Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature this year has been awarded, surprisingly enough, to the American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan.

Roxana Vasile, 14.10.2016, 13:38

75-year old singer and songwriter Bob Dylan on Thursday joined an impressive line of American writers awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, including the likes of Eugene ONeill, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. The Swedish Academy decided Dylan has produced a remarkable body of literary work. Bob Dylan is thus the first musician in history honoured with a Nobel in literature, for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. Here is the president of the poetry section of the Romanian Writers Union, Dan Mircea Cipariu, explaining the decision of the Swedish Academy, which came with a nearly one-million-dollar cash award:

“This prize must be viewed in a different light, it must be read as a meta-cultural political decision, so to say, because Bob Dylan was a symbol of the flower power generation. This type of poetic thinking that Bob Dylans work puts forth is one that transcends the literary genre we call poetry and it even transcends literature itself. Bob Dylan is not necessarily a poet, but rather the creator of a specific type of poetic thinking, one that we need so much today. The world nowadays needs a spiritual dimension, something beyond this daily consumerism and tabloidization.

Bob Dylan released some 60 albums in his five-decade long career. His work has chronicled social unrest and the identity crisis of the American society after the war in Vietnam. It embodied concepts like defiance, courage, and a criticism of neo-colonial militarism and adventurism, with songs like “Blowing in the Wind becoming anthems of anti-war and civil rights movements. The Nobel he received on Thursday follows a long line of distinctions granted to Bob Dylan, including the Grammy, Golden Globe and Oscar. He was inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2008 he received a Pulitzer for the poetic force of his works, which had a deep impact on American music and culture.

Those who criticised the award of this prize to Mr. Dylan spoke about the fact that many major authors have been cited as possible Nobel recipients for years, but have never won it. One example is the Romanian Mircea Cartarescu, whose works were translated into many languages, and who wrote, in a Facebook post regarding Bob Dylan, “a great poet, but I pity the true writers. The Nobel Committee played us this time around. In turn, the Romanian poet Florin Iaru sees the award as a political decision.

(Translated by A.M. Popescu)