The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature Went to Rock Musician Bob Dylan

On 13 October 2016, the Swedish Academy announced the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan as the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The award was given "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

Dylan was born in 1941; his songs grew out of the American folk tradition and absorbed the influences of modernist and Beat poets, while his lyrics voiced social protest, love, and religion. Besides his songs, he published a poetry collection, "Tarantula" (1971), and a memoir, "Chronicles: Volume One" (2004). He is the twelfth Nobel laureate in literature from the United States and the first musician and songwriter to receive the award.

Bookmakers put Dylan's odds of winning at 50 to 1, while the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami was considered the favorite at 4 to 1. The musician himself stayed silent for several days and then called the award "amazing" and "incredible." The academy's decision sparked debate: some writers held that the merits of his lyrics were not equal to those of more traditional authors, while others welcomed the expansion of the boundaries of literature.

Dylan did not come to the ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December 2016, which the academy explained by previously scheduled commitments. His speech was read by the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji, and Patti Smith performed his song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." The laureate received the medal and diploma in April 2017 at a private ceremony in Stockholm.

Dylan published his Nobel lecture in 2017. To receive the prize of eight million Swedish kronor (about 900,000 U.S. dollars), academy rules required the lecture to be delivered within six months of the ceremony. In it he spoke about the influence of Melville's "Moby-Dick," Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front," and Homer's "Odyssey." The lecture was later accused of borrowing: Slate found matches with an analysis of "Moby-Dick" on the SparkNotes website, and the Associated Press counted more than 20 identical and similar formulations, while finding no verbatim matches.

Image: Don Hunstein Public domain

Translation editor: Ловушкин А.