Nobel prize for literature to Bob Dylan: How do we feel? – FAZ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

What does it mean that the Nobel prize for literature this year went to a singer, to Bob Dylan? And what that he went last year to a non-fiction book writer, Svetlana Alexievich? There is no Poet more the of the most prestigious literary prize would be worthy? Or the Nobel prize in literature is new, because the recognized him to be awarded at the end of the Swedish Academy, that there are more effective ways to tell a story is a promise, as what is commonly understood to be literature? Prophecies of doom were immediately heard: Mircea Cartarescu, itself often decorated writer from Romania, and already for a long time under the constant favorites for the Nobel prize for literature, has informed after the notification of the award to Dylan, that he will have the “real writer” would do.

author: Andreas Platthaus, editor responsible for the literature and literary life. consequences:

The can do a Haruki Murakami, Don DeLillo, or Ngugi wa Thiong'o, because they had each earned the award. But has not earned him Dylan? The question that must be asked is: Is the essence of Bob Dylan’s art – or by Svetlana Alexievich, seal? Only with their answer, you can evaluate the decisions of the Nobel prize for literature Committee: as a misunderstanding, if it was not to seal, or as a possible miscarriage of justice.

The expansion of the literary term

misunderstandings are not the most recent two ceremonies: no-one denies the literary and dramatic craftsmanship of Svetlana Alexievich, the has perfected with their conversation portraits, a Genre that acquired literary rank. These texts can be read poetically, they are engaging, and aesthetically challenging. Why should a Nobel prize for literature in the Presence of such qualities in fictional prose and poetry? Especially since 1953, the author was awarded the prize in addition to the biographical-historical works (nonfiction!) specifically, the Talk mitgeehrt Winston Churchill wanted to see. Or even in 1902, in the second year of the Nobel prize, Thedor Mommsen as “the greatest living master of the historical presentation of art”. The expansion of the literary concept of the Jury is as old as the award.

For many years, Bob Dylan is betting on the Nobel prize for literature. Now, the Jury finally rings. photo gallery

In English, the musical division bears, of the seventy-five years old and still restless, active Dylan heard the term “Singer/Songwriter”. Writing is so constitutive for the assignment to an artist’s existence, for which the German has only the ugly mechanical-sounding term “singer-songwriter”. Their roots in music and poetry alike. More than all other forms of modern lyric poetry has kept in song lyrics, but the rhyme; a representative of a traditionalist understanding of poetry should be able to make friends with it. Advanced poetry friends, in turn, can enjoy the use of language creative Potential of popular music texts. Just think of what has hired Herbert Grönemeyer with the German language and what Poets such as Michael Jackson and admire him.

The Nobel prize is expanding its Terrain

Bob Dylan is not for neologisms or verse experiments, but for a poetic language, and the resulting sublimation of its narrative materials. Some have him accused, therefore, of the Verräts, and the idiosyncratic presentation of the singer on the stage contributes the Rest, Dylan is considered by many as incomprehensible. However, it is not a coincidence that his song texts collected in the early seventies, as the books are published (and in many languages). This was not a sing-along assistance to desperate concert-goers, but the Material for the text exegesis of avid listeners, the about appealing more readers. And, in the best case, your feeling for poetry developed or sharpened, because even if Dylan’s seal may not meet the expectations of modern poetic terminology, it is in the metaphors as imaginative as in the Form most carefully built. They moved their listeners, is evident. What seal want more?

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but in competition with a poet such as Adonis, who had been favored prior to the awarding of the prizes, too? Is it linked to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Wisława Szymborska and Tomas Tranströmer, the Dylan’s last predecessor as Nobel prize-winning poet? When the Nobel prize for literature sees its task in the assessment of challenging writing and its global dissemination is to promote, he met with the award to Bob Dylan, a consistent decision. And the emphasis of the Jury, you will have to draw from an author who had invented constantly, and still do, is a note, which is why he has the preference to some of the highly traded writers, especially from his American home.

The Nobel prize has expanded its Terrain, and can not conceive of literature as a strictly eingehegtes field. The Secretary of the Swedish Academy referred to the fact that Dylan bring his poetry to people as it used to be Homer. This is a long shot, but the comparison contributes to the understanding of clarification: Homer operating singing, verse, art and Property. In a word: literature.