Nobel Prize in Literature 1958

[Ben Jackson]

42 writers was nominated for the Nobel Prize this year, which was awarded to Boris Pasternak, best known for his famous novel Doctor Zhivago, and for his poems My Sister, Life. Future Laureates nominated this year include Steinbeck, Perse, Sartre, Sholokhov. Shortlisted writers this year was Blixen, Alberto Moravia, Sholokhov and Pasternak.

Sholokhov was dismissed for his distorted reality in the novel And Quiet flows the Don, a work that also moved away from historical truth and basically intended to mislead and confuse. Alberto Moravia was n the lead before the famous CIA intervention (sending a letter to Academy and threatening them with exposing documents from the previous years), ensured Pasternak's victory. Pasternak's publication of Doctor Zhivago was well-received in the West and other parts of Europe, but was condemned in Soviet Union. The novel was a good chance for the West to get back at Soviet Union, as wind of Cold War was about to blow.

Pasternak, for me, is an outstanding choice, in as much as I haven't read Sholokhov's masterpiece, hailed even by writers like Doris Lessing, and Moravia. Doctor Zhivago and My Sister, Life, are excellent works.

 

[Papageno]

Alberto Moravia was n the lead before the famous CIA intervention (sending a letter to Academy and threatening them with exposing documents from the previous years), ensured Pasternak's victory

Wow, I'd love to know more about that! In fact, in my own view, not awarding Moravia (for me personally one of the finest writers of the 20th century) was one of the SA's most appalling errors, so it would be thrilling to find out it is actually CIA's fault! Is there an article or something like that where one could learn more?

 

[Ben Jackson]

Wow, I'd love to know more about that! In fact, in my own view, not awarding Moravia (for me personally one of the finest writers of the 20th century) was one of the SA's most appalling errors, so it would be thrilling to find out it is actually CIA's fault! Is there an article or something like that where one could learn more?

I think there's some information about this decision if you check out Doctor Zhivago (novel) on Wikipedia. Which of Moravia's books have you read and which one do you think is the best?

 

[Liam]

There are very interesting discussions still raging about whether or not Sholokhov plagiarized. From everything I have read, I must say that the evidence is convincing both ways. He was, however, an asshole and a communist party toady. I must say that he is my least favorite Nobel winner of all time. Pasternak is a deeper and more humane writer, writing in a very poetic language.

 

[Papageno]

I think there's some information about this decision if you check out Doctor Zhivago (novel) on Wikipedia. Which of Moravia's books have you read and which one do you think is the best?

Thank you, I'll check it out!

As for Moravia, he's one of my all time favorites. He simply clicked with me in a way few writers do. My top picks would be:

Gli indifferenti ("The Indifferent People" 1929) - a chamber novel with only 5 characters which encapsulates with great subtlety the moral and social collapse in the wake of the rise of fascism. I personally think it is the best novel about what fascism does to society that never mentions fascism explicitly. Even more so when one remembers that Moravia wrote it when he was only 22 years old!

Then there are two famous novel tracing the fates of women through the horrors of WW2 - La Romana (1947) and La Ciociara (1957), both made into movies starring two greatest Italian actresses of the time: Gina Lollobrigida in the adaptation of the first, Sophia Loren of the second.

Also about WW2 is Il Conformista (1951), where Moravia traces, with his signature psychological acuity, the life and the character of a young fascist bureaucrat.

Very different, but equally interesting is, for example, his novel Il Disprezzo (1954) - it is again truly a chamber novel. There are only three characters: a man, his wife, and his boss who is seducing his wife. The novel is in a sense a loose retelling of the Odyssey, and just like the great Greek epic, contains countless ambiguities. It seems that no two readers of the novel (at least the ones I spoke with) can agree whose side are they on, and what is the sense of this book. I like to think of it as an acute portrayal of a slow deterioration of the relationship between two ultimately incompatible spouses, but opinions differ.

There are many more extraordinary novels he wrote, and I don't think you can go wrong no matter where you start, but I have to at least mention Agostino - a coming-of-age story about a boy coming to terms with his (and his mother's) sexuality on a beach one hot summer. The story manages to veer all the time between the tender and the threatening, the beautiful and the disturbing.

It is incredible how different all his novels are, but to each story he managed to bring supreme psychological insight and social commentary.

 

[Cleanthess]

There are very interesting discussions still raging about whether or not Sholokhov plagiarized. From everything I have read, I must say that the evidence is convincing both ways. He was, however, an asshole and a communist party toady. I must say that he is my least favorite Nobel winner of all time. Pasternak is a deeper and more humane writer, writing in a very poetic language.

I read this a long time ago, so it might not be totally accurate.
Pasternak was being followed by government informers everywhere he went, to see if they could catch him saying anything that could be misunderstood or misreported to the authorities to have him imprisoned for seditious, Western-sympathizing or anti-proletarian speech.
Pasternak had a conference scheduled for a certain night. He climbed to the stage among applause. Pasternak said only one word: 30.
And the entire audience began to recite Pasternak's translation of Shakespeare's 30th sonnet:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought...

 

[Ben Jackson]

Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Literature Prize "for his important acheivement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of great Russian epic trdition." Announced on 23rd October, 42 writers were suggested.

Some Facts:

First time nominees
Salvador Quasimodo
Ivo Andric
Elio Vittorini
James Gould Cozzens
John Hersey
Fernand Baldensperger
Elizabeth Bowen
Rudolf Alexander Schroder
John Cowper Powys
Junichiro Tanizaki
Lionel Trilling
Maurice Bowra
Robert Penn Warren
Georges Simenon
Junzaburo Nishiwaki
Tennessee Williams
Miroslav Krleza

Nominated women

Elizabeth Bowen
Karen Blixen
Marie Under
Gertrude Von Le Fort
Edith Sitwell

Nominations from Academy Members:

Mikhail Sholokhov--- Harry Martinson and Johannes Edfelt
Ignazio Silone--- Dag Hammarskjold
Karen Blixen--- Elias Wessen

Nominations from Nobel Laureates:
Rudolf Alexander Schroder and St John Perse--- T S Eliot
Junichiro Tanizaki-- Pearl Buck
Martin Buber--- Hermann Hesse

Nominees that would later become Laureates:
Jean Paul Sartre (Nobel Laureate 1964)
Salvador Quasimodo (Nobel Laureate 1959)
Ivo Andric (Nobel Laureate 1961)
St John Perse (Nobel Laureate 1960)
Mikhail Sholokhov (Nobel Laureate 1965)
John Steinbeck (Nobel Laureate 1962)

Famous writers nominated (which include former finalists):

Tarjel Vessas
Ricardo Bacchelli
Alfonso Reyes
Carl Sandburg
Graham Greene
Giusppe Ungaretti
Andre Malraux
Ramon Menedez Pidal
Thornton Wilder
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Robert Frost

Books highligted by the Nobel Committee:
Albert Moravia: Time of Indifference, Woman of Rome, Conformist, Two Women, Fancy Dress Party
Boris Pasternak: My Sister, Life, Doctor Zhivago, Wide Open Spaces, Themes and Variations, Safe Conduct, Childhood of Luvers
Karen Blixen: Out of Africa, Last Tales, Winter Tales, Seven Gothic Tales
Mikhail Sholokhov: And Quiet Flows the Don, Virgin Soil Upturned

Nobel Committee Members:
Anders Osterling
Sigfried Siwertz
Hjalmar Gullberg
Dag Hammarskjold