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The contribution of Nobel Prize winners to the world in 2021, Part 6-4,
Prize in Literature
November 25, 2021
Austin Kuan
When the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel died in 1896, his will stated that the money from his estate would be divided into five awards, which have been given out every year since 1901. The winners must be outstanding in the relevant scientific achievements in order to be awarded for the first three of the five items in physics, chemistry, physiology, or medicine, so there is little controversy. The two literature awards and the peace awards, on the other hand, have always been contentious, especially the peace awards. It is common for the winners' contributions to world peace to be offset by their subsequent actions. The positive and negative evaluations are the most contentious, so when this series discusses the 2021 Nobel Prize's contribution to the world, the first one will focus on the Peace Prize.
The Nobel Prize in Literature is not a contentious issue, but it is "unexpected by the world." People frequently do not know who the winner is. Take, for example, the Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021. He has published ten books, but none of them are available in the United States. Even though he was nominated for the Booker Prize for English Literature in the United Kingdom, his works are scarce. To put it bluntly, before receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, few people recognized Gurnah's abilities. His works were not well received, and even if they were, they would not sell well.
As a result, when Gurnah's prize was announced on October 7, 2021, the publishing industry complained, because the majority of literature lovers around the world were eager to appreciate Gurnah's works, but the publisher was out of stock, whether it was a physical book or an e-book. The literary criticism community is also embarrassed. Because there are so few people who are familiar with Gurnah's works, journalists are eager to invite literary critics to write a manuscript about him. Many people are unsure where to begin because so few people have read his books.
The best-selling Japanese writer Haruki Murakami will always be on the recommended list for the Nobel Prize in Literature in the last 20 years, but no matter how popular his works are, he will not win the prize. Someone once joked that if Haruki Murakami hadn't been a best-selling author, he'd have won a literary award a long time ago. Indeed, looking through the list of Nobel Prize winners in Literature in the past, we find many unpopular writers.
Humans invented literature to relieve their emotions through sound or words. Of course, writing eventually became the standard literary tool. If you reach out to a large number of people with your words, your work will have a kind of "universality," and even in a commercial society, there will be a lot of market interest. However, touching literary works usually occur when a writer writes about the most painful, helpless, or missed aspects of his life. These tortured his body, mind, and soul, but was he eventually set free? Certainly not! Perhaps when he writes his feelings and they become a work, he releases a part of his pain, and the writer's pain is shared through the existence of the work; or perhaps because the work fully records the writer's pain, he also moves towards another experience. Many people will embellish it with the word "sublimation," but he may still be unable to free himself from the agonizing entanglement. Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize in 1954, Kawabata Yasunari in 1966, and Harry Martinson in 1974 all committed suicide. The three were among the seven Nobel laureates who took their own lives. It is obvious that winning the Nobel Prize does not always provide a writer with a means of liberation other than death.
However, the more painful experiences literature records through unique written statements, even if it does not lead the writer to the liberation and happiness of the living, or even if he was regarded as a loser in that era, the more the literary works he left will move tens of thousands of people in subsequent generations. When literary works share the reader's inner anxieties and sorrows, the reader is able to live happily instead. Qu Yuan, a famous Chinese writer, was a loser of an era, but his leftover work "Li Sao" has become an aesthetic masterpiece. Herman Melville, an American, wrote "Moby-Dick" in 1851, but it was not widely known until 70 years after his death. And now, as long as someone is unwilling to succumb to fate, he will read "Moby Dick," but Melville lived his later years as a loser until his death.
Literature was also the losers' last source of sustenance at the time. Literature may save the soul of the reader, but it may not necessarily free the author. So, is it appropriate to establish a literary award? Is it appropriate to award prizes and medals for a written statement involving the human soul and subjective feelings? This has sparked a lot of debate among literature buffs. Is a writer who has received the Nobel Prize in Literature always a "great" writer? In fact, it's possible that it isn't. Despite the fact that Lev Tolstoy of Russia, Mark Twain of the United States, and Émile Zola of France are all internationally renowned writers, none of them has received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Even if we abolish all existing literary awards, large and small, around the world, literary works will continue to be created. Any work that is meaningful to the author's soul will have an impact on many readers. The world's great writers would exist without the Nobel Prize in Literature, and even if bonuses were awarded to them, their lives would not necessarily be better. It's possible that he'll never be able to write better literary works because of the generous bonuses and secure lifestyle.
So, what exactly is the significance of the Nobel Prize in Literature? Let's look at Gurnah's reasons for winning the prize in 2021 to see if we can get some ideas. The Royal Swedish Academy awarded Gurnah because "his works and writing criticize colonialism and show a great deal of sympathy for refugees."
Gurnah was born in 1948 in Tanzania, East Africa. He is of African and Arab descent and practices Islam. During the two world wars, Tanzania became a colony of Germany and the United Kingdom. Although World War II ended in 1945, Tanzania did not gain independence for another 16 years. However, during the independence process, it was confronted with the colonial damage and ethnic tears left by Germany and Britain, rendering Gurnah unable to wait for Tanzania's independence. He came to the United Kingdom as a refugee in 1960 and stayed until he retired. Gurnah's painful experience of becoming a refugee before the age of 21 makes it unusual for him to introduce the world to the relatively unknown colonial culture and long-term harm in East Africa.
This year marks Gurnah's 72nd birthday. His pain allowed him to write ten works half a century ago, demonstrating how profound his experience was. And Gurnah's suffering is not something that the Western world has previously paid attention to, and no one has even cared about it. After subtracting those who immigrated to Africa due to the recent chaos in Africa, blacks in Europe and the United States mostly came from being transported by slave ships in West Africa two hundred years ago, and the pain of blacks becoming slaves naturally gradually appeared in European and American literature. So far, five African writers have received the Nobel Prize. Akinwande Soyinka, a West African writer from Nigeria, was the first to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. Gurnah is one of the few African writers who focuses on colonial issues in East Africa as well as refugee issues.
Human beings' deepest experiences are recorded in literature. Over the last two decades, a large number of international refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, and Africa have flooded into Europe and the United States. Many people died as a result of artillery fire, at sea, and in refugee camps. Why should they leave their homes, risk their lives, and be separated from their flesh and blood? This is due in large part to the ethnic opposition that European and American countries purposefully created when colonizing the Middle East and Africa. We frequently see an independent African country with two races with long-standing feuds, or two or three races with different religions, and some of their compatriots or compatriots of the same faith may have been classified into other countries. Even if the country gained independence, it was the start of civil war and massacre. This is why Gurnah fled Tanzania when he was 21 years old, not expecting Tanzania to gain independence.
It has been 60 years since African countries established a large number of independent states in the 1960s, but colonialism's ethnic divisions and racial antagonism have kept Africa in turmoil. A war-torn Africa is the best customer for European and American arms, and these massive arms deals are one of the main causes of African refugees. They avoid discussing the harm caused by their colonization of the Middle East and Africa in mainstream European and American culture. It is not an exaggeration to call their acceptance of a large number of refugees an atonement.
The significance of the Nobel Prize in Literature lies in its "topicality". In these times, the suffering and cries of international refugees deserve more attention. But the refugees have not yet had time to write about their suffering; they are still struggling to survive. So it was only through his personal experience in 1960, written in fluent English, that Gurner was selected by the Royal Swedish Academy in 2021 as a wake-up call to the world. At this time, the Nobel Prize for Literature shines a light on the collective suffering of refugees, making the Nobel Prize for Literature a moral imperative in the same literary context. That is sufficient in this case.