My Science School

Sartre postulated that past awarded winners did not represent equally all ideologies and nations, and was concerned that his work would be unjustly and undesirably misinterpreted by rightist circles who would criticize “certain past errors.”  Sartre, himself, disagreed with particular laureates of past awards, including, interestingly enough, Boris Pasternak who also refused the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957, though for different reasons.  

But the refusal was not a theatrical or “impulsive gesture,” Sartre wrote in a statement to the Swedish press, which was later published in Le Monde. It was consistent with his longstanding principles. “I have always declined official honors,” he said, and referred to his rejection of the Legion of Honor in 1945 for similar reasons. 

There was another reason as well, an “objective” one, Sartre wrote. In serving the cause of socialism, he hoped to bring about “the peaceful coexistence of the two cultures, that of the East and the West.” (He refers not only to Asia as “the East,” but also to “the Eastern bloc.”)

Boris Pasternak, the Russian author, said to-day that he had "voluntarily" changed his mind about accepting the Nobel Prize and had done so without having consulted even his friends. He told me at his villa ten miles outside Moscow that he had thought over the reaction to the award and decided fully on his own to renounce it.

This morning he wrote in pencil a brief telegram of explanation to the Swedish Academy, carried it himself to the local post office, and so informed the world. The telegram read:

"Considering the meaning this award has been given in the society to which I belong, I must reject this undeserved prize which has been presented to me. Please do not receive my voluntary rejection with displeasure. - Pasternak."

 

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The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 was awarded to Louise Glück "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."

Born in New York City in 1943, Glück grew up on Long Island and from an early age was drawn to reading and writing poetry. Her parents read her classical mythology as bedtime stories, and she was transfixed by the tales of Greek gods and heroes — themes she would later explore in her work. She wrote some of her earliest verses when she was 5, and set her mind to becoming a poet when she was in her early teens. She struggled with anorexia as a teenager, a disease she later attributed to her obsession with purity and achieving control, and almost starved herself to death before eventually recovering through therapy.

She began taking poetry workshops around that time, and attended Sarah Lawrence College and later Columbia University, where she studied with the poet Stanley Kunitz. She supported herself by working as a secretary so that she could write on the side. In 1968, she published her first collection, “Firstborn.” While her debut was well received by critics, she wrestled with writers’ block afterward and took a teaching position at Goddard College in Vermont. Working with students inspired her to start writing again, and she went on to publish a dozen volumes of poetry.

Glück’s verses often reflect her preoccupation with dark themes — isolation, betrayal, fractured family and marital relationships, death. But her spare, distilled language, and her frequent recourse to familiar mythological figures, gives her poetry a universal and timeless feel, said the critic and writer Daniel Mendelsohn, the editor at large for The New York Review of Books.

 

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To date, the youngest Literature Laureate is Rudyard Kipling, best known for The Jungle Book, who was 41 years old when he was awarded the Literature Prize in 1907.

Kipling’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, was an artist and scholar who had considerable influence on his son’s work, became curator of the Lahore Museum, and is described presiding over this “wonder house” in the first chapter of Kim, Rudyard’s most famous novel. His mother was Alice Macdonald, two of whose sisters married the highly successful 19th-century painters Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, while a third married Alfred Baldwin and became the mother of Stanley Baldwin, later prime minister. These connections were of lifelong importance to Kipling.

Kipling returned to India in 1882 and worked for seven years as a journalist. His parents, although not officially important, belonged to the highest Anglo-Indian society, and Rudyard thus had opportunities for exploring the whole range of that life. All the while he had remained keenly observant of the thronging spectacle of native India, which had engaged his interest and affection from earliest childhood. He was quickly filling the journals he worked for with prose sketches and light verse.

In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Englishman to be so honoured. In South Africa, where he spent much time, he was given a house by Cecil Rhodes, the diamond magnate and South African statesman. This association fostered Kipling’s imperialist persuasions, which were to grow stronger with the years. 

 

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The Nobel Prize in Literature 1909 was awarded to Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings."

Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) was born in Östra Emterwik, Värmland, Sweden. She was brought up on Mårbacka, the family estate, which she did not leave until 1881, when she went to a teachers’ college at Stockholm. In 1885 she became a teacher at the girls’ secondary school in Landskrona. She had been writing poetry ever since she was a child, but she did not publish anything until 1890, when a Swedish weekly gave her the first prize in a literary competition and published excerpts from the book which was to be her first, best, and most popular work. Gösta Berlings Saga was published in 1891, but went unnoticed until its Danish translation received wide critical acclaim and paved the way for the book’s lasting success in Sweden and elsewhere. In 1895 financial support from the royal family and the Swedish Academy encouraged her to abandon teaching altogether. She travelled in Italy and wrote Antikrists mirakler (1897) [The Miracles of Antichrist], a novel set in Sicily. After several minor works she published Jerusalem (1901-1902) [The Holy City], a novel about Swedish peasants who emigrated to the Holy Land and whom she had visited in 1900. This work was her first immediate success.

 

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The board of Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian to receive a Nobel Prize, one of the highest honours in the world. He won the prize in the Literature category in 1913 for his poetry collection “Gitanjali”.

Born in 1891 in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Tagore was well known for his poetry, songs, stories, dramas, which included portrayals of people’s lives, philosophy and social issues.

Born in a wealthy family, Tagore was home-schooled, but went to England to study further. A few years later, he returned to India without a formal degree. While managing his family’s estates, he got a closer look at the impoverished rural Bengal. A friend of Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore participated in India’s struggle for independence. In fact, the national anthem that we sing today is one of the many stanzas of hymn composed by Tagore.

While he originally wrote in Bengali, Tagore reached out to a wider audience by translating his works into English. “Gitanjali” is a collection of more than 150 poems, which includes Tagore’s own translations of some of his Bengali poems. It was originally published in Bengali in 1910 and in English in 1912, with a preface by English poet W.B. Yeats. Some of Tagore’s acclaimed works include “Ghare Baire” (“The Home and the World”); “Sesher Kabita” (“Farewell My Friends”). “Kabuliwala”, “Gora”, “My Boyhood Days”, “Gitabitan, “and “The Post Office”.

Following the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919, Tagore returned his Knighthood for Services to Literature, which g=he was awarded in 1915.

Through his ideas of peace and spiritual harmony, the Nobel Laureate paved a new way of life based on his ideals of Brahmo Samaj. His contribution to education too is unparalleled. He founded the Visva Bharti University in Santiniketan, focusing on developing the child’s imagination and promoting stress-free learning.

Tagore passed away in 1941 at the age of 80.

 

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