Curiosities about the Nobel Prize for Literature that you should know

Nobel Prize for Literature award-winning book

The Nobel Prize in Literature It is one of the most important awards in the world.. Many writers want to win it but not all of them get it. However, there are some details that you should know, curiosities that do not come to light so often but are striking.

For this reason, we have done a little research to discover some of the curiosities of a prize that has been awarding the writers. You want to know more?

41 years, that is the age of the youngest Nobel Prize for Literature

And it is that, if you look a little at the list of winners, most of them are 60-70 and up. But a young writer has never been awarded. The youngest was the 1907 case in which Rudyard Kipling was who, aged 41, won the award.

But this has not been repeated for what is already holds a record for being the youngest author with the Nobel Prize for Literature.

88 years, the age of the oldest Nobel Prize for Literature

Nobel Prize for Literature

As we have told you before who was the youngest person to receive the award, it is also important to know who is the person who received it the oldest. And in this case, the lucky one was Doris Lessing, who, at 88, won the most coveted award for writers.

To date, there has been no one older, although many have come close to his age (80s and up). Doris received it in 2007 and sadly passed away a few years later, in November of 2013.

The fortune that a writer earns for the Nobel Prize for Literature

We don't know if writers like the Nobel Prize for Literature just because of that award or because of the money they earn for it. And it is that all prize winners also receive quite a lot of money.

We are talking about nine million crowns, which, rounding up a bit, equals 1 million dollars, more or less the same in euros (depending on how it ends up in the stock market).

Actually, what you may not know is that it was the inventor of the Nobel Prizes who asked the Swedish institution that was going to organize them on his behalf for years, to reward every year the "author of the most outstanding literary work of idealistic tendency."

And from there comes the fact that he is given that economic prize (which will surely come in handy for everyone).

350 annual proposals

Books

That is the average number received by the Swedish institution every year. They are letters sent by writers who ask them to look at them to enter among the possible candidates. Obviously, some do it from humility and others are a little more… direct, so to speak. But, apart from the letters, many times these are accompanied by offerings, gifts and any other way to "soften" the heart of the jury to enter among those candidates (and opt for the award). Of course this doesn't help the writers much.

Origin of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Before we have told you about Alfred Nobel and you may know that he was the creator of the Nobel prizes. However, what you may not know is that, although it was his will that economic prizes were created and awarded, it was not fulfilled until a year after his death.

The reason? Had to be approved by the Norwegian Parliament. Only at that moment, we are talking about 1897, they were able to fulfill the will, and the Nobel Foundation was raised.

The only two posthumous Nobel Prize winners

Know that all nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature must be from writers who are alive and have published in that year. Dead authors are not accepted. Except on two occasions, in 1931 and in 1961. What happened? You see, the winners in those years were Erik Axel Karlfeldt and Dag Hammarskjöld (in this case Nobel Peace Prize). Both died when they had already been selected, that is, they were on the final list of writers who could win the award. And they had the bad luck to die (the first in April and the second in September).

Also, you should know that Erik Axel Karlfeldt, as we have seen on Wikipedia, refused to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1918. And if we go to the list of winners, it turns out that that year the Prize was vacant because it was not held because of the First World War. So we really don't know what happened.

The two authors who dared to reject the prize

Library

If we have told you before that no one would be able to refuse a Nobel Prize for Literature, much less the money that comes with it, the truth is that we must retract. There were two authors who preferred to reject it.

The first one you may know, perhaps not by name, Boris pasternak, but yes for one of the best-known books out there, Doctor Zhivago. When it was granted he accepted it. But a week later he decided to return it due to pressure from the Soviet government about him. This was in 1958.

And years later, in 1964, it was the writer jean paul Sartre who did not want to accept the prize nor the honors that corresponded to him. He even made a public announcement in which he said that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."

The Nobel Prize for Literature has a history

If you have never noticed the medal that they give to the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, you should know that it isThis one was designed by Erik Lindberg and in it there is a small scene. A man is seen seated, with some folios on his right knee and looking spellbound at a young woman in front of him playing a harp.

Furthermore, he is known to be sitting next to a laurel and it is said that what he wrote was the song that the muse is playing for him.

Apart, there are some words in latin, Inventions – Vitam – Iuvat – Excoluisse – Per – Arts, which comes to mean "Those who ennobled life by discovering the arts". And if you have read the Aeneid, you will know that this phrase appears in verse 663 of the sixth canto.

As you can see, the Nobel Prize for Literature has many curiosities (more than we have told you). Do you know any that we should know about?


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