1968 Nobel Prize in Literature
{{Infobox award
| name = 20px 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature
| subheader = Yasunari Kawabata
| awarded_for =
| presenter = Swedish Academy
| year = 1901
| website = {{official website|https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1968/summary/}}
| holder_label = 1968 laureate
| holder =
| image = Yasunari Kawabata 1968 cropped.jpg
| caption = "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind."
| host =
| date = {{plainlist|
- 10 October 1968 (announcement)
- 10 December 1968
(ceremony)
}}
| location = Stockholm, Sweden
| previous = 1967
| main = Nobel Prize in Literature
| next = 1969
}}
The 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind."[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1968/summary/ The Nobel Prize in Literature 1968] nobelprize.org He is the first Japanese recipient of the prize.
Laureate
{{main|Yasunari Kawabata}}
Yasunari Kawabata's short story Izu no odoriko ("The Dancing Girl of Izu"), first published in 1926, served as his literary debut. After producing a number of noteworthy works, Kawabata's 1937 novel Yukiguni ("Snow Country") established him as one of Japan's most renowned writers. In 1949, he published two serial novels Senbazuru ("Thousand Cranes") and Yama no Oto. His later works include Mizuumi ("The Lake", 1955) and Koto ("The Old Capital", 1962). Both in the author's home country and abroad, The Old Capital left the biggest impression.[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1968/kawabata/facts/ Yasunari Kawabata – Facts] nobelprize.org[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kawabata-Yasunari Yasunari Kawabata] britannica.com
Deliberations
=Nominations=
Kawabata was nominated on 8 occasions starting in 1961. He was annually nominated with single nominations made by members of the Swedish Academy. In 1968, his nomination was made by Eyvind Johnson, member of the said academy.[https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=12589 Nomination archive – Yasunari Kawabata] nobelprize.org
In total, the Nobel Committee received 112 nominations for 76 writers from various academics, literary critics and societies. Among the repeated nominees were Ezra Pound and E. M. Forster – both dismissed on account of their advancing ages – Max Frisch, Louis Aragon, Charles de Gaulle, Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov and Eugène Ionesco – the latter two authors were set aside because of their controversial works. Nineteen of the nominees were newly nominated such as Patrick White (awarded in 1973), Luis Buñuel, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Friedebert Tuglas, Tadeusz Różewicz, Vladimír Holan, Angus Wilson, Zbigniew Herbert, and Sławomir Mrożek. The oldest nominee was the Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal (aged 99) and the youngest was Sławomir Mrożek (aged 38). Five of the nominees were women namely Marie Under, Anna Seghers, Marianne Moore, Mildred Breedlove, and Katherine Anne Porter.[https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/list.php?prize=4&year=1968 Nomination archive – 1968] nobelprize.org
The authors Karl Barth, Charles Bean, Joaquín Edwards Bello, Enid Mary Blyton, Max Brod, Abel Bonnard, Anthony Boucher, Helen Cam, León Felipe Camino, Jacques Chardonne, Donald Davidson, Pablo de Rokha, Margaret Duley, Edna Ferber, Romano Guardini, Germaine Guèvremont, D. Gwenallt Jones, Fannie Hurst, Anna Kavan, Helen Keller, Alexandre Kojève, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, Donagh MacDonagh, Dorothea Mackellar, Thomas Merton, Harold Nicolson, Mervyn Peake, Sixto Pondal Ríos, Conrad Richter, Marah Roesli, and Tian Han died in 1968 without having been nominated for the prize.
class="sortable wikitable mw-collapsible"
|+ class="nowrap" | Official list of nominees and their nominators for the prize |
scope=col | No.
! scope=col | Nominee ! scope=col | Country ! scope=col | Genre(s) ! scope=col | Nominator(s){{efn|group=notes|Some names of the nominators for the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature was not present in the list released by the Swedish Academy.{{Cite web|url=https://www.svenskaakademien.se/sites/default/files/forslagslista_1968.pdf|title=Nobelarkivet 1968|website=svenskaakademien.se|access-date=11 November 2020}}}} |
---|
1
|Jorge Amado (1912–2001) |{{flag|Brazil}} |novel, short story |{{unbulleted list|Antônio Olinto (1919–2009)|Jean Subirats (?)|Brazilian Writers Association}} |
2
|Jean Anouilh (1910–1987) |{{flag|France}} |drama, screenplay, translation |{{unbulleted list|Emil Ernst Ploss (1925–1972)|Paul Pédech (1912–2005)}} |
3
|Louis Aragon (1897–1982) |{{flag|France}} |novel, short story, poetry, essays |{{unbulleted list|Jean Gaudon (1926–2019)|Pierre Angel (1913–2007)|Robert Ricatte (1913–1995)|Jacques Proust (1926–2005)}} |
4
|Alexandre Arnoux (1884–1973) |{{flag|France}} |screenplay |François Bar (?) |
5
|Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973) |{{flag|United Kingdom}} |poetry, essays, screenplay | |
6
|Agustí Bartra (1908–1982) |{{flag|Francoist Spain|name=Spain}} |poetry, songwriting, translation | |
7
|Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) |{{flag|Ireland}} |novel, drama, poetry |{{unbulleted list|Gerhard Heilfurth (1909–2006)|Robert Brustein (1927–2023)|Matthew Hodgart (1916–1996)|William Stuart Maguinness (1903–1983)|Siegbert Salomon Prawer (1925–2012)|20px Nelly Sachs (1891–1970)}} |
8
|Henri Bosco (1888–1976) |{{flag|France}} |novel, short story | |
9
|Mildred Breedlove (1904–1994) |{{flag|United States}} |poetry |United Poets Laureate International |
10
|Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) |{{flag|Francoist Spain|name=Spain}} |screenplay | |
11
|Heinrich Böll (1917–1985) |{{flag|West Germany}} |novel, short story |Gustav Korlén (1915–2014) |
12
|Paul Celan (1920–1970) |{{flag|Socialist Republic of Romania|name=Romania}} |poetry, translation | |
13
|André Chamson (1900–1983) |{{flag|France}} |novel, essays |{{unbulleted list|Pierre-Henri Simon (1903–1972)|Marc Boegner (1881–1970)}} |
14
|René Char (1907–1988) |{{flag|France}} |poetry | |
15
|Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) |{{flag|France}} |memoir, essays | |
16
|Joseph Delteil (1894–1978) |{{flag|France}} |poetry, novel, short story, essays | |
17
|Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) |{{flag|Switzerland}} |drama, novel, short story, essays |Gustav Siebenmann (born 1923) |
18
|Gunnar Ekelöf (1907–1968) |{{flag|Sweden}} |poetry, essays |{{unbulleted list|Gunnar Tideström (1906–1985)|20pxPär Lagerkvist (1891–1974)}} |
19
|Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) |{{flag|Socialist Republic of Romania|name=Romania}} |history, philosophy, essays, autobiography, novel, short story |Stig Wikander (1908–1983) |
20
|Konstantin Fedin (1892–1977) |{{flag|Soviet Union}} |novel, poetry, essays |
21
|Edward Morgan Forster (1879–1970) |{{flag|United Kingdom}} |novel, short story, drama, essays, biography, literary criticism |Georg Roppen (1919–1983) |
21
|Max Frisch (1911–1991) |{{flag|Switzerland}} |novel, drama | |
22
|Jean Giono (1895–1970) |{{flag|France}} |novel, short story, essays, poetry, drama | |
23
|Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969) |{{flag|Polish People's Republic|name=Poland}} |short story, novel, drama | |
24
|Robert Graves (1895–1985) |{{flag|United Kingdom}} |history, novel, poetry, literary criticism, essays | |
25
|Graham Greene (1904–1991) |{{flag|United Kingdom}} |novel, short story, autobiography, essays |Karl Ragnar Gierow (1904–1982) |
26
|Jorge Guillén (1893–1984) |{{flag|Francoist Spain|name=Spain}} |poetry, literary criticism | |
27
|Zbigniew Herbert (1924–1998) |{{flag|Polish People's Republic|name=Poland}} |poetry, essays, short story, drama |Karl Ragnar Gierow (1904–1982) |
28
|Alberto Hidalgo Lobato (1897–1967) |{{flag|Peru}} |poetry, essays | |
29
|Vladimír Holan (1905–1980) |{{flag|Czechoslovakia}} |poetry, essays |Gunnar Jakobsson (1886–1972) |
30
|Hans Egon Holthusen (1913–1997) |{{flag|West Germany}} |poetry, literary criticism, essays | |
31
|Taha Hussein (1889–1973) |{{flag|United Arab Republic|name=Egypt}} |novel, short story, poetry, translation |{{unbulleted list|William Montgomery Watt (1909–2006)|Kuwait University|University of Jordan|Academy of the Arabic Language}} |
32
|Eugène Ionesco (1909–1994) |{{flag|Socialist Republic of Romania|name=Romania}} |drama, essays |{{unbulleted list|Paul Vernois (1920–1997)|Walter Mönch (1905–1994)}} |
33
|Marcel Jouhandeau (1888–1979) |{{flag|France}} |short story, novel | |
34
|Pierre Jean Jouve (1887–1976) |{{flag|France}} |poetry, novel, literary criticism | |
style="background:gold;white-space:nowrap"|35
|style="background:gold;white-space:nowrap"|Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) |style="background:gold;white-space:nowrap"|{{flag|Japan}} |style="background:gold;white-space:nowrap"|novel, short story |style="background:gold;white-space:nowrap"|Eyvind Johnson (1900–1976) |
36
|Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981) |{{flag|Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|name=Yugoslavia}} |poetry, drama, short story, novel, essays | |
37
|Erich Kästner (1899–1974) |{{flag|West Germany}} |poetry, screenplay, autobiography |
38
|Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2008) |{{flag|Belgium}} |philosophy, essays | |
39
|Robert Lowell (1917–1977) |{{flag|United States}} |poetry, translation |{{unbulleted list|William Alfred (1922–1999)|Thomas McLernon Greene (1926–2003)}} |
40
|Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978) |{{flag|United Kingdom}} |poetry, essays |David Daiches (1912–2005) |
41
|Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972) |{{flag|United Kingdom}} |novel, short story, drama, poetry, history, biography, essays, literary criticism, memoir |{{unbulleted list|Angus McIntosh (1914–2005)|Thomas Anthony Dunn (1923–1988)|Edmund Blunden (1896–1974)|20pxJohn Boyd Orr (1880–1971)|Alexander Robertus Todd (1907–1997)|Alexander Norman Jeffares (1920–2005)|William Walker Chambers (1913–1985)|Eric Linklater (1899–1974)|Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990)|Alistair Mair (1924–1975)|Nigel Tranter (1909–2000)|Alan Martin Boase (1902–1982)|Moray McLaren (1901–1971)|William MacTaggart (1903–1981)}} |
42
|André Malraux (1901–1976) |{{flag|France}} |novel, essays, literary criticism | |
43
|Gustave Lucien Martin-Saint-René (1888–1973) |{{flag|France}} |poetry, novel, essays, literary criticism, drama, songwriting, short story | |
44
|Segismundo Masel (1895–1985) |{{flag|Argentina}} |essays |Antonio de Tornes Ballesteros (?) |
45
|Ramón Menéndez Pidal (1869–1968) |{{flag|Francoist Spain|name=Spain}} |philology, history | |
46
|Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) |{{flag|Japan}} |novel, short story, drama, literary criticism |Henry Olsson (1896–1985) |
47
|Eugenio Montale (1896–1981) |{{flag|Italy}} |poetry, translation | |
48
|Henry de Montherlant (1895–1972) |{{flag|France}} |essays, novel, drama |{{unbulleted list|Barthélémy-Antonin Taladoire (1907–1976)|Adrien Fourrier (?)|The Greek PEN-Club}} |
49
|Marianne Moore (1887–1972) |{{flag|United States}} |poetry, literary criticism, essays, translation |Erik Lindegren (1910–1968) |
50
|Alberto Moravia (1907–1990) |{{flag|Italy}} |novel, literary criticism, essays, drama | |
51
|Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) |{{flag|Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|name=Russia}} |novel, short story, poetry, drama, translation, literary criticism, memoir |{{unbulleted list|Elizabeth Hill (1900–1996)|The Swedish PEN–Club}} |
52
|Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) |{{flag|Chile}} |poetry | |
53
|Junzaburō Nishiwaki (1894–1982) |{{flag|Japan}} |poetry, literary criticism | |
54
|Germán Pardo García (1902–1991) |{{flag|Colombia}} |poetry |{{unbulleted list|James Willis Robb (1918–2010)|Kurt Leopold Levy (1917–2000)}} |
55
|Konstantin Paustovsky (1892–1968) |{{flag|Soviet Union}} |novel, poetry, drama | |
56
|Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) |{{flag|United States}} |short story, essays | |
57
|Ezra Pound (1885–1972) |{{flag|United States}} |poetry, essays | |
58
|Tadeusz Rózewicz (1921–2014) |{{flag|Polish People's Republic|name=Poland}} |poetry, drama, translation | |
59
|Anna Seghers (1900–1983) |{{flag|East Germany}} |novel, short story | |
60
| Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986) | {{flag|Czechoslovakia}} | poetry, memoir, translation | |
61
|Claude Simon (1913–2005) |{{flag|France}} |novel, essays |Lars Gyllensten (1921–2006) |
62
|Pierre-Henri Simon (1903–1972) |{{flag|France}} |essays, novel, literary criticism, poetry | |
63
|Gustave Thibon (1903–2001) |{{flag|France}} |philosophy |Édouard Delebecque (1910–1990) |
64
|Friedebert Tuglas (1886–1971) |{{flag|Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic|name=Estonia}} |short story, literary criticism |The Finnish PEN Club |
65
|Pietro Ubaldi (1886–1972) |{{flag|Italy}} |philosophy, essays | |
66
|Marie Under (1883–1980) |{{flag|Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic|name=Estonia}} |poetry |The Finnish PEN Club |
67
|Mika Waltari (1908–1979) |{{flag|Finland}} |short story, novel, poetry, drama, essays, screenplay |Esko Pennanen (1912–1990) |
68
|Peter Vansittart (1920–2008) |{{flag|United Kingdom}} |novel, essays, memoir |Herbert Howarth (1900–1971) |
69
|Erico Verissimo (1905–1975) |{{flag|Brazil}} |novel, short story, autobiography, essays, translation | |
70
|Tarjei Vesaas (1897–1970) |{{flag|Norway}} |poetry, novel |{{unbulleted list|Otto Christian Oberholzer (1919–1986)|Karl-Hampus Dahlstedt (1917–1996)|Carl-Eric Thors (1920–1986)|Sigmund Skard (1903–1995)|Johannes Andreasson Dale (1898–1975)|Harald Noreng (1913–2006)}} |
71
|Simon Vestdijk (1898–1971) |{{flag|Netherlands}} |novel, poetry, essays, translation |{{unbulleted list|The Dutch PEN Club|Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences}} |
72
|Patrick White (1912–1990) |{{flag|Australia}} |novel, short story, drama, poetry, autobiography |Muriel Clara Bradbrook (1909–1993) |
72
|Kazimierz Wierzyński (1894–1969) |{{flag|Polish People's Republic|name=Poland}} |poetry, essays | |
73
|Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) |{{flag|United States}} |drama, novel, short story |{{unbulleted list|Hans Peter Wapnewski (1922–2012)| Frederick Albert Pottle (1897–1987)}} |
74
|Angus Wilson (1913–1991) |{{flag|United Kingdom}} |novel, short story, essays |Nicholas Brooke (1924–1998) |
75
|Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) |{{flag|United States}} |essays, literary criticism, short story, drama |Wiktor Weintraub (1908–1988) |
76
|Sławomir Mrożek (1930–2013) |{{flag|Polish People's Republic|name=Poland}} |drama, essays |Karl Ragnar Gierow (1904–1982) |
=Prize decision=
The leading contenders for the prize in 1968 were the French novelist André Malraux and the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (awarded in 1969). The third proposal by the Nobel Committee was the British poet W. H. Auden and Kawabata was the fourth. Anders Österling, chair of the committee, and committee member Eyvind Johnson pushed for the choice of Malraux, while the other three members of the committee supported a prize for Beckett. Eventually Kawabata was the candidate that could be agreed upon, following the Swedish Academy's ambition in the 1960s to award authors from different language areas and parts of the world.{{cite news|url=https://www.svd.se/a/7la3EW/vacker-fragan-syftet-med-nobelstiftelsens-ravspel |title=Väcker frågan – syftet med Nobelstiftelsens rävspel? |author=Kaj Schueler |newspaper=Svenska Dagbladet |date=8 January 2019 |language=Swedish}} The committee had deliberated the Japanese authors Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and Yasunari Kawabata since 1960 and even sent a representative to Japan to survey who was the most popular writer. A shared prize to Tanizaki and Kawabata had been proposed before Tanizaki's death in 1965. In 1968, the committee also considered Yukio Mishima, a Japanese author of a younger generation. While supporting a prize for Malraux, Österling admitted that a prize for Kawabata "should prove justified and welcome."{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/10/samuel-beckett-rejected-as-unsuitable-for-the-nobel-prize-in-1968|title=Samuel Beckett rejected as unsuitable for the Nobel prize in 1968|date=10 January 2019|access-date=21 May 2021|author=Alison Flood|website=The Guardian}}
Reactions
Donald Keene, a Japanese literature scholar and professor, was surprised that the Swedish Academy had not awarded Yukio Mishima the prize, but said that Kawabata "certainly deserved the recognition". According to Keene, the prize decision was "greeted with something approaching national delirium" in Japan, but that the Japanese at the same time were puzzled how Kawabata could be understood in the Western world: "Of all contemporary Japanese writers Kawabata is most closely concerned with the objects and landscapes of traditional Japan, and he employs an allusive, indirect style stemming from the old literature, rather than the straightforward expression other Japanese novelists have borrowed from the West. Certainly Kawabata's best novels are not considered easy reading even by the Japanese, and it puzzles them that the Committee in Stockholm should have chosen so intensely Japanese a writer."{{cite web|url=https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20231019/p2a/00m/0et/012000c |title=Donald Keene's Japan (Pt. 43): Yasunari Kawabata wins Nobel Prize in literature |work=Mainichi Daily News |publisher=The Mainichi |date=24 October 2023 }}
In 1970, Artur Lundkvist, a member of the Swedish Academy and its Nobel committee expressed dissatisfaction with the choice of Kawabata: "Sure he is a representative of the Japanese tea drinking traditions and cherryflowers and that. But he says nothing about the Japanese reality", Lundkvist said, "In that sense I think Mikima [Yukio Mishima] in his writing has a better grip on the realities in Japan."{{cite news|title="Det var politik att ge Solsjenytsin nobelpriset" |publisher=Expressen |date=10 December 1970 |lang=Swedish |url=https://www.svenskaakademien.se/svenska-akademien/akademiens-arkiv/reaktioner-pa-alexander-solzjenitsyns-nobelpris }}
Nobel lecture
Kawabata's Nobel Lecture was titled Japan, The Beautiful and Myself ({{lang|ja|美しい日本の私―その序説}}). Zen Buddhism was a key focal point of the speech; much was devoted to practitioners and the general practices of Zen Buddhism and how it differed from other types of Buddhism. He presented a severe picture of Zen Buddhism, where disciples can enter salvation only through their efforts, where they are isolated for several hours at a time, and how from this isolation there can come beauty. He noted that Zen practices focus on simplicity and it is this simplicity that proves to be the beauty. "The heart of the ink painting is in space, abbreviation, what is left undrawn." From painting he moved on to talk about ikebana and bonsai as art forms that emphasize the elegance and beauty that arises from the simplicity. "The Japanese garden, too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature."{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1968/kawabata-lecture.html|title=Japan, the Beautiful and Myself|last=Kawabata|first=Yasunari|date=12 December 1968|publisher=Nobel Media|access-date=25 November 2013}}
In addition to the numerous mentions of Zen and nature, one topic that was briefly mentioned in Kawabata's lecture was that of suicide. Kawabata reminisced of other famous Japanese authors who committed suicide, in particular Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. He contradicted the custom of suicide as being a form of enlightenment, mentioning the priest Ikkyū, who also thought of suicide twice. He quoted Ikkyū, "Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?" There was much speculation about this quote being a clue to Kawabata's suicide in 1972, a year and a half after Mishima had committed suicide.{{cite book |author=Donald Keene |title=Five Modern Japanese Novelists |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Pd_yLuplcKIC&pg=PA24|date=June 2005|publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-12611-3 |page=26}}
Notes
{{notelist}}
References
{{Reflist}}