This is the start of my new project, to read at least one book by each of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature who was not a white man, in order. I am bracing myself for Kristin Lavransdatter in a couple of rounds, but the process starts gently with Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) of Sweden, who in 1909 became the tenth winner but the first woman, and also the first Swede, to get the award, “in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination, and spiritual perception that characterize her writings”
I thought it was worth looking up the presentation speech at the 1909 Nobel ceremony.
Purity and simplicity of diction, beauty of style, and power of imagination, however, are accompanied by ethical strength and deep religious feeling… what makes Selma Lagerlöf’s writings so lovable is that we always seem to hear in them an echo of the most peculiar, the strongest, and the best things that have ever moved the soul of the Swedish people. Few have comprehended the innermost nature of this people with a comparable love… Such an intimate and profound view is possible only for one whose soul is deeply rooted in the Swedish earth and who has sucked nourishment from its myths, history, folklore, and nature. It is easy to understand why the mystical, nostalgic, and miraculous dusk that is peculiar to the Nordic nature is reflected in all her works. The greatness of her art consists precisely in her ability to use her heart as well as her genius to give to the original peculiar character and attitudes of the people a shape in which we recognize ourselves.
Perhaps it comes across as a little defensive of the Swedish Academy for having chosen one of their own. By contrast, Lagerlöf’s own speech is attractively humble, regretting that her late father was not present.
Anyone who has ever sat in a train as it rushes through a dark night will know that sometimes there are long minutes when the coaches slide smoothly along without so much as a shudder. All rustle and bustle cease and the sound of the wheels becomes a soothing, peaceful melody. The coaches no longer seem to run on rails and sleepers but glide into space. Well, that is how it was as I sat there and thought how much I should like to see my old father again.
I was first put onto Lagerlöf by my distant cousin Frederic Whyte (1876-1940), who wrote about her in his 1926 memoir A Wayfarer in Sweden. On his recommendation, as it were, I read and enjoyed Gösta Berling’s Saga and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. Of her other books, The Emperor of Portugallia had the most raters on Goodreads and Jerusalem the most owners on LibraryThing, and both are short, so I decided to read both (but was only partially successful, as I will explain).
The second paragraph of the third chapter of The Emperor of Portugallia is:
| Det var Erik i Fallas hustru, som skulle bära barnet till dopet. Hon åkte till prästgården med den lilla flickan i sina armar, och Erik i Falla själv gick bredvid kärran och körde. Den första vägbiten ända fram till Duvnäs bruk var ju så dålig, att den knappt kunde kallas för väg, och Erik i Falla ville vara försiktig, då han hade det odöpta barnet att köra för. | It was the wife of Eric of Falla who was to bear the child to the christening. She sat in the cart with the infant while Eric of Falla, himself, walked alongside the vehicle, and held the reins. The first part of the road, all the way to Doveness, was so wretched it could hardly be called a road, and of course Eric had to drive very carefully, since he had the unchristened child to convey. |
Published in 1914, five years after Lagerlöf had got her Nobel Prize, it is about a tenant farmer who is devoted to his daughter; but when he falls on hard times, she goes to Stockholm to work. It becomes obvious to everyone in the village that she has become a sex worker in the city; her father at first is in denial, and then suffers a mental breakdown, believing himself to be the Emperor of Portugallia and his absent daughter his princess. There is a somewhat glurgy ending, but the rest is interesting enough. It is exactly the sort of thing that the Swedish Academy would have had in mind in celebrating the pious and honest people of the countryside, oppressed by the landowners but supported by the Church. I did not think it was especially deep, but there is nothing very wrong with it. You can get The Emperor of Portugallia here.
Having (as I thought) finished Jerusalem, and checking out the plot points on Swedish Wikipedia, I was alarmed to realise that I had only the first of the two parts of the novel, published respectively in 1901 and 1902. (I also had intended to read the earlier book first, but I got that wrong too.) None of the English translations available in ebook format seems to include the second part of Jerusalem – I suspect that they have all been scraped from Project Gutenberg, which has only the first half. So my review is of the first half of the book only.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Jerusalem, is:
| – Vad ska det där bli till? sade mor Märta. | “What’s all that for?” asked Mother Martha. |
It’s another portrait of a changing society in rural Sweden, which I did not find as compelling as The Emperor of Portugallia – too many people with similar names, and the narrative skips through a couple of generations perhaps a little too easily. But the last few chapters, showing a fringe Christian cult gaining control of most of the population and then brainwashing them into moving from Sweden to Jerusalem, are well done. In the second volume, which I wasn’t able to get hold of, apparently they get to Jerusalem and have a really hard time. Claes Annerstedt’s Nobel ceremony speech, quoted above, raves about Jerusalem, but I think more about the second part than the first. You can get the first part of Jerusalem here.
The rural Swedes moving to Jerusalem are a genuine historical episode; they joined up with the American settlers whose legacy is the very pleasant American Colony Hotel to the north of the Old City.
Anyway, I think that in retrospect, there were much more interesting things going on in literature in 1909 than Selma Lagerlöf, but she is a logical enough laureate if you’re interested in the kind of literature that the Swedish Academy was – bearing in mind that the previous laureates were Sully Prudhomme, Theodor Mommsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Giosuè Carducci, Rudyard Kipling and Rudolf Christoph Eucken.
Next in this sequence of mine is the winner of the Nobel Prize four years after Selma Lagerlöf – Rabindranath Tagore, who got the award in 1913. I shall be reading his poetry collection Gitanjali.
