The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature

American poet Louise Gluck won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature on October 8, an unexpected choice known for themes of childhood and family life that draw on classical myths and motifs.

Professor Gluck, 77, was honored “for her incomparable poetic voice which, with stark beauty, makes individual existence universal,” the Academy said.
Professor Gluck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for her collection “The Wild Iris” and the National Book Award for her latest collection, “Faithful and Virtuous Night”, in 2014.
The Academy’s permanent secretary, Mats Malm, said he spoke with Professor Gluck just before making the public announcement.

“The message was a surprise, but a welcome message that I know of,”
Malm told reporters.

Professor Gluck was not considered a Nobel laureate before Thursday’s announcement, although the odds of gambling sites plummeted just before Thursday’s announcement.
The president of the Nobel Committee of the Academy, Anders Olsson, regretted that it was not better known, “at least outside the United States.” borders “, and had not been translated into many other languages.
She is the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in the last decade, after Olga Tokarczuk, Svetlana Alexievich and Alice Munro, and only the 16th since the Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901.
The professor of English at Yale University, Louise Gluck “seeks the universal, and in this she is based on the classical myths and motifs, present in most of her works,” said the Academy in its appointment. Price.
“The voices of Dido, Persephone and Eurydice – the abandoned, the punished, the betrayed – are masks of a transforming self, as personal as it is valid throughout the world.”
Her collections “The Triumph of Achilles” (1985) and “Ararat” (1990) address “almost brutally direct images of painful family relationships,” the jury said, noting that his use of a “deceptively natural tone is surprising.” “trace of poetic adornment”.
Professor Gluck is also a poet of radical change and rebirth, and describes in her poem “Snowdrops” the miraculous return of life after winter, her work often marked by “humor and scathing wit.”
The jury declared that her 2006 “Avernus” collection was a “masterful collection, a visionary interpretation of the myth of Persephone’s descent into the underworld in captivity from Hades, the god of death.”

“He writes dreamlike narrative poetry that recalls memories and travels, to doubt and stop at new perspectives. The world is dismantled, to be magically present again ”,
concluded the Academy.

Ceremony canceled

Last year, the Swedish Academy winked at Austrian novelist Peter Handke, prompting a flurry of criticism as many wondered how it could reward a writer known for supporting Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in the Balkan wars and minimizing the atrocities of her army.
The Academy defended this choice as made solely on literary merits without political considerations.
The Nobel Prize comes with a medal and a sum of 10 million Swedish crowns (approximately $ 1.1 million).
Professor Gluck would normally receive the Nobel Prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at an official ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of scientist Alfred Nobel, who created the prizes in his last will.
But the in-person ceremony was canceled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic and replaced with a televised ceremony that showed the winners receiving their prizes in their home countries.
So far this year, four women have won Nobel Prizes, approaching the 2009 record of five awards.
The four this year are, in addition to Professor Gluck, Emmanuelle Charpentier from France and Jennifer Doudna from the United States who shared the chemistry award on Wednesday, and Andrea Ghez from the United States who shared the physics award with two male colleagues on Tuesday.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 9 and the economy is expected to be announced on October 12.