsed (to her frustration) by the Moomin trolls, and it is not difficult to imagine members of the Swedish Academy recoiling from the thought of having to deliberate on Tove Jansson, let alone entertain the thought she might receive the prize; though this is purely speculation. 1975 marks the first time Tove Jansson was nominated, further years – pending she was nominated – will determine whether or not she was discussed.
The
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975 by all accounts during the time was
considered a safe choice. Eugenio Montale was considered a concrete decision as
an important Italian poet. Certainly, the last of his generation with the death
of Giuseppe Ungaretti. Though what separates Montale from his contemporaries (Salvatore
Quasimodo and Giuseppe Ungaretti) was a refusal to engage with politics
directly in his literary work. In the later years Quasimodo’s poetry moved
towards a political bent, taking an active critical position. While Giuseppe
Ungaretti in turn had a complex relationship with both fascism and Mussolini.
First an open supporter of both, endorsing the strong-willed principles of both
as necessary to unite a fractured Italy into a strong nation. Ungaretti eventually
grew more disillusioned with the ideology and its leader for its brutality and
strong-arm practices. Montale, however, continuously resisted politics from
infiltrating his poetic work, staying the course in writing poetry that was
intrapersonal, oblique, and was described by some critics as reminiscent of a
man muttering to himself. In all the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature was by all
accounts a decent prize. A significant refreshing perspective as last years
prize was marked by outrage and opposition. While Italy was jubilant to the
announcement; even by this time, poetry had become an increasingly lacking form
for readers, and the rest of the world reacted with nonchalance and
indifference. As for Eugenio Montale, it made is otherwise unhappy life, less
unhappy.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
For
Further Reading
Svenska Dagbladet: "Efter krisen: Nobelpris till andrahandsvalet,"
The New York Times: "Montale, a Poet, Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature,"
The Nobel Prize Website: The Nobel Prize in Literature 1975 (Press Release)
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