Forgotten, Famous and Favourite Nobel Literature Prize Winners (1901-1906)
120 Nobels Challenge * WEEK 1 * (1901-1906): pre-modernists and nationalists
Today I begin my series on the Nobel Prize for Literature. The 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature will be awarded on 10 October 2024. Every Saturday until then I will introduce you to seven Nobel Prize Winners, and together we will read all 120 Nobel Literature Laureates.
I calculated last year that I had read 44 of the 120 Nobel Laureates - so going methodically through all 120 Prize winners will boost my score by a lot. How many have you read at the start of this pilgrimage? Let me know how many and if there are any Nobel Laureates you are most keen to learn about on this journey.
I am going to go in chronological order, starting in 1901, because this pilgrimage is also an adventure in which I am not sure what I will find; but I certainly feel we will learn some new perspectives on the cultural history of the world since 1901.
The Nobel Prize for Literature is the world’s most prestigious literary honour, but, like all prizes, it has its controversies, biases, and blind spots. It is not the perfect list of the best books; nor is it the most representative choice of all the literatures of the world; but it is certainly one unique, global lens on the cultural history of the multipolar world since 1901. You can read more about the Prize at the official site here.
The First Seven Nobels: Classicists & Nationalists
The first seven Nobel Prize winners may be summarised as classicists and cultural nationalists of the new liberal nations of Europe. These seven winners were awarded over the six years from 1901 to 1906 because the Nobel Committee honoured two writers in 1904.
1901 Prudhomme (France)
1902 Mommsen (Germany)
1903 Bjornson (Norway/Sweden)
1904 Mistral (France/Provence)
1904 Echegaray (Spain)
1905 Sienkiewicz (Poland/Russia)
1906 Carducci (Italy)
I have a companion series on YouTube, where you can watch me read small texts from these writers. Here are my highlights from the first seven Nobel Laureates, and links for you to explore any of their writing that sparks your curiosity.
1901 Sully Prudhomme (1839–1907)
The first Nobel Laureate was the French poet and essayist, Sully Prudhomme.
He wrote classical French verse but wrote poetry less from the 1880s. Having established himself as a member of the French Academy, he turned to essays defending literary traditions and exploring scientific liberalism.
When I think of late 19th century French literature and poetry I think Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé. But that reflects how I have been shaped by the modernism that Prudhomme opposed. By choosing Prudhomme the Swedish academy was choosing an establishment idealistic figure.
One French literary scholar summarised Prudhomme’s outlook as:
"No self-appointed messiah like Victor Hugo but no nihilist like Leconte de Lisle, he lifted poetry from some of the gloom into which positivistic pessimism had plunged it for a generation and taught his belief that the road to happiness lies through pain, self-sacrifice, and brotherly love."
(Jean-Albert Béde in Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, 1980)
In the 1880s he wrote an enormous poem, Le Bonheur, that expressed these views, but by the early twentieth century he was a conservative figure who stood against emerging modernism, symbolism and literary experimentation. Indeed, Prudhomme dedicated his Nobel prize money to defend classical literary standards.
His best-known work is Le Vase Brisé (The Broken Vase). Its last verse reads
The world sees just the hard, curved surface
Of a vase a lady’s fan once grazed,
That slowly drips and bleeds with sadness.
Do not touch the broken vase.
You can read in original French and listen to a reading of the poem here here.
1902 Theodore Mommsen (1817–1903)
In 1902 the Nobel Committee affirmed history as part of literature by choosing not a poet nor a novelist, but the German historian of ancient Rome, Theodore Mommsen.
Mommsen was the first born of the Nobel Laureates. He was born in 1817, one year before Karl Marx. By the time of his prize, Mommsen had contributed to German and European culture for six decades since the 1840s.
He reported on the 1848 Revolutions in Europe as a newspaper correspondent, and was a giant of the German academy when German universities led the world. Rome gave him honorary citizenship. The Dutch and brash young Americans elected him to their learned societies. He also sired a family of scholars. He had sixteen children, and some of them and their children went on to leading academic positions in Europe and USA.
He was also a politician, who represented a liberal nationalist viewpoint. He opposed Bismarck’s policies, and advocated voluntary cultural assimilation of nationalities, which was the great issue of late nineteenth century politics, that in the end led to World War One. Mommsen opposed the antisemitic political campaigns of another distinguished German historian, von Treitschke. But he was not without taint in his vehement support for German nationalism. He directed his venom and advocated violence against the Slavs, including the Czechs.
His most famous work was his eight-volume history of Rome that reflected on the moral and political weaknesses that led to the fall of Rome, that great European model lesson in power from the classical world.
But the bitterest feature of this bitter time was that even hope and effort failed the clear-seeing patriot. The sun of freedom with all its endless store of blessings was constantly drawing nearer to its setting, and the twilight was settling over the very world that was still so brilliant. It was no accidental catastrophe which patriotism and genius might have warded off; it was ancient social evils—at the bottom of all, the ruin of the middle class by the slave proletariat—that brought destruction on the Roman commonwealth.”
― Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, Vol 4: The Revolution
Like Prudhomme, Mommsen was a figure of the nineteenth century, honoured when the cultural tides of the world were changing, when the modernist world was born.
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910)
The 1903 winner was the influential public intellectual and “national poet” of Norway, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.
He is ranked in a quartet of great Norwegian writers, alongside Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland. Of those four, before this pilgrimage, I had only read Ibsen, the great playwright.
Bjørnson’s story too is of cultural nationalism. Indeed, he wrote the lyrics of the Norwegian national anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet" (“Yes, I love this land”).
Bjørnson became known as the national poet of Norway when Norway did not exist as a separate state. In 1903 it was still part of Sweden, only separating in 1905.
However, the phenomenon of “national poet” was common in the nineteenth century with the growth of nationalism, mass education and standardised languages. National poets often spoke for countries that had only recently or did not yet exist because they were part of larger imperial states.
Bjørnson’s verse does not resonate today. It is full of tales of heroic old Norwegian heroes and kings. The poem, Bergliot, is considered one of his finer lyrics, and it describes combats of Harald and the longing for national homecoming. Here are its last three verses.
The dogs to-day will not greet us gladly,
But drearily howl with drooping tails.
And lifting their heads the horses will listen;
Neighing they stand, the stable-door watching,
Eindride's voice awaiting.
In vain for his voice will they hearken,
Nor hears the hall the step of Einar,
That called before him for all to arise and stand,
For now came their chieftain.
Too large the house is; I will lock it;
Workmen, servants send away;
Sell the cattle and the horses,
Move far hence and live alone.
Drive slowly!
—Soon enough we shall come home.
Bjørnson, Bergliot
In addition to poetry, he wrote plays, novels, and lots of polemics. Over time the balance between them changed. At times, his energy went into his politics. Like Prudhomme, Bjørnson was a supporter of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish soldier who was persecuted by the French establishment. It was the great liberal cause of the turn of the century, which is similar to the case of Julian Assange today. But unlike Prudhomme, Bjørnson could do something about it. He was until 1906 one of the original members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
But, like many writers who dabble in politics, he sometimes said too much and was hoisted on his own words. In 1901, he proclaimed,
"I'm a Pan-Germanist, I'm a Teuton, and the greatest dream of my life is for the South Germanic peoples and the North Germanic peoples and their brothers in diaspora to unite in a fellow confederation."
This late switch to Pan-Germanist sentiment came after many years campaigning for Norwegian nationalism. In 1903, he urged Norway and Sweden to remain a single unified kingdom. Could the Swedish Academy’s honour have turned his head?
In any case, when Norway approached its decision to secede and become a separate state in 1905, Bjørnson sent a telegram to the Norwegian Prime Minister stating, "Now is the time to unite."
The Prime Minister replied, "Now is the time to shut up."
I sense that forgotten Prime Minister was right.
1904 Frédéric Mistral (1830–1914)
Frédéric Mistral was the second Frenchman to win the Nobel Prize, but he believed he belonged to a different nation altogether, which he called Félibrige.
He proclaimed he was not French, but Provençal. He would have liked to separate from France. He even wrote in an old language, Occitan. Mistral dedicated his literary output and scholarship to creating this national language and culture. He became the national poet of Provence or in his own terms, Félibrige.
He was a son of a farmer and devoted himself to the rehabilitation of Provençal life and language. In 1854, he founded with colleagues the Félibrige, an association for the revival of the Provençal language and customs. This language and culture lived in the region of Southern Europe known as Occitania, which extends across Spain, Southern France and parts of Italy. The language of Catalonia, that separatist region of Spain, is Catalan, and is closely related to Occitan the language Mistral celebrated.
Mistral too was a regional nationalist, like Bjørnson and Mommsen.
But Mistral was also reviving a literary tradition with his use of Occitan. This language was used by the troubadours, the great poets of courtly love and song from the High Middle Ages. The troubadour school or tradition began in the late 11th century in Occitania, a region of Southern Europe across Spain, France and Italy. It lay at the heart of European literature, and would later be celebrated, for example by that great modernist, who never won a Nobel Prize, Ezra Pound.
Here is a verse from one of the major poems Mistral wrote in Occitan, Calendau
Ever reviving Soul,
joyful and proud and lively Soul,
whinnying in the sound of the Rhone and Rhone's wind!
Soul of melodious forests
and sunny creeks,
pious soul of fatherland,
I call you! incarnate-you in my Provençal verses!
You can read Mistral’s memoirs, which includes his poems in both translated English and Occitan here.
1904 José Echegaray (1832 – 1916)
As if to balance out the prize awarded to a separatist region of France and Spain, the Nobel Committee also awarded a prize in 1904 to the intriguing, powerful figure of mainstream Spain, José Echegaray.
Despite our modern perception of his appearance, this Nobel laureate was no literary fop. He was a civil engineer, mathematician, politician (indeed, Finance Minister), and one of the leading Spanish dramatists of the last quarter of the 19th century.
He came from a highly educated family - his father was a doctor and professor of Greek, and his mother…. Sadly, all my research has discovered so far is that she “was from Navarra”.
He taught engineering, mathematics, stereotomy, hydraulics, descriptive geometry, and differential and physical calculus. He was a typical figure of the liberal intellectual engaged in public works, civil responsibilities and promoting free trade.
He became a Minister in the Spanish republican government in 1868, after the overthrow of the monarchy, and held ministries for six years, including Education, Public Works and Finance. However, in 1874, Spain restored the Bourbon monarchy, and Echegaray retired from politics.
So where does the literature come in?
Well, as you might guess from his dress, he loved the theatre. He wrote powerful social dramas set in contemporary Madrid. One well-known known play is the Great Galeoto. You can read it here, and sample its opening monologue of a romantic intellectual suffering writer’s block below
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916)
In 1905 the Nobel committee again rewarded the ardent nationalism of a writer from a country that was a “no-nation”, Poland.
Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote historical novels and ardent patriotic journalism that advocated the Polish nationalist cause in Europe and North America.
In Poland, he is known for his trilogy of historical novels set in the 17th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth: With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Pan Michael. Internationally, he is known for Quo Vadis, which is set in Nero’s Rome and was made by Hollywood into an epic film in 1951.
His family were impoverished Polish nobles, on his father's side deriving from Tatars who had settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He was born in Eastern Poland, near current day Ukraine, when Poland was part of Russia.
Polish nationalism was a major liberal political cause across Europe and North America in the 19th century. Sienkiewicz’s historical trilogy was set at a time when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was still powerful, but when it was about to descend into the “Deluge” and the “Ruin”, Poland’s century of humiliation that would lead to its extinction as a state through three partitions by the Russian, Prussian, and Austria-Hungarian states in 1772, 1793, and 1795.
Fire and Sword commences the trilogy, and its opening sentences evoke the threatening “Asiatic horde.”
The year 1647 was that wonderful year in which manifold signs in the heavens and on the earth announced misfortunes of some kind and unusual events. Contemporary chroniclers relate that beginning with spring-time myriads of locusts swarmed from the Wilderness, destroying the grain and the grass; this was a forerunner of Tartar raids.
You can read the whole trilogy here, and even listen to audiobook recordings of these very long historical novels of Polish nationalist myths.
The historical myths crafted by Sienkiewicz remain strong among conservative Polish nationalists, despite their celebration of historical figures such as Khmelnitsky, who perpetrated massacres of the Jewish and other ethnic populations of Poland-Lithuania (and current territory of Ukraine).
However, a much later Nobel Prize winner, Olga Tokarczuk offers a different vision of the same history. Her Books of Jacob has been described as an anti- Sienkiewicz, and I would recommend reading Tokarczuk over the 1905 Polish nationalist, who also like Prudhomme opposed the emerging modernism and literary experimentation of the new world.
1906 Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907)
The 1906 winner was Giosuè Carducci from Italy, another new national state that had only been unified in 1861.
Carducci was another “national poet” of a rising new nation like Bjørnson (1903) and Mistral (1904).
He used his literary skills in the service of a liberal, anti-clerical political ethos, in part inspired by the founders of the Italian republic, and in part inspired by the American Revolution.
He wrote sonnets to and about Dante, Petrarch, Homer, and other Italian poets of the classical and Renaissance eras. He constructed a sense of national identity through this literary past, and so became known as the “national poet” of Italy. This phenomenon no longer exists, reflecting changes in cultural history since 1901.
Some say his best poetry was written later in life, rather than his early more political writing. The collections Rime Nuove (New Rhymes) and Odi Barbare (Barbarian Odes) contain some of the best poems including this moving poem, Snowfall.
Snowfall
A light snow falls through an ashy sky.
From the city no sounds rise up, no human cries,
not the grocer’s call or the ruckus of his cart,
no light-hearted song of being young and in love.
From the tower in the piazza, the quinsied hours
moan, sighing as if from a world far off.
Flocks of birds beat against the misted glass:
ghosts of friends returned, peering in, calling to me.
Soon, O my dears, soon—peace, indomitable heart—
I will sift down to silence, in shadow rest.
Carducci, January 29, 1881
There is an excellent discussion of four Carducci poems in this 2018 article in New Criterion.
I hope you have enjoyed this first instalment of my guide to all 120 Nobel Prizes for Literature. I have increased my score of Nobel Laureates from 44 to 49 this week. What about you?
Next week, we will read the better-known winners from 1907 to 1913, beginning with the poet of British Empire, Rudyard Kipling (1907) and ending with the poet who sung the ruin of Britain’s Empire in India, Rabindranath Tagore (1913).