Nobel Lectures and Banquet Speeches

[liehtzu]

They're all available at the Nobel website, handily.

Some decide not to give a lecture, but do deliver a banquet speech. Others just say thanks, grab the Oscar, and walk back to the airport. Others grumble at what a bother it is, or are ill, and don't show up. Pasternak wasn't allowed to accept it by the Soviets, nor was Solzhenitsyn (who wrote his speech a couple years after the fact, when safely tucked away in Vermont). I've quoted a fair amount from Solzhenitsyn's here, which is right up there with my favorites, even if the translation on the Nobel site pleases me a lot less than Alex Klimoff's, which can be found in book form (in the collection East and West, which also includes Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address). Also: Camus, Boll, Walcott, Montale, Perse ("It is enough for the poet to be the bad conscience of his age.")... I've even tracked down one or two writers' works just because I liked their Nobel speeches.

So, if anyone else here reads these things, what your favorites are and why? Or, maybe more interestingly: any that you can't stand?

 

[pesahson]

I read some, but only of those authors I already knew. One of my favorite quotes is from the banquet speech of Giorgos Seferis:

"In our gradually shrinking world, everyone is in need of all the others. We must look for man wherever we can find him. When on his way to Thebes Oedipus encountered the Sphinx, his answer to its riddle was: «Man». That simple word destroyed the monster. We have many monsters to destroy. Let us think of the answer of Oedipus."

Full speech http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1963/seferis-speech.html

 

[adaorardor]

They're all available at the Nobel website, handily.

Some decide not to give a lecture, but do deliver a banquet speech. Others just say thanks, grab the Oscar, and walk back to the airport. Others grumble at what a bother it is, or are ill, and don't show up. Pasternak wasn't allowed to accept it by the Soviets, nor was Solzhenitsyn (who wrote his speech a couple years after the fact, when safely tucked away in Vermont). I've quoted a fair amount from Solzhenitsyn's here, which is right up there with my favorites, even if the translation on the Nobel site pleases me a lot less than Alex Klimoff's, which can be found in book form (in the collection East and West, which also includes Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address). Also: Camus, Boll, Walcott, Montale, Perse ("It is enough for the poet to be the bad conscience of his age.")... I've even tracked down one or two writers' works just because I liked their Nobel speeches.

So, if anyone else here reads these things, what your favorites are and why? Or, maybe more interestingly: any that you can't stand?

Great idea for a post. I'll be back later with more thoughts. One quick thing, though: I thought that they used to just have Banquet speeches, and then at some pt they started doing a Lecture, too, which is longer and more of an intellectual statement, whereas the Banquet Speech now is more of a quick thank-you to the Swedes. At least that's what it looks like from the website.

 

[Daniel del Real]

Two of the most memorable speeches I've read are the ones from the two Japanese laureates: Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburo Oé. A beautiful description of the Japan of the fist half of the XX century is contained in Kawabata's Japan the Beautiful and Myself. 26 years later, Kenzaburo Oé complements and replies to Kawabata's speech with the superb Japan the Ambiguous and Myself in which the post-war Japan is presented an analysed through the eyes of one of his most vivid critics and admirers.
There are a lot of great speeches in the history of the Nobel Prize, but I think I'd stick to these two as the best.

 

[Ben Jackson]

This is an old Nobel thread so I got to drop my opinion on this one.

In 2019, I decided to read all the Nobel Laureates Lectures and Banquet Speeches, though they were some laureates who didn't deliver theirs: Prudhomme, Mommsen, Mistral/Echegaray, Carducci, Kipling, Pasternak, Sartre, Beckett, White and Canetti are some Laureates who failed to show up for their lectures. Most of the laureates lectures' common themes include role of poetry/poet, art and the state, art and artists in society and life, the difficulties artist face to compose their arts and all that jazz. But it's the manner at which the Laureates delivered the lectures that makes one to rank certain Laureates lectures above the other. And with Ernaux's lecture due to be presented in the three and half weeks, here are my favourite:

Faulkner's Lecture "on artist as booster of human heart," the quote "I don't believe in the end of man, " has become one of my favourite quotes.

Coetzee Lecture "He and his Man, " where he uses the story of Robinson Crusoe and Defoe as allegory for the struggle of the artist in life.

Betrand Russell Lecture "What Desires are Politically Important" examines desire as the central motive driving human behaviour and his exploration of existential desire, which is infinite in man, through four dimensions: Acquisitiveness, to possess as much as possible, Rivalry, which is stronger than acquisitiveness but upstages human narcissism, Vanity, which include search for personal glory, and Love of power, which makes man to be in control of or influence events and which is akin to vanity.

Camus' Lecture: existential lecture about the responsibility of the artist to either refuse to lie about what one knows or become resistant to oppression. Also advocates the artist to seek truth and liberty I'm his craft.

Pablo Neruda's Lecture: Towards the Splendid City, which, through the motif of journey, allegorizes the writer's connection to earth, soul and community.

Other Lectures I admire include Brodsky's lecture, about the poet in society, work, aesthetics/ethics, Solzhenistyn's lecture about unification, healing and quality of art and its significance for mankind, Le Clezio's Lecture In Forest of Paradoxes, which alludes Swedish writer Stig Dagerman, the place from which the artist must not attempt to escape, and Claude Simon's Lecture which is reaction to his Nobel win, style of writing and evolution of the novel and painting and examination of literary paradoxes, and Cela's Eulogy to Fable, which talks about time, writing in solitude and evolution of man's language. There are some lectures I would re-read definitely, like the Lectures of Elytis, Boll and Eucken.

To be hhonest, there are so many great lectures that I would love to list, but I think the ones I have listed are okay.