The Nobel Prize in literature is awarded to American poet Louise Glück Former President Barack Obama awarded Louise Glück the 2015 National Humani
The Nobel Prize in literature is awarded to American poet Louise Glück
Glück has been recognized before for her work, but this time she is awarded a Prize that hailed another American, Bob Dylan in 2016
Gto News informs on the Literature Nobel Prize to the American writer, this information is based on information published by CNN
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the US poet Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”, reported the Nobel Comitee as reported by CNN.
Almost a tradition
Glück is the first American to win the prestigious award since Bob Dylan was honored in 2016. Toni Morrison was the last American to receive the prize before him, winning in 1993, reports CNN.
Glück was born in New York in 1943 and is a professor of English at Yale University in Connecticut. She made her debut in 1968 with “Firstborn,” and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 and the National Book Award in 2014, informs CNN.
First thoughts
“My first thought was I won’t have any friends, because most of my friends are writers, but then I thought no, that won’t happen,” said the 77-year-old in a call with the Nobel Prize team after her win was announced.
She said there were some previous recipients she admired and some she did not, but the award was “a great honor.”
“It’s too new, I don’t know, really, what it means,” she added. “Mostly I am concerned for the preservation of daily life with people I love”, said Gluck in the report by CNN.
A laureated writer
Glück, the 16th woman to win the literature prize, has published 12 collections of poetry and several volumes of essays on poetry.
Her writing is characterized by a striving for clarity and focuses on themes of childhood and family relationships, according to notes from Anders Olsson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee.
“Snowdrops,” from her 1992 Pulitzer-winning collection “The Wild Iris,” describes the miraculous return of life after winter:
“I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body.”
“…I thought…”
Glück, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will receive 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million dollars) for the award, which was announced at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.
She said she was thinking of buying a house in Vermont with the prize money.
Her 1999 collection “Vita Nova” ends with the lines: “I thought my life was over and my heart was broken. / Then I moved to Cambridge.”
A Myth of Devotion
Louise Glück
When Hades decided he loved this girl
he built for her a duplicate of earth,
everything the same, down to the meadow,
but with a bed added.
Everything the same, including sunlight,
because it would be hard on a young girl
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness
Gradually, he thought, he’d introduce the night,
first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.
Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.
Let Persephone get used to it slowly.
In the end, he thought, she’d find it comforting.
A replica of earth
except there was love here.
Doesn’t everyone want love?
He waited many years,
building a world, watching
Persephone in the meadow.
Persephone, a smeller, a taster.
If you have one appetite, he thought,
you have them all.
Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night
the beloved body, compass, polestar,
to hear the quiet breathing that says
I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me. And when one turns,
the other turns—
That’s what he felt, the lord of darkness,
looking at the world he had
constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind
that there’d be no more smelling here,
certainly no more eating.
Guilt? Terror? The fear of love?
These things he couldn’t imagine;
no lover ever imagines them.
He dreams, he wonders what to call this place.
First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden.
In the end, he decides to name it
Persephone’s Girlhood.
A soft light rising above the level meadow,
behind the bed. He takes her in his arms.
He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you
but he thinks
this is a lie, so he says in the end
you’re dead, nothing can hurt you
which seems to him
a more promising beginning, more true.
“A Myth of Devotion” from Averno by Louise Glück.
Copyright © 2006 by Louise Glück.
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