Understanding Nobel Prize: 1924---1926

[Ben Jackson]

The Nobel Prizes for 1924, 25, 26 was awarded to Wadlyslaw Reymont, Bernard Shaw and Grazia Deledda. The shortlist for 1924 was Thomas Mann, Thomas Hardy, Reymont and his countryman Stefan Zeromski. The 1925 Nobel wasn't awarded that year, so it was awarded in 1926. The combined shortlist for both years were Bernard Shaw, Johannes V Jensen, Deledda, Kostas Palamas, Arnold Bennet, James Frazer and Paul Claudel.

Thomas Hardy, in 1924, was dismissed for his "advanced age, " and the Nobel committee shifted their attention away from English language candidates, as their awarded Yeats the previous year. Thomas Mann was praised for his work Buddenbrooks, but waited for more production. Stefan Zeromski, who was Polish lobbyists main candidates, was dismissed because his recent work "Wind from the Sea," displayed anti-German sentiments. Raymont was awarded the Prize based on his masterpiece The Peasants which was seen as a powerful portrayal of European society.

Arnold Bennet was, in 1926, dismissed for uneven oeuvre, despite the committee's admiration for An Old Wives' Tale, Bennet's masterpiece. James Frazer was dismissed for "old age," while Paul Claudel was dismissed for "esoteric poetry." The commitee's lack of translated works of Kostas Palamas posed a problem to the committee as they "wasn't enough Greek experts in the Academy, " while Johannes V Jensen was "lack of humanity," in his works. Bernard Shaw's recent publication of one of his masterpieces St Joan, was decisive in Shaw's triumph, while Deledda was praised for her brilliant portrayal of the people of Sardinia, especially her portrayal of women's psychology and emotions, as advocated by committee member Henrik Schuk, the committee's Italian literature expert who was said to have discovered Deledda around 1912.

 

[Leseratte]

The Nobel Prizes for 1924, 25, 26 was awarded to Wadlyslaw Reymont, Bernard Shaw and Grazia Deledda. The shortlist for 1924 was Thomas Mann, Thomas Hardy, Reymont and his countryman Stefan Zeromski. The 1925 Nobel wasn't awarded that year, so it was awarded in 1926. The combined shortlist for both years were Bernard Shaw, Johannes V Jensen, Deledda, Kostas Palamas, Arnold Bennet, James Frazer and Paul Claudel.

Thomas Hardy, in 1924, was dismissed for his "advanced age, " and the Nobel committee shifted their attention away from English language candidates, as their awarded Yeats the previous year. Thomas Mann was praised for his work Buddenbrooks, but waited for more production. Stefan Zeromski, who was Polish lobbyists main candidates, was dismissed because his recent work "Wind from the Sea," displayed anti-German sentiments. Raymont was awarded the Prize based on his masterpiece The Peasants which was seen as a powerful portrayal of European society.

Arnold Bennet was, in 1926, dismissed for uneven oeuvre, despite the committee's admiration for An Old Wives' Tale, Bennet's masterpiece. James Frazer was dismissed for "old age," while Paul Claudel was dismissed for "esoteric poetry." The commitee's lack of translated works of Kostas Palamas posed a problem to the committee as they "wasn't enough Greek experts in the Academy, " while Johannes V Jensen was "lack of humanity," in his works. Bernard Shaw's recent publication of one of his masterpieces St Joan, was decisive in Shaw's triumph, while Deledda was praised for her brilliant portrayal of the people of Sardinia, especially her portrayal of women's psychology and emotions, as advocated by committee member Henrik Schuk, the committee's Italian literature expert who was said to have discovered Deledda around 1912.

This silly dismissal for old age. Hardy probably would have loved to win the award after the polemics about his novels.

 

[Ben Jackson]

The Nobel Prize for 1924 was awarded to Wladslaw Reymont "for his great national epic The Peasants." 18 names were suggested for the prize.

Shortlisted writers and their key works:

Thomas Hardy
Wladslaw Reymont
The Peasants
Ferments
The Commedienne

Hugo Hofmansthaal (same books evaluated in 1919 plus Difficult Man and The Incorruptible)

Thomas Mann (1929 winner)
Buddenbrooks
Royal Highness
Death in Venice
Tristan
Tonio Kroger
Reflections of a Non-Political
Blood of Walsungs

Bernard Shaw (1925 winner, same books evaluated in 1911 and 1921 plus Saint Joan)

Stefan Zeromski
Winds from the Sea
Homeless
Ashes
Faithful River
Sisyphean Labours
Prime of Life
Quail Has Escaped
Early Spring

First Time Nominees
Thomas Mann
Olav Dunn
Max Neubeurger

Nominees by Swedish Academy
Grazia Deledda, Paul Sabatier (Carl Bildt)
Bernard Shaw (Tor Hedberg)
Wladslaw Reymont (Anders Osterling)

Female nominated writers
Grazia Deledda
Mathilde Serao

Nominees that would become laureates

Bernard Shaw (1925 winner)
Thomas Mann (1929 winner)
Grazia Deledda (1926 winner)

 

[Ben Jackson]

In this case of Thomas Mann, he was described as "having the blend of both Goethe's variant Romanticism and contemporary novel." Per Hallstron and Anders Osterling were positive in their assessment, but Schuck and Karlfeldt were not in support of Mann's candidature, instead recommendng the Commitee to wait for new production. Hofmansthal, on the other hand, was rejected "because his art and stylistic masterpieces has some colorful and wobble elements and with their excessive and uneven poetic and human work which has failed to gain grounds in the form of Nobel Prize."

The main candidate which report was massive and insightful was Bernard Shaw. With influences of Ibsen and Strindberg, Shaw's works were known to present social issues to the fore in a much realistic technique drawn from his masters, with witty and satirical lens. In that year, he had published one of his masterpiece, a work that was already gaining classic status St Joan, inspired by the life of Joan of Arc, who was canonised by the Catholic church about two years ago. The Committee described Shaw:

As he despised every appoach of the Great Style. His imagination provoke and his literary loftiness appears as pure falsehood.

Concerning St Joan:

The fate of the central figure is not entirely that of great style. Shaw's so anxious that he avoids pathos: Joan's purity, courage and naive sovereignty and wide heart find itself with the heroine of historical brashness, and it becomes impaired without Shaw never adopting his imagination. Requirements are probably also in a (tragic grasp which destiny of martyrdom here goes great). However, his case, as the law court in French Justice, against drive to leave, has the naive pious Joanne in a dangerous heresy transformed in a protestant before the Reformation, that of which submissive son, whose church elongated to the soil become error, all this drove the play's logic and act with little dramatic content--- as intentions of content prevent other art. That the sovereignty which main character in the artistic, comically and natural movements actually great and filled with beauty but the blending is unharmonic.

With such report, Shaw's candidature was rejected in place of Reymont, who was chosen for his national epic The Peasants.

 

[Ben Jackson]

The Nobel Prize for Literature for 1925 was awarded to George Bernard Shaw "for his work which's marked by both idealism and humanity and its stimulating satire often being infused with singular poetic beauty." 21 writers were suggested.

Shortlisted writers and their key works
Johannes Jensen (1944 winner)
Himmerland Stories
Long Journey
Fall of the King
Poems (1906)
Aesthetics and Evolution

Bernard Shaw

First Time Nominees
Johannes Jensen
Giovanni Schembari
Paul Einer More
Paul Raynal
Ferenc Herczeg
Rudolf Maria Holzapfel

Nominees by Swedish Academy
Grazia Deledda (Henrik Schuck)
Gugliemo Ferrero (Nathan Soderblom, Verner Heidenstam)
Paul Raynal, Bernard Shaw (Tor Hedberg)
Paul Einer More (Nathan Soderblom)
Paul Sabatier (Carl Bildt)

Nominees by Nobel Laureates
Rudolfo Maria Holzapfel (Romain Rolland)

Nominees that would become Laureates
Johannes Jensen (1944 winner)
Grazia Deledda (1926 winner)
Sigrid Undset (1928 winner)

Nominated female writers
Mathilde Serao
Grazia Deledda
Sigrid Undset

 

[The Common Reader]

In this case of Thomas Mann, he was described as "having the blend of both Goethe's variant Romanticism and contemporary novel." Per Hallstron and Anders Osterling were positive in their assessment, but Schuck and Karlfeldt were not in support of Mann's candidature, instead recommendng the Commitee to wait for new production. Hofmansthal, on the other hand, was rejected "because his art and stylistic masterpieces has some colorful and wobble elements and with their excessive and uneven poetic and human work which has failed to gain grounds in the form of Nobel Prize."

The main candidate which report was massive and insightful was Bernard Shaw. With influences of Ibsen and Strindberg, Shaw's works were known to present social issues to the fore in a much realistic technique drawn from his masters, with witty and satirical lens. In that year, he had published one of his masterpiece, a work that was already gaining classic status St Joan, inspired by the life of Joan of Arc, who was canonised by the Catholic church about two years ago. The Committee described Shaw:

As he despised every appoach of the Great Style. His imagination provoke and his literary loftiness appears as pure falsehood.

Concerning St Joan:

The fate of the central figure is not entirely that of great style. Shaw's so anxious that he avoids pathos: Joan's purity, courage and naive sovereignty and wide heart find itself with the heroine of historical brashness, and it becomes impaired without Shaw never adopting his imagination. Requirements are probably also in a (tragic grasp which destiny of martyrdom here goes great). However, his case, as the law court in French Justice, against drive to leave, has the naive pious Joanne in a dangerous heresy transformed in a protestant before the Reformation, that of which submissive son, whose church elongated to the soil become error, all this drove the play's logic and act with little dramatic content--- as intentions of content prevent other art. That the sovereignty which main character in the artistic, comically and natural movements actually great and filled with beauty but the blending is unharmonic.

With such report, Shaw's candidature was rejected in place of Reymont, who was chosen for his national epic The Peasants.

Ben, you know far better than I do what the Nobel committee was thinking when it awarded Reymont, but for my money, the Nobel should have had something to do with his extraordinary look at the dark underside of industrialization and robber-baron era capitalism, The Promised Land [Ziemia obiecana] published in 1899. In the mid-seventies, Andrzej Wajda made one of his greatest films based closely on the novel:

The novel and the film are both particularly good at dramatizing the conflicts betweeen Łódź's Polish, German, and Jewish populations, all of them seething under Russian occupation. Both highly recommended.

 

[Ben Jackson]

In addition to what I had written up thread about Bernard Shaw's authorship, here's a more detailed report by Nobel Committee:

Young, inexhaustible idealism with firm loftiness, freshness and genuine humanity and yes even quality of subtlety. Behind wit and sophistication, a highly and serious, burning purpose, in his drive which spirit of establishment, dependence of imagination or of false or half sensation to liberate. However, this becomes negative of mankind, and he entirely (warm), which despite all his rationalistic views in human souls exist in a core, idealistic and human rationale status is retained.

Shaw's dramatic masterwork, with strict control of art. To be conscious of himself's to maintain new stand in accustomed degree after evaluating its own condition, independent of the development of drama till the contemporary period. The new aspect fails so highly in composition and form which rapidly and unconcerned scenic effect from one fails further demanding. However, so highly fresh theatre culture, his insistence rather in the immediacy with which the ideal in narrative becomes implemented and of every peculiarity of temperament and of intellect who,to himself, almost unparralled direction and unrestrained expression.

This temperament, one which lively and witty, that in which literature can discover and this in its unusual border's mobile and sharp intellect will in his pugnacity, provides common judgement to the mind and confound, in this aspect, distress to the poet that his gladiatorial a superficial observer fails scant similarity with the occurrence one can clowns.

The author of the appraisals attempt to express at this point his appreciation about the stricter control of great drama, setting forth wide and new supple and intrepid stage art just to become which in itself fails (what would this loosening which must stick predisposed, is the (seriously) and (highly inspiring) modern audience (to shackle and to gain). St Joan's quite rational in its annunciation of heroism in one for all true heroism stand in little favorable period, but also that various others in Shaw's works, that new provocative play) seems to have something rationally serious, which in its highest expression in the heroic narrative St Joan encounter. Although Shaw's works is accomplished in its founding towards humanity and idealism.

 

[Leseratte]

Ben, you know far better than I do what the Nobel committee was thinking when it awarded Reymont, but for my money, the Nobel should have had something to do with his extraordinary look at the dark underside of industrialization and robber-baron era capitalism, The Promised Land [Ziemia obiecana] published in 1899. In the mid-seventies, Andrzej Wajda made one of his greatest films based closely on the novel:

The novel and the film are both particularly good at dramatizing the conflicts betweeen Łódź's Polish, German, and Jewish populations, all of them seething under Russian occupation. Both highly recommended.

 

[Leseratte]

Ben, you know far better than I do what the Nobel committee was thinking when it awarded Reymont, but for my money, the Nobel should have had something to do with his extraordinary look at the dark underside of industrialization and robber-baron era capitalism, The Promised Land [Ziemia obiecana] published in 1899. In the mid-seventies, Andrzej Wajda made one of his greatest films based closely on the novel:

The novel and the film are both particularly good at dramatizing the conflicts betweeen Łódź's Polish, German, and Jewish populations, all of them seething under Russian occupation. Both highly recommended.

Loved the beginning to the rhythm of the factory machines.

 

[Leseratte]

In this case of Thomas Mann, he was described as "having the blend of both Goethe's variant Romanticism and contemporary novel." Per Hallstron and Anders Osterling were positive in their assessment, but Schuck and Karlfeldt were not in support of Mann's candidature, instead recommendng the Commitee to wait for new production. Hofmansthal, on the other hand, was rejected "because his art and stylistic masterpieces has some colorful and wobble elements and with their excessive and uneven poetic and human work which has failed to gain grounds in the form of Nobel Prize."

The main candidate which report was massive and insightful was Bernard Shaw. With influences of Ibsen and Strindberg, Shaw's works were known to present social issues to the fore in a much realistic technique drawn from his masters, with witty and satirical lens. In that year, he had published one of his masterpiece, a work that was already gaining classic status St Joan, inspired by the life of Joan of Arc, who was canonised by the Catholic church about two years ago. The Committee described Shaw:

As he despised every appoach of the Great Style. His imagination provoke and his literary loftiness appears as pure falsehood.

Concerning St Joan:

The fate of the central figure is not entirely that of great style. Shaw's so anxious that he avoids pathos: Joan's purity, courage and naive sovereignty and wide heart find itself with the heroine of historical brashness, and it becomes impaired without Shaw never adopting his imagination. Requirements are probably also in a (tragic grasp which destiny of martyrdom here goes great). However, his case, as the law court in French Justice, against drive to leave, has the naive pious Joanne in a dangerous heresy transformed in a protestant before the Reformation, that of which submissive son, whose church elongated to the soil become error, all this drove the play's logic and act with little dramatic content--- as intentions of content prevent other art. That the sovereignty which main character in the artistic, comically and natural movements actually great and filled with beauty but the blending is unharmonic.

With such report, Shaw's candidature was rejected in place of Reymont, who was chosen for his national epic The Peasants.

The blending of the committees comments is sometimes very unharmonic.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Ben, you know far better than I do what the Nobel committee was thinking when it awarded Reymont, but for my money, the Nobel should have had something to do with his extraordinary look at the dark underside of industrialization and robber-baron era capitalism, The Promised Land [Ziemia obiecana] published in 1899. In the mid-seventies, Andrzej Wajda made one of his greatest films based closely on the novel:

The novel and the film are both particularly good at dramatizing the conflicts betweeen Łódź's Polish, German, and Jewish populations, all of them seething under Russian occupation. Both highly recommended.

I think the Committee was, in refrencing specifically on The Peasants, was looking at a specific work that captured the national spirit of Poland. I read articles on Reymont when critics complained of his uneven quality, but praised the novel you mentioned and the epic. Secondly, the Committee couldn't find a suitable candidate, though the lack of quality writers nominated at the time. Mann was probably too young and with few works under his belt, the skeptcism of Shaw and controversial nature of Zeromski, which I haven't read yet, and advanced age of Hardy and committee's opposition to avant-gardism in the works of Hofmansthal posed problems for the Committee. It would be one of the rare cases when a particular work of a Laureate would be singled out in presentation speech, the other times was Du Gard and his The Thibaults and Sholokhov and his Don epic.

This novel of Reymont is it in English Translation? Because the work of Reymont I know of in English is The Peasants, recently translated in 2022.

 

[Ben Jackson]

The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 was awarded to Grazia Deledda "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life of her native island and with depths and sympathy deal with human problems in general." 29 writers were suggested.

Shortlisted writers and their Key works
Grazia Deledda

Arnold Bennett
Old Wives Tale
Anna of Five Towns
Clayhanger Family
Riceyman Steps
These Twain

James Frazer
Golden Bough

Paul Claudel
Tidings Brought to Mary
Satin Slipper
Five Great Odes
East I Know
Poems of War
Break of North

Kostas Palamas
Iambs and Anapests
Songs of Fatherland
To Athena
Eyes of my Soul
Grave
Motionless Life
Twelves Lays of Gypsy
Wolves, Two Flowers
Passionate Secret of Whispers
Satrical Excercises

Vincent Huidobro
Altazor
Poems

Mathilde Serao
Fantasy
Conquest of Rome
Life and Adventures of Ricardo Joanna
Land of Cockaigne
The Harvest

First Time Nominees
Arnold Bennett
Pyotor Krastov
Sofia Casanova
Vincent Huidobro
Avetis Aharonian
Edvaed Westermack
Ada Negri
Juan Zorrilla de San Martin
Karl Kraus
George Bonne
JH Rosyaine
Kostas Palamas
Johannes Jorgensen
Concha Espina de la Serna
Paul Claudel

Nominees nominated by Swedish Academy
Paul Raynal (Tor Hedberg)

Nominees by Nobel Laureates
Concha Espina, Sofia Casanova (Jacinto Benevente)

Nominees that would become Laureates
Sigrid Undset (1928 winner)

Nominated female writers
Sigrid Undset
Mathilde Serao
Ada Negri
Sofia Casanova
Concha Espina

Nobel Committee Members
Per Hallstrom (Chairman)
Erik Karlfeldt
Anders Osterling
Henrik Schuck

 

[Ben Jackson]

I just want to add that Mathilde Serao was rejected because of the influences of fascist leader Benito Mussolini. From information gathered, some Italian officials in the fascist government had written a letter to Committee to discredit Serao's candidature due to her recent work The Harvest which had criticised the fascist government. On the other hand, the Nobel Committee had rejected Huidobro, who became the first Latin American writer to be shortlisted for his "fairly cumbersome and inaccessible structure of poetry." Paul Claudel, was rejected for his "strange intensity, who with strong religious personality, of his difficult, inaccessible art with which one can find the esoteric poetry with publicity of religious aesthetic, even with unadulterated but subtle stylistic work of musical biblical verse. His langauge departing from the traditional form of clarity." With Palamas' pleasant lyricism welcomed by the Nobel Committee, his candidature faced issues of linguistic as committee lacked Greek experts which lead to bypassing one of Greek poetic masters, Deledda was chosen "because her latter composition's refined and deepened and which lay in the idealistic view of life and Its moral problems, her compassion for suffering and interesting psychological aspect. Her soft harmonic style and her ability in constructing her narrative provides grounds to award the prize for a new concept: towards plastic vividness."

 

[Leseratte]

The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 was awarded to Grazia Deledda "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life of her native island and with depths and sympathy deal with human problems in general." 29 writers were suggested.

Shortlisted writers and their Key works
Grazia Deledda

Arnold Bennett
Old Wives Tale
Anna of Five Towns
Clayhanger Family
Riceyman Steps
These Twain

James Frazer
Golden Bough

Paul Claudel
Tidings Brought to Mary
Satin Slipper
Five Great Odes
East I Know
Poems of War
Break of North

Kostas Palamas
Iambs and Anapests
Songs of Fatherland
To Athena
Eyes of my Soul
Grave
Motionless Life
Twelves Lays of Gypsy
Wolves, Two Flowers
Passionate Secret of Whispers
Satrical Excercises

Vincent Huidobro
Altazor
Poems

Mathilde Serao
Fantasy
Conquest of Rome
Life and Adventures of Ricardo Joanna
Land of Cockaigne
The Harvest

First Time Nominees
Arnold Bennett
Pyotor Krastov
Sofia Casanova
Vincent Huidobro
Avetis Aharonian
Edvaed Westermack
Ada Negri
Juan Zorrilla de San Martin
Karl Kraus
George Bonne
JH Rosyaine
Kostas Palamas
Johannes Jorgensen
Concha Espina de la Serna
Paul Claudel

Nominees nominated by Swedish Academy
Paul Raynal (Tor Hedberg)

Nominees by Nobel Laureates
Concha Espina, Sofia Casanova (Jacinto Benevente)

Nominees that would become Laureates
Sigrid Undset (1928 winner)

Nominated female writers
Sigrid Undset
Mathilde Serao
Ada Negri
Sofia Casanova
Concha Espina

Nobel Committee Members
Per Hallstrom (Chairman)
Erik Karlfeldt
Anders Osterling
Henrik Schuck

Enthused to see that Huidobro was nominated at least once for the Nobel.

 

[The Common Reader]

I think the Committee was, in refrencing specifically on The Peasants, was looking at a specific work that captured the national spirit of Poland. I read articles on Reymont when critics complained of his uneven quality, but praised the novel you mentioned and the epic. Secondly, the Committee couldn't find a suitable candidate, though the lack of quality writers nominated at the time. Mann was probably too young and with few works under his belt, the skeptcism of Shaw and controversial nature of Zeromski, which I haven't read yet, and advanced age of Hardy and committee's opposition to avant-gardism in the works of Hofmansthal posed problems for the Committee. It would be one of the rare cases when a particular work of a Laureate would be singled out in presentation speech, the other times was Du Gard and his The Thibaults and Sholokhov and his Don epic.

This novel of Reymont is it in English Translation? Because the work of Reymont I know of in English is The Peasants, recently translated in 2022.

It must have been twenty years ago that I was reading The Promised Land, I don't remember whether I came across an English-language translation, but I think there must be one somewhere. Whether it is at all recent or in print is another question.

Amazingly, Amazon sells a DIY paint-by-numbers of Jacek Malczewski's famous portrait of Reymont: https://www.amazon.com/Painting-Portrait-Wladyslaw-Malczewski-Paint/dp/B0CC1BFHST?th=1

 

[The Common Reader]

The portrait dates from 1905.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Enthused to see that Huidobro was nominated at least once for the Nobel.

Had he won the Prize in 1926, he could have been the youngest ever Laureate (36). The books he published before the year under review: Echoes of the Soul, Songs in the Night, La Pagodas Occultas, Grotto of Silences, Mirrors of Water, Horizon Carrie, Adan.

 

[Leseratte]

Had he won the Prize in 1926, he could have been the youngest ever Laureate (36). The books he published before the year under review: Echoes of the Soul, Songs in the Night, La Pagodas Occultas, Grotto of Silences, Mirrors of Water, Horizon Carrie, Adan.

I suspect he is more or less forgotten outside his country. But his constructivism poetry seems very innovative. Wanted to show some examples, but of course they have taken the bilingual (Spanish-English) edition out.
Found however, this editorial evaluation with which I fully agree:
"Altazor is increasingly seen as one of the key works of the 20th-century Hispanic avant-garde in poetry. Apparently put together over several years, it looks back in part to the ground-breaking volume Ecuatorial (1918), imbibes a number of futurist tropes from that same era, takes in the surrealist wave that took hold in the mid-1920s, and ends with shattered pieces of language that appear to admit of the impossibility of finishing the work coherently, or even coherent speech, while also implying a more pessimistic view of the world than that which Huidobro would have espoused as a younger man during the heyday of Cubist Paris. In amongst all this, the poem’s eponymous protagonist flies high and low, taking in the heavens and the depths of hell, following both Dedalus and Orpheus. While the book evidently left his contemporaries puzzled, and had minimal initial impact, Altazor today looks uncannily prophetic, even post-modern, in its emphasis on verbal games and trickery, on defamiliarisation, and being comfortable with a lack of any conclusion. Huidobro even boasted of this lack in a letter to Luis Buñuel, referencing Lautréamont and Rimbaud as other “failures” whose company he was glad to keep."

Shearsman Poetry Books | Poetry in Translation | Vicente Huidobro

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