So, is everything good again now? Has the Nobel Prize in literature been picked up from the ditch and placed on the throne again? In any case, it was easy to think so when Jon Fosse gave his moving Nobel lecture on Thursday. Then everyone who watched heard the story of the boy who lost his language out of fear, who found it again inside himself, and who became one of the world’s leading writers. EVENT: Jon Fosse was interviewed at Frekhaug kai shortly after he was awarded the world’s most important literary prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature. Photo: Stian Sørum Røkenes / news The applause has been great. Almost strikingly large. Not conspicuously because of Fosse, but because of the institution that has given him this honor. Because it is only five years since the Nobel Prize in Literature lay down with broken arms and legs. In 2018, the award ceremony was postponed. By then, the Swedish Academy, which decides who will receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, had been torn to shreds by the biggest dispute in its more than 230-year history. That’s not saying much. Because it’s quite a bunch we’re talking about. The Swedish Academy was founded by King Gustaf III of Sweden in 1786. Their mission was to protect the Swedish language and support “eloquence and poetry”. The eighteen members, “De Aderton”, were allocated eighteen numbered chairs by lottery. TIME FOR STRID: Sara Danius, former and now deceased permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, was also known for her interest in fashion. Here she sits during the Nobel Prize ceremony in 2018, the same year that no Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded. Photo: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND Membership in the Academy must be for life. When a member dies, the new member not only takes over a seat in the assembly, but also the deceased’s chair and number. Every Thursday after the members’ meetings, the members have dinner at the restaurant Gyllene freden in Gamla Stan. The crockery and shot glasses are engraved with the individual’s seat number. These are also inherited. As an academy member, you drink from the same glass as your predecessors on the same chair. Yes, you can also freely use limousines and luxurious apartments that the Academy has at its disposal. Yes, and then there was this: the Academy plays an important role as manager of the large sums that they give each year in scholarships to Swedish authors. These cannot be applied for, and the Academy does not have to justify its decisions. The Swedish Academy is, in other words, an aristocracy of intellectuals. Their judgment has been considered so self-evident that no one has questioned it. That is, not until 2017. The Metoo wave washed over many countries. Soon the newspaper Dagens Nyheter was able to publish a case in which eighteen women accused a Swedish cultural figure of harassment and sexual assault. IN COURT: Jean-Claude Arnault arrives in the courtroom in Stockholm, 19 September 2018. He was eventually to be sentenced to two and a half years in prison for rape. Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP The man was Jean-Claude Arnault, and he was married to the renowned poet Katarina Frostenson, who sat in chair number eighteen. The culture scene Arnault ran had received considerable support from the Academy, and some of the assaults were said to have taken place in the Academy’s apartments. He is said to have threatened several of the women with destroying their careers if they did not obey him. Arnault was later convicted of rape. But the case also splintered the Swedish Academy. Some of the members, including permanent secretary Sara Danius, wanted a settlement and an independent investigation. Katarina Frostenson believed that she and her husband were victims of a conspiracy. She was supported by Horace Engdahl, former permanent secretary and Arnault’s close friend. He believed that the Academy had to stand together against attacks from outside, and remember that they were working for the history books. They did not have to give in to moralistic and petty pressure from outside. ON THE WAY HOME: Horace Engdahl on the way home after an academy meeting at the time when the scandal was about to tear the Swedish Academy apart. Engdahl clearly took the side of Katarina Frostenson, against the permanent secretary Sara Danius. Photo: NTB This was an attitude that met with great opposition outside the Academy’s thick walls. The Swedish Academy had great power and new enormous respect. Now the Swedes had to ask themselves if it wasn’t too easy to feel unassailable, above norms and laws, for someone who sat for life in one of the country’s most honorable assemblies. That feeling was not lessened by the fact that a majority of the Academy’s sitting members voted against a proposal to expel Katarina Frostenson. The wedding nevertheless ended with Frostenson resigning. But Sara Danius had to do the same, and several of her supporters. It feels like a long time ago, even though it isn’t. In 2018, it was asked whether the Swedish Academy could survive at all. In the coverage of this year’s award ceremony, the scandal is barely mentioned. HAD TO WITHDRAW: Permanent secretary Sara Danius and writer Sara Stridsberg leave the Swedish Academy’s meeting at Börshuset in Gamla stan. In the period after the scandal, a number of Swedish women were to dress in tie blouses as a statement of support for Danius. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT / NTB scanpix It has to do with several things. It probably plays a role in the fact that a majority of today’s members were elected after the Arnault case broke. But it probably also has something to do with the fact that the academy members are simply doing an invaluable task. That does not mean that they can claim to be exempt from scrutiny and criticism, as Horace Engdahl seems to think. But that means that regularly, in fact once every year, it becomes obvious that there is simply something to be said for awarding a Nobel Prize in literature. Because it is a price that should simply be uncompromisingly quality-conscious. It is an increasingly rare commodity in a world that is becoming increasingly oriented towards the marketable, the easily digested, the extroverted. Towards the authors who master social media or the interview chair on a literary stage and who also often have a financially strong publishing house behind them. CELEBRATED: Katarina Frostenson was primarily known as an advanced and renowned poet and a member of the Swedish Academy when the scandal surrounding her and her husband broke out. Just a year earlier, she had received the Nordic Council’s literature prize in Copenhagen. Photo: SCANPIX DENMARK / Reuters But “De Aderton”, despite all the problematic sides, has the task of looking behind all this. They may ask to have literary works translated specifically, in order to assess authors who have not had worldwide success against authors who have. It means that a well-known and beloved author like Annie Ernaux could win last year. And the year before: British-Tanzanian Abdulrazak Gurnah. For most people in our part of the world, it was the first time they heard Gurnah’s name when the Academy’s permanent secretary Mats Malm announced the winner. Those who were inspired to open one of Gurnah’s books were quickly introduced to captivating, colorful and devilish works. UNKNOWN TO MANY: But those who were inspired by the Nobel Prize to open Abdulrazak Gurnah’s books encountered a literary world that was easy to get carried away with. Photo: Robert Rønning / Robert Rønning / news And this year it was Fosse. It can be experienced as full of contrasts to see the beach bum read his subdued, thoughtful and personal lecture surrounded by gold leaf and blue velvet. But it’s just a contrast because it’s usually a completely different type of people we see in such glamorous settings. They are often movie stars, photogenic celebrities. In the wind now, maybe blown away in a year, or ten. The Nobel Prize in Literature ensures that the eyes and cameras of the world, for a brief moment, focus their full attention on someone who, simply and simply, is extremely good at writing. That alone is a reason to be glad that the strange, mythic and often provocative institution survived its worst crisis.
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The Nobel Prize in Literature survived its worst crisis. Thank goodness for that. – Speech
