Photo: AP Photo/ Fernando Vergara
STOCKHOLM, 2 January. /TASS/. The main competitors of the Australian writer Patrick White (1912-1990) for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973 were the American novelist Saul Bellow, the English writers Anthony Burgess and William Golding (1983 laureate) and the Italian poet Eugenio Montale (1975 prize winner). This is evidenced by archival documents released by the Swedish Academy and examined by a TASS correspondent.
The lists of nominees were kept secret for 50 years. Among the 100 names on the list published at the beginning of the new year are many famous writers: the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado, the Argentine novelist, poet and journalist Jorge Luis Borges, the Italian writer Alberto Moravia (previously nominated 16 times), the English novelist Graham Greene, the German writer Günter Grass, the American playwright Arthur Miller, the Swedish writer Harry Martinson, the Anglo-American poet and playwright W. H. Auden. For the first time, 18 writers were selected. Jorge Amado has been nominated for the prize eight times and Jorge Luis Borges has been in the running since 1962.
Patrick White won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his epic and psychological mastery, which led to the discovery of a new literary continent".
Choosing an academy
Karl Ragnar Girow, the Academy's permanent secretary and chairman of the Nobel Committee at the time, writes in his statement on the nominations for the prize that he prefers Saul Bellow to Patrick White, citing Bellow's "artistic maturity and thoroughness that allow him to occupy an undeniably prominent place in modern American prose." Girov also discusses the weaknesses of Bellow's latest novel, "Mr. Sumler's Planet," which is over-saturated with abstract thinking, which Girov says makes it impossible to include in the final list of nominees.
Eugenio Montale is in principle worthy, in Girov's opinion, of the prize, and almost got it before. However, "without completely rejecting the idea of awarding him the Nobel Prize, for my part I would prefer another of the names mentioned above."
"Of the remaining two, I put Anthony Burgess ahead of William Golding. I consider both of them acceptable [candidates], but I will not vote for either of them in the fall," Girov writes.
Nabokov is back on the list of candidates
Archival lists also show that Vladimir Nabokov was nominated for the Nobel Prize for the ninth time. His candidacy was proposed by university professors in the USA, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia and also by the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Although the experts state in their letters that Nabokov "created a new form of the novel" and is "a great writer, one of the last masters of the literary art of our time", the Nobel committee is adamant in its earlier verdict. "Vladimir Nabokov: the offer was rejected several times, most recently in 1971," the archive documents say.
Among the articles is a translation into Swedish of Solzhenitsyn's letter of 12 April 1972, in which the author of "Lolita" was nominated for the prize. It says that Nabokov is "a writer of dazzling literary talent, exactly the kind we call genius". "He has reached a peak in the finest psychological observations, in sophisticated language play (two excellent languages of the world!), in brilliant composition. He is wholly original, recognizable from a single paragraph - a sign of real brightness, a singular talent," the letter reads.
The Nobel laureate also points out that in 20th century literature the candidate he proposes "occupies a special, high and incomparable position". Solzhenitsyn suggests that the commission should speed up the award to Nabokov "because the author is as old as our century". "The most insulting thing is to realize belatedly the irreparability of the mistake," he concludes.
TASS/RoZ_07
https://tass.ru/kultura/19667691
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