Presentation Speech by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the , on December 10, 1905 Wherever the literature of a people is rich and inexhaustible, the existence of that people is assured, for the flower of civilization cannot grow on barren soil. But in every nation there are some rare geniuses who concentrate in themselves…

Presentation Speech by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the , on December 10, 1906 From the unusually large number of poets and authors proposed for the Nobel Prize this year, the Swedish Academy has chosen a great Italian poet who for a long time has attracted the attention both of the Academy and of…

Presentation Speech by Professor Sture Allén of the , December 10, 1997. Translation of the Swedish text. Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, To be a jester is, and always has been, a serious matter. Swedish mediaeval laws stipulated that it cost a man smaller fines to lay violent hands on somebody from…

Presentation Speech by Harald Hjärne, Director of the , on December 10, 1908 Alfred Nobel was a man of action who, during his successful business career in the competing markets of many countries and in the international trade centres, had developed an awareness of the inner contradictions and dangers of modern developments. Mankind still seemed…

Presentation Speech by Karl Ragnar Gierow, of the (Translation) Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mix a powerful imagination with a logic in absurdum, and the result will be either a paradox or an Irishman. If it is an Irishman, you will get the paradox into the bargain. Even the Nobel Prize in…

Presentation Speech by Mr. Östen Sjöstrand, Member of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Irish poet Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. The thatched farmhouse he grew up in was called Mossbawn – a name that has become mythical in Heaney’s poetry.…

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the The student of François Mauriac’s works will be struck from the very first by the insistence with which Mauriac devotes himself to describing a precise milieu, a corner of land one can point to on a map of France. The action of his novels nearly always…

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Member of the Nobel Committee of the , on December 10, 1932 When we survey John Galsworthy’s authorship, it seems to develop unusually smoothly, pushed on by a conscientious and indefatigable creative impulse. Yet he is not one of those who have turned to the literary career rapidly and without…

  Presentation Speech by Dr. Johannes Edfelt, of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, The exiled and cosmopolitan author Canetti has one native land, and that is the German language. He has never abandoned it, and he has often avowed his love of the highest manifestations of…

Presentation Speech by Per Hallström, Permanent Secretary of the , on December 10, 1933 Ivan Bunin’s literary career has been clear and uncomplicated. He came from a family of country squires and grew up in the literary tradition of the times in which that social class dominated Russian culture, created a literature occupying a place…