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Dylan and the Nobel

2007; Center for Studies in Oral Tradition; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ort.2007.0011

1542-4308

Gordon H. Ball,

Academic Writing and Publishing

Dylan and the Nobel Gordon Ball (bio) Allow me to begin on a personal note. I'm not a Dylan expert, nor a scholar of music, or classics, or folklore, or, for that matter, the Nobel Prize. My specialty is the poet Allen Ginsberg and the literature of the Beat Generation; I edited three books with Ginsberg and have taken and exhibited a number of photographs of the poet and his Beat colleagues over the years. For decades I've admired the work of Bob Dylan, whom I saw at Newport 1965; my memoir '66 Frames relates my first contact with his music, and he makes a brief appearance in a recently completed chronicle of my years on an upstate New York farm with Ginsberg and other Beats. In 1996 I first wrote the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy, nominating Dylan for its Prize in literature. The idea to do so did not originate with me but with two Dylan afficianados in Norway, journalist Reidar Indrebø and attorney Gunnar Lunde. (Also, a number of other professors have supported Dylan's candidacy at various times in the past.) Mr. Indrebø and Mr. Lunde had written Allen Ginsberg seeking help with the nomination. (The nominator must be a member of the Swedish Academy, or professor of literature or language, or a past laureate in literature, or the president of a national writers' organization.) Ginsberg's office called and asked if I would like to write a nominating letter. In my 1996 nomination, I cited the almost unlimited dimensions of Dylan's work, how it has permeated the globe and affected history. On the basis of his lyrics alone he deserves the Prize, but the dimensions of his artistic accomplishment are even larger because together with a very considerable body of lyrics there is also music and performance. Examining the criteria for the granting of the Nobel Prize in Literature, I learned that two general standards had been specified early on. The final will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 stipulated that in literature the honoree's work shall have been "the most outstanding . . . of 'an idealistic tendency'"; and that in each field "during the preceding year, [it] shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" (Frenz 1969b:VII). According to Horst Frenz in Nobel Lectures: Literature, the second stipulation was clarified by Nobel Foundation [End Page 14] statutes to mean that awards should be made "for the most recent achievements in the field of culture" and that older works should be considered only in cases where their importance "has not become apparent until recently" (Frenz 1969b:VII-IX). However, a review of awards and their presentations since 1901 suggests considerable latitude in terms of recent achievement and revised appreciation of earlier work. While some Nobel presentations focus more on an author's latest creation (or, as in the case of Faulkner, for example, on a new perspective of his entire oeuvre), others seem to take in a whole career. In the case of Icelandic novelist Halldor Laxness (1955), the most recent work cited was published nine years earlier. T. S. Eliot was over a quarter-century removed from The Waste Land when he received his Nobel recognition. So the original criteria for granting prizes call for a literature that is idealistic and of benefit to humanity. Though a recent statement from the Swedish Academy emphasizes literary and artistic values (Allén and Espmark 2001:47), in the earliest years Nobel's "idealistic tendency" was taken to mean that the award was "not primarily a literary prize" but also one recognizing elevating views of humanity (Espmark 1991:10). However, the senses of "idealistic tendency" have varied over time and can even include "uncompromising integrity" in depicting "the human predicament" (Allén and Espmark 2001:47). Few would challenge Bob Dylan's "uncompromising integrity" in depicting the human predicament. Yet many may ask whether the Nobel Committee should break with perceived tradition and grant an award to someone seen largely as a writer and performer of song. Is Dylan's work truly of sufficient literary quality to join that of time-honored masters of the pen? Can an icon of popular culture, a "song...