Understanding Nobel Prize: Policy of Neutrality 1913---1915

[Ben Jackson]

The criteria for the period 1913-1919, championed by comittee's chairman Harald Hjarne was called "Policy of Neutrality, " which was "endeavouring to mitigate abuses and excess resulting from 'nationalistic tendencies in modern literature and struggle for power in general'"" assserting "transcendent of literature over political unrest of the period and function as 'Int'l arbitrator of Scholarship,' refusing to allow its serenity to be disturbed by contact with profane concerns." This period shifted belligerent powers outside and giving smaller count a chance, hence the selection of Scandanivian writers.

The Nobel Prizes for 1913 and 1915 were awarded to India's Tagore and France's to Romain Rolland. The shortlist for these two years were: French Literaty critic Emile Faguet, Anatole France, Juhani Aho, Thomas Hardy and Tagore, while 1915's shortlist consisted of Galdos, Rolland, Henri Bergson and Dmitry Merezhkovsky.

Translation of Tagore's masterpiece Gitanjali (Songs Offerings), was key in Tagore's triumph. The committee expressed their opinion that no poet in European tradition since Goethe's death in 1832 could rival Tagore. Tagore was seen as not just a brilliant successor to Goethe, but also to Keats and Tennyson. Anatole France was felt as too "sceptic," while Thomas Hardy was considered too "pessimistic." The committee felt that Aho's works was "more like awarding the Nobel to Swedish Literature, as Finnish Literature was considered as subsidiary of Swedish literature at the time." The committee chose Emile Faguet, but the Academy, once again, overturned the Committee's decision and awarded Tagore, hence becoming the first Non-European laureate.

In 1915, Bergson was dismissed for been "for militant French patroitism, which prevented him from being honored during the war." Merezhovsky was dismissed for his "uneven works." Galdos was chosen, after Harald Hjarne, himself a historian, praised Galdos' historical novels, by the committee, but the Academy found Rolland's pacifist stance appealing and, yet again, disagreed over the committee's choice and awarded Rolland instead.

 

[Ben Jackson]

The Nobel Prize for Literature for 1913 was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore "because of his profound sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which with consumate skill which made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words a part of the Literature of the West." Tagore, announced as the Laureate on 9th October, became the first non-European to be awarded. 28 writers were nominated for the Prize this year.

First Time Nominees:

Rabindranath Tagore
Henrik Pontoppidan
Grazia Deledda
Edward Snowden
John Lobbock
Francis Welles
Emile Faguet
Jakob Knudsen
Edmund Picard
Benito Perez Galdos

Nominees by Swedish Academy members

Carl Spitteler (Nobel Committee)
Ernest Lavisse (Hans Hildebrand)
Jacob Knudsen (Per Hallstrom)
John Aveburg (Hans Hildebrand)
Henri Bergson (Vitalis Norstrom)

Shortlisted Writers:

Grazia Deledda (1926 winner)
After the Divorce
Reeds in the Wind
Ashes
Elias Portulu
Evil Way
Star of the Orient

Thomas Hardy (same works evaluated in 1910 plus Poems of Past and Present and Times' Laughingstocks)

Anatole France (1921 winner, same works evaluated in 1904, 1909 and 1910 plus Gods Want Blood)

Benito Perez Galdos

Misericordia
Marianela
Fortunata and Jacinta
Miau
Torment
Dona Perfecta

Emile Faguet

Moralists and Political Thinkers of 19th Century
Politica Questions
Flaubert
Notes of Contemporary Theatre
Ancient Drama, Modern Drama
French Poetry
L'Arte de Lire
Le Feminism
Le Pacifism
Cult of Incompetence

Rabindranath Tagore
Gora
Gitanjali
Post Office
Bunch of Stories
Golden Boat
Sacrifice
Blood Oleanders

Verner Heidenstam (1913 winner)
Pilgrimage and Wandering Years
Charles Men
Poems
Hans Alieus
One People
Forest Whispers
Balbo Inheritance
Tree of the Folkung

Nomination from Nobel Laureate
Edmund Picard (Maurice Maeterlinck)

Nominees that would win the Nobel Prize:

Carl Spitteler (1919 winner)
Grazia Deledda (1926 winner)
Anatole France (1921 winner)
Henrik Pontoppidan (1917 winner)
Verner Heidenstam (1916 winner)
Karl Gjellerup (1917 winner)
Henri Bergson (1927 winner)

Grazia Deledda was the only nominated female writer, while Sven Hedin was the only Academy member to be nominated.

 

[Leseratte]

The Nobel Prize for Literature for 1913 was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore "because of his profound sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which with consumate skill which made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words a part of the Literature of the West." Tagore, announced as the Laureate on 9th October, became the first non-European to be awarded. 28 writers were nominated for the Prize this year.

First Time Nominees:

Rabindranath Tagore
Henrik Pontoppidan
Grazia Deledda
Edward Snowden
John Lobbock
Francis Welles
Emile Faguet
Jakob Knudsen
Edmund Picard
Benito Perez Galdos

Nominees by Swedish Academy members

Carl Spitteler (Nobel Committee)
Ernest Lavisse (Hans Hildebrand)
Jacob Knudsen (Per Hallstrom)
John Aveburg (Hans Hildebrand)
Henri Bergson (Vitalis Norstrom)

Shortlisted Writers:

Grazia Deledda (1926 winner)
After the Divorce
Reeds in the Wind
Ashes
Elias Portulu
Evil Way
Star of the Orient

Thomas Hardy (same works evaluated in 1910 plus Poems of Past and Present and Times' Laughingstocks)

Anatole France (1921 winner, same works evaluated in 1904, 1909 and 1910 plus Gods Want Blood)

Benito Perez Galdos

Misericordia
Marianela
Fortunata and Jacinta
Miau
Torment
Dona Perfecta

Emile Faguet

Rabindranath Tagore
Gora
Gitanjali

Verner Heidenstam (1913 winner)
Pilgrimage and Wandering Years
Charles Men
Poems
Hans Alieus
One People
Forest Whispers
Balbo Inheritance
Tree of the Folkung

Nomination from Nobel Laureate
Edmund Picard (Maurice Maeterlinck)

Nominees that would win the Nobel Prize:

Carl Spitteler (1919 winner)
Grazia Deledda (1926 winner)
Anatole France (1921 winner)
Henrik Pontoppidan (1917 winner)
Verner Heidenstam (1916 winner)
Karl Gjellerup (1917 winner)
Henri Bergson (1927 winner)

Grazia Deledda was the only nominated female writer, while Sven Hedin was the only Academy member to be nominated.

Who is this Edward Snowden you mention in your first list above? Is he kin to the whistle blower?

 

[Ben Jackson]

Before I dive further into the deliberations for the period 1913-1919, let me talk about Harald Hjarne, the chairman of the Nobel Committee.

Herald Hjarne (1848--1922) was a historian and political writer known for his influence on Swedish Historical scholarship and contributed to Swedish conservative and right-wing liberal thought. He emphasized on national defence and foreign policy over domestic reform.

Becoming the Chairman of the Nobel Committee in 1912, few weeks after announcement of Hauptmann as that year's Laureate, Hjarne adopted the policy of neutrality which was the only time the Nobel Literature Prize came close to Peace Prize, as writers considered militant or war-like were rejected. His report reflected on his own expertise as historian, as well as touching on issues of principles relating to literature, partly due to the impact of first World War, with the detailed discussion of the world events beginning in 1914. With the acrimonious attacks from Eucken, Kipling, Materlinck and Hauptmann, questions began to arise across Europe of what was going to happen to international cultural relations at the end of the war. But with the political outlook of Hjarne, this epoch resulted in the Nobel Committee been a sort of arbitration or in his words "function as international arbitration of scholarship," and should assert "transcendence of literature over political unrest of the period." After been a member of the Committee for nearly 20 years, Hjarne died in 1922 and was replaced by fellow commitee member Per Hallstrom.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Who is this Edward Snowden you mention in your first list above? Is he kin to the whistle blower?

It's actually Edward Dowden, Irish critic and poet.

 

[Ben Jackson]

With the Committee proposing for a waiting period, Per Hallstrom commented on Spitteler's Olympian Spring "possessing incomparable beauty which composition --- emphasizes on choice of subject--- has jewel of difficulty on modern mind. And while Heidenstam was rejected for the Prize (probably because of a recent Scandanivian laureate in Lagerolf), Heidenstam shared his displeasure with Spitteler's essays " which would imply a such of breach," which might also refer to awarding the Prize to another German language author soon after Hauptmann. "In the previous year Spitteler and Karl Schoonher weren't considered " appropriate for a shared prize with Hauptmann, whose powerful works address a broadened and keen psyche." Unlike for the years 1972--74 when Johnson and Martinson were excepted from the Academy's deliberations due to their works been in consideration by the Nobel Committee, at the time of Hjarne, Heidenstam was present during the deliberations despite his name been on the shortlist.

With Galdos rejected for "his violent reasons deflecting specific stance in Spain," and Anatole France rejected "for his highly skeptical works in tradition of Voltaire and Epicurus," Thomas Hardy, in the words of Per Hallstrom, "Literature of Hardy, a leading English representative, is filled with pessimistic realism." Hallstrom's comments on Hardy's philosophical pessimism and idealism, which shows a higher perspective found in Aeschylus and Schopenhauer "is that Hardy's works are filled with episodes of inauspicious force of coincidences which is weakness in Hardy's tragic mechanism," similar views shared with secretary and later Nobel Laureate Erik Karlfeldt. There was attention on Tess, similar to the situation three years before "a work attributed to international validity which displays force of warm heart and rebellious mind filled with appropriate resonace and theological expressions of agonized humanity."

Harald Hjarne, expressing his doubts whether Tagore's original or too dependent of classical Indian traditions, had advocated for French Critic Emile Faguet, described "moralistic master with blessed shades of Montagine, Paschal and Le Rochefocauld." The arguement presented by Hjarne was that Faguet possessed the sprit of the aforementioned masters against struggle of negativism of Taine and Renan and that Faguet's positivism was the determining strength "with Faguet filled with aspect of moral responsibility in direction of Beuve," and that Faguet "was the most positivist thinker since Plato and Kant and which qualifies for the prize in the most idealistic direction," by maintaining "its moral order and embracing existence through its psychological investigation and representation through a higher alignment."

But with Heidenstam acquiring the recent production of Tagore Gitajanli (Song Offerings), Heidenstam confirmed reading Gitanjali in translation and been impressed:

they gave me hours of intense feeling, like drinking water of fresh, clear spring. Intense poetry permeating purity of heart and spiritual beauty. There's nothing in the work that's controversial or offensive or petty. If there's a ever a poet who's said to possess qualities that may be entitled to a Nobel Prize, it's him. It would be great to find an ideal poet of really great stature and we shouldn't pass him over.

And with Heidenstam's comments to Gitanjali, he reference the condition of Nobel Stipulation which was to "award a work published the previous year," a criteria that will be used during Hjarne's epoch.

 

[Leseratte]

It's actually Edward Dowden, Irish critic and poet.

I wouldn't have noticed if I weren't a fan of Edward Snoden. There are so many names.
Thank you again, Ben, for taking the trouble to instruct us in the offstage mysteries of the SA.

 

[Ben Jackson]

The Nobel Prize for Literature for 1915 was awarded to Romain Rolland "as tribute to lofty ideals of his literary production and to sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings." It was awarded on 9th November 1916, the same year the Laureate for that year was awarded. The Nobel Prize decision for this year was postponed to the following year following the Committee's indecision to find a suitable candidate. 22 writers was nominated for this year.

Shortlisted Writers and their key works:

Henri Bergson (1927 winner)
Time and Free Will
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
Laughter
Dreams
Philosophy of Poetry
Introduction to Metaphysics

Emile Verhaeren (same works evaluated in 1909 plus Evening Hours, Helene of Sparta)

Paul Bourget (same works evaluated in 1907 plus Night Cometh, Demon de Midi)

W B Yeats (1923 winner)
Green Helmet
Wind among the Reeds
Countess Cathleen
Cathleen ni Houlihan
Responsibilities
In Seven Woods

Benito Perez Galdos (same works evaluated in 1913 plus National Episodes: Zaragoza, Trafalgar and Cadiz been the highlights)

Romain Rolland
Jean Christophe
Life of Beethoven
Life of Michelangelo
Above the Battle
Tolstoy
Some Musicians of Today
Some Musicians of Former Days
People's Theater
Handle

Dmitry Merezhkovsky
Poems
Symbols
Resurection of the Gods
Death of Gods
Anti-Christ
Christ and Anti-Christ in Russian Literature
Tsar et la Revolution

Carl Spitteler (1919 winner)

Rene Bazin
Dying Earth
Donatienne
Rising Wheat
Children of Alsace

First Time Nominees
Romain Rolland
Charles Montagu Doughty
Ferdinand Avenarius

Nominees that was nominated by Swedish Academy
Romain Rolland, Anatole France (Henrik Schuck)
Grazia Deledda (Carl Bildt)
Rene Bazin, Vihelm Gronbech, Karl Gjellerup (Harald Hjarne)
Willem Kloss, Henri Bergson (Per Hallstrom)

Nominees that would become laureates:
Verner Heidenstam (1916 winner)
Karl Gjellerup (1917 winner)
Carl Spittler (1919 winner)
Anatole France (1921 winner)
W B Yeats (1923 winner)
Grazia Deledda (1926 winner)
Henri Bergson (1927 winner)

Nominated female writer
Only Grazia Deledda was nominated.

Nobel Committee during this period:
Herald Hjarne (chairman)
Hans Hildebrand (member in 1913)
Per Hallstrom
Henrik Schuck
Erik Karlfeldt (permanent secretary)

Good news is that Merezhkovsky's Resurrection of the Gods is recently re-translated to English by Alma Classics in 2018.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Concerning Carl Spitteler's candidature, the Committee felt "its political restrained... His biggest work in German and Austria and that its choice depends on the war in this land and that awarding him the prize would provoke appreciation that evoke varied art." The Nobel committee rejected, in particular, Bergson, Bazin, Faguet, Bourget and Verhaeren for particiapting in virulent feuds with nationalistic overtones during the war which "stir a foreign nation against the other."

Benito Perez Galdos, according to Harald Hjarne on National Episodes and contemporary novels, called Galdos "a genuinely significant and in his country a highly valued writer of masculine, noble and valued spirit. One drift from reporach of chauvinism of French side prove itself as spurious and the charge the partisan preference for specific historic shape would be successfully disprove. He doesn't show support for a party but provides himself to general standpoint of his country. He's clerical in the Spanish presence is his solicitous against both rare just to hostility against the church footprint for none particularly Spanish clerical eyes not reveal." Hjarne revelaed that "to those which in abstract way, he attempted to debate the problem through extraordinary variety through a complex, vital fate by creating a sharp, marked and clear character. Galdos Spanish features are comprehensible to readers that aren't familiar." Per Hallstrom, on the other hand, greeted Galdos work "meets with greater sympathy and without appraisals, conjure up with aesthetic exceptionality."

Romain Rolland's candidature was presented to the Committee by Henrik Schuck, expressing his concerns on Jean Christophe:

Some formless creature--- to highly below, a fantastic and misleading cult genius and the announced idealism is feeling of skepticism and interesting dislike applies to the sort itself-- Kunstelrroman, in all art, an art which's reflection of life.

Harald Hjarne's remarks on Romain Rolland's authorship was "art, artist (a reflection on reflection) in which the author, instead of directly representing ultimately his life, reaches itself generally and undecided aesthetics which itself reflection, devoting instead a vigorous craft and vibrant people which change of shadow convey.

Swedish Academy decided to overturn the decision of Galdos, after rejecting Yeats for his overt symbolist writings which marked lacked of clarity, by choosing Romain Rolland, despite the committee's apparent stance on his uneveness, because of Rolland " pacifist utterances (bitterness) over the war not just in Germany but also in its owns patriotic France.

 

[Leseratte]

The criteria for the period 1913-1919, championed by comittee's chairman Harald Hjarne was called "Policy of Neutrality, " which was "endeavouring to mitigate abuses and excess resulting from 'nationalistic tendencies in modern literature and struggle for power in general'"" assserting "transcendent of literature over political unrest of the period and function as 'Int'l arbitrator of Scholarship,' refusing to allow its serenity to be disturbed by contact with profane concerns." This period shifted belligerent powers outside and giving smaller count a chance, hence the selection of Scandanivian writers.

The Nobel Prizes for 1913 and 1915 were awarded to India's Tagore and France's to Romain Rolland. The shortlist for these two years were: French Literaty critic Emile Faguet, Anatole France, Juhani Aho, Thomas Hardy and Tagore, while 1915's shortlist consisted of Galdos, Rolland, Henri Bergson and Dmitry Merezhkovsky.

Translation of Tagore's masterpiece Gitanjali (Songs Offerings), was key in Tagore's triumph. The committee expressed their opinion that no poet in European tradition since Goethe's death in 1832 could rival Tagore. Tagore was seen as not just a brilliant successor to Goethe, but also to Keats and Tennyson. Anatole France was felt as too "sceptic," while Thomas Hardy was considered too "pessimistic." The committee felt that Aho's works was "more like awarding the Nobel to Swedish Literature, as Finnish Literature was considered as subsidiary of Swedish literature at the time." The committee chose Emile Faguet, but the Academy, once again, overturned the Committee's decision and awarded Tagore, hence becoming the first Non-European laureate.

In 1915, Bergson was dismissed for been "for militant French patroitism, which prevented him from being honored during the war." Merezhovsky was dismissed for his "uneven works." Galdos was chosen, after Harald Hjarne, himself a historian, praised Galdos' historical novels, by the committee, but the Academy found Rolland's pacifist stance appealing and, yet again, disagreed over the committee's choice and awarded Rolland instead.

I like Tagore but would also have loved a Thomas Hardly win.