1949 Nobel Prize in Literature

The 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded the American author William Faulkner "for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel."[1]

William Faulkner

The prize was awarded in 1950. The Nobel Committee for Literature had decided that none of the nominations for 1949 met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel, and the prize was reserved until the following year.[1]

Laureate
Main article: William Faulkner

William Faulkner was an American novelist and short story writer known for novels such as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light In August (1934) and Absalom! Absalom! (1936).[2]

Nominations

William Faulkner was not nominated for the prize in 1949,[3] but he was nominated the following year and in 1950 the Swedish Academy decided to award Faulkner the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1949. In total the Nobel committee received 43 nominations for the 1949 prize and 79 nominations for the 1950 prize, including nominations for Pär Lagerkvist, Winston Churchill, Paul Claudel, Halldór Kiljan Laxness, François Mauriac, Robert Graves, Karen Blixen, E. M. Forster, Boris Pasternak, Graham Greene, and Bertrand Russell, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1950.[4] William Faulkner was nominated by Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland, president of the Swedish PEN Center.[5] Faulkner had not been nominated for the prize before, making it a rare occasion when an author have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year they were first nominated.[6]

Award ceremony speech

In his award ceremony speech on 10 December 1950, Gustaf Hellström, member of the Swedish Academy, said of Faulkner: "As a probing psychologist he is the unrivalled master among all living British and American novelists. Neither do any of his colleagues possess his fantastic imaginative powers and his ability to create characters. His subhuman and superhuman figures, tragic or comic in a macabre way, emerge from his mind with a reality that few existing people – even those nearest to us – can give us", "Moreover – side by side with Joyce and perhaps even more so – Faulkner is the great experimentalist among twentieth-century novelists. Scarcely two of his novels are similar technically. It seems as if by this continuous renewal he wanted to achieve the increased breadth which his limited world, both in geography and in subject matter, cannot give him. The same desire to experiment is shown in his mastery, unrivalled among modern British and American novelists, of the richness of the English language, a richness derived from its different linguistic elements and the periodic changes in style – from the spirit of the Elizabethans down to the scanty but expressive vocabulary of the Negroes of the southern states."[7]

Reactions

The choice of William Faulkner as the Nobel Prize Laureate was well received.[8]

References
  1. "Nobel Prize in Literature 1949". nobelprize.org.
  2. "William Faulkner". Britannica.
  3. "Nominations 1949". nobelprize.org.
  4. "Nominations 1950". nobelprize.org.
  5. "William Faulkner Nomination archive". nobelprize.org.
  6. "Nomineringar och utlåtanden 1901-1950" (in Swedish). Svenska Akademien.
  7. "Award Ceremony speech". nobelprize.org.
  8. "Winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature (link to article)". The New York Times.
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