The American Nobel Prize for Literature Laureate Louise Glück regards this year’s award as an honor for cautious literary voices. “I believe that the Swedish Academy honors the intimate, private voice with my award, which can sometimes be reinforced or expanded through public statements, but never replaced,” wrote the 77-year-old poet in her Nobel lecture, which the Nobel Foundation wrote on Monday evening published on their website.
If you write books, you probably want to reach many people, wrote Glück. Some poets, however, often reached their readers only temporarily, one after the other and over time. “In a profound way, these readers come one at a time.”
She herself has always felt drawn to lonely human voices in poetry, such as William Blake’s “The Little Black Boy” and “I’m nobody! Who are you?” by Emily Dickinson. “And the poets to whom I returned as I got older were the poets in whose work I played a decisive role as the chosen listener. Intimate, seductive, often stealthy or secret. No stadium poets. No poets who speak to themselves. “
The Swedish Academy announced at the beginning of October that this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature would go to the US poet Glück. She is to be officially honored on Thursday together with all other Nobel Prize winners except the Nobel Peace Prize winner at an online award ceremony broadcast from Stockholm.
Unlike usual, the winners will not be on site in the Swedish capital because of the coronavirus pandemic, but will be honored with the Nobel certificates and medals in their homeland in advance. According to the Nobel Foundation, Glück received these honors on Sunday at home in the USA.
As the Swedish Academy announced at the request of the German Press Agency, Glück preferred to give her Nobel Lecture in writing. A year ago, the winners for 2018 and 2019, Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke, personally held their Nobel Lectures in Stockholm.
Quelle: What / Dpa
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