Nobel Prize in Literature 1967

M

Marba

Reader
In 1967 the Nobel Prize was awarded to Miguel Ángel Asturias.

Like they do at the beginning of every year the Swedish Academy has now made the list of those nominated 50 years ago available, in 1967 they were 72 individuals (one less than in 1966).

http://www.svenskaakademien.se/akademien/akademiens-arkiv/nobelarkivet-1967

And likewise Kaj Schueler at Svenska Dagbladet has been reading the reports:

https://www.svd.se/hemliga-dokument-borges-ratades-for-bortglomd-forfattare/av/kaj-schueler

The Nobel website usually takes some time to get it all into their system so I’m not sure of the official shortlist, but from Schueler’s article it seems as there was a split in the Nobel Committee with Chairman of the Committee Anders Österling suggesting:

  1. Graham Greene
  2. Yasunari Kawabata (would become the winner in 1968)
  3. W. H. Auden

Eyvind Johnson, Henry Olsson and Erik Lindegren opposed this and suggested a list which Karl Ragnar Gierow also voted for:

  1. Miguel Ángel Asturias (winner)/Jorge Luis Borges
  2. W. H. Auden
  3. Yasunari Kawabata (would become the winner in 1968)

Somewhere along the discussions the SA dropped the idea of sharing the prize between two writers as they had done in 1966 and Miguel Ángel Asturias became the 1967 Nobel laureate.

Some other facts:

Nominees who would win later:

  • Yasunari Kawabata (1968 winner)
  • Samuel Beckett (1969 winner)
  • Pablo Neruda (1971 winner)
  • Eugenio Montale (1975 winner)
  • Saul Bellow (1976 winner)
  • Claude Simon (1985 winner)

Most nominations:

  • José María Pemán (8)
  • Samuel Beckett (6) (winner in 1969)
  • Jorge Amado (5)
  • André Malraux (5)
  • Tarjei Vesaas (4)
  • Simon Vestdijk (4)
  • Judith Wright (4)

First-time nominees:

  • Jorge Amado
  • Carlos Drummond de Andrade
  • Saul Bellow (winner in 1976)
  • Emil Boyson
  • Arturo Capdevila
  • Ivan Drach
  • Rabbe Enckell
  • Hans Magnus Enzensberger
  • Jean Genet
  • Lawrence Sargent Hall
  • Friedrich Georg Jünger
  • Basij Khalkhali
  • Lina Kostenko
  • György Lukács
  • Germán Pardo García
  • André Pézard
  • Claude Simon (winner in 1985)
  • Pavlo Tychyna

Nominations from members of the SA:

  • Carlos Drummond de Andrade (by Gunnar Ekelöf)
  • Miguel Ángel Asturias (by Henry Olsson) (winner)
  • Jorge Luis Borges (by Henry Olsson)
  • Alejo Carpentier (by Lars Gyllensten)
  • Rómulo Gallegos (by Lars Gyllensten)
  • Jean Genet (by Karl Ragnar Gierow)
  • Witold Gombrowicz (by Henry Olsson)
  • Graham Greene (by Karl Ragnar Gierow)
  • Eugène Ionesco (by Karl Ragnar Gierow)
  • György Lukács (by Erik Lindegren)
  • Yukio Mishima (by Harry Martinson)
  • Konstantin Paustovsky (by Eyvind Johnson)
  • Claude Simon (by Erik Lindegren) (winner in 1985)
  • Arnulf Øverland (by Eyvind Johnson)

Nominated women (a raise from 3 in 1966):

  • Marie Luise Kaschnitz
  • Lina Kostenko
  • Katherine Anne Porter
  • Anna Seghers
  • Judith Wright

Nominations from former winners:

  • Samuel Beckett (winner in 1969) (nominated by 1965 winner Nelly Sachs)

Oldest and youngest nominees:

  • Ramón Menéndez Pidal (born 1869, 98 years)
  • Ivan Drach (born 1936, 31 years)

Still alive (and hence possibly in the running…):

  • Hans Magnus Enzensberger (born 1929)
  • Lina Kostenko (born 1930)
  • Ivan Drach (born 1936)
 
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Bartleby

Bartleby

Moderator
Interesting! Nice to see that our Drummond was first nominated so early, sad he never got it, though...

And I'd love to know why Borges wasn't awarded the prize that year...

And I was kinda surprised to see Hans Magnus Enzensberger being nominated so early, he's that old!
 
redhead

redhead

Blahblahblah
Wonder how they went from those shortlists to just Asturias winning?

Also, cool to see Simon nominated almost 20 years before his win, although I believe at that point in time, with exception to The Georgics, the majority of his most acclaimed pre-Nobel work was out.
 
garzuit

garzuit

Former Member
Marba said:

Nominations from members of the SA:
  • Miguel Ángel Asturias (by Henry Olsson) (winner)
  • Jorge Luis Borges (by Henry Olsson)
  • Alejo Carpentier (by Lars Gyllensten)
  • Rómulo Gallegos (by Lars Gyllensten)

Click to expand...

If the Academy was going to give the prize to a Latin American writer and if they were going to snub Borges again, at least they should've given the prize to Alejo Carpentier, who influenced all the Boom writers and many generations afterwards, and not Asturias.
 
Bartleby

Bartleby

Moderator
I wonder when the 1968 nominations will be revealed. The shortlist mustn't be so different from last year's, but the full nominations are always fun to see, the new names etc...
 
Daniel del Real

Daniel del Real

Moderator
Thanks for the link Alter. No surprises at the short list. What caught my attention is the name of poet Junzaburo Nishiwaki, first time I've heard of him.
 
redhead

redhead

Blahblahblah
Thanks ALRV. Interesting short list, probably one of the strongest I've seen; they really couldn't have gone wrong with any of those.

I forget where I read this, but I recall reading once that part of the reason they went with Kawabata instead of Mishima was the turbulent leftist movements of the sixties. One of the experts the Swedish Academy turned to had begun to distrust the youth and held Mishima's age against him--the irony being that Mishima was an incredibly conservative figure.

Edit: Found that source: https://imgur.com/a/xrg7X

Not sure how reliable it is, but I'd say Keene is most trustworthy than some random blog or something.
 
Daniel del Real

Daniel del Real

Moderator
redheadshadz said:
Thanks ALRV. Interesting short list, probably one of the strongest I've seen; they really couldn't have gone wrong with any of those.

I forget where I read this, but I recall reading once that part of the reason they went with Kawabata instead of Mishima was the turbulent leftist movements of the sixties. One of the experts the Swedish Academy turned to had begun to distrust the youth and held Mishima's age against him--the irony being that Mishima was an incredibly conservative figure.

Edit: Found that source: https://imgur.com/a/xrg7X

Not sure how reliable it is, but I'd say Keene is most trustworthy than some random blog or something.
Click to expand...

From what book are those excerpts? It looks very interesting, besides I've always wanted to read Donald Keene.
 
redhead

redhead

Blahblahblah
It's from Five Modern Japanese Novelists (who maybe aren't so modern now). The others discusses in it are Tanizaki, Kawabata, Kobo Abe, and Ryotaro Shiba, who I hadn't heard of before.
 
OverTheMountains

OverTheMountains

Reader
I'm curious about that article. I don't necessarily doubt the short list it is building up, but there is no information available on the Nobel website about the 1968 nomination process (neither is there anything up about 1967).

https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/redirector/?redir=archive/

Either the journalist is at the archives and conducting the research themselves, or they are relying on uncited (unciteable) sources. I am hopeful of the former instead of the latter.
 
Bartleby

Bartleby

Moderator
I wanted so much to be able to read this article, but the website requires we pay a subscription to read it, only allowing us to see a little preview - in it, they share that the academy in 68 was divided between awarding beckett and malraux. And therefore kawabata's choice was a bit of a compromise, the way of uniting the whole academy.

https://www.svd.se/vacker-fragan--syftet-med-nobelstiftelsens-ravspel

I hope the SA put these considerations and the full list of nominations on their website soon...
 
B

Ben Jackson

Well-known member
Miguel Asturias was awarded the Nobel Prize In 1967 "for his vivid literary acheivement, deep-rooted in national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America." 69 writers were nominated for the Nobel Prize, the shortlist was:

Greene
Asturias
Borges
Kawabata
Auden

"Greene is an accomplished observer whose experience encompass global diversity of external environs, above all mysterious aspect of inner world, human conscience and anxiety and nightmares," says Anders Osterling. He was strong advocate for Greene but the other committee members felt awarding the Prize to Asturias, who Osterling refereed to as "narrowly limited on his evolutionary subject world," would make the Prize international. Borges was dismissed for "works too exclusive and artificial in his ingenious miniature art, " and Auden was dismissed for his "best work was too far behind." Osterling was silenced about Kawabata.
 
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