A Historian for the Nobel Prize?

It is not always true that a novelist, poet or playwright are the only ones that get a Nobel Prize.

Sometimes a journalist gets one as well, such as Svetlana Alexievich, and sometimes a philosopher, such as Henri Bergson.  Indeed, in theory, any type of writing may be awarded the Prize, though the Academy usually goes for the similar types.

Recently Richard Dawkins has asked why has scientists been left out of the circle, when a lot of them write with elegance and style (I think of Steven Pinker's clear prose).  Presumably this is the case because most of the Nobel Prizes goes to scientists for their clearly defined and measurable achievements, why give any more to them?

I would like to ask a similar question but about historians, why have there been none for the Nobel Prize for Literature in it's own long history?

The reason I ask is that I have recently been reading a lot of history.  It strikes me that the kind of writing necessary for requires huge efforts in skill, in assimilation, in precision that is worthy of the highest literature award for it all.

When you think that a sentence, for the historian, might have to comprise several years of lived life it  asks a lot of that writer to write it accurately, to give a just presentation of that time  and to do so vividly requires serious talents.  For it is a lot harder to re-create a half-submerged world than to invent one.  There is a lot riding on you to it sensibly, as politics in this age could be changed.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume was regarded more as a historian in his own time, and one would think that his studies of men and women of the past informed his own thought experiments, which possibly proves the value of studying history.

Reading two books on the histories of the world (History of the World by J.M. Roberts, and An Unfinished History of the World by Hugh Thomas) I am bowled over as to how they must have researched and collected all the information that they needed to write such books.  And similarly with Yuval Noah Harari's Saipens it shows that history, and the way we look at them, changes.  History is not so fixed in the past as it can be constantly re-interpenetrated.

For all that the Academy has not seen this value and continues to award the Prize to creators of new worlds.

So this year I will be looking around and taking suggestions for a possible living historian that may well be a contender to champion for the Nobel Prize.  If anything I have leaned from history is that it is always in a process of change.

'Knulp' by Herman Hesse

Knulp was the perfect book for me.

I had been precariously travelling around the country after an upsetting incident that ended with me losing my accommodation and then struggling with myself and the world.  I find that in these times of questioning I need books more than ever and 'Knulp' by Herman Hesse was that rarest of stories found at the perfect moment.  It healed some of my hurt.

With the wayward traveller Knulp I found a kindred spirit- a nomad in the world.  Knulp has no occupation, yet knows a great deal of many things.  He is loved by all but can never stay in one place for long as he does not want to have a home while he wishes to see the world.  Others may find this irresponsible as he could have been a respectable person and practice a profession or a trade but Knulp needs his freedom to explore and discover.

Knulp earnest and sincere character made me respond to him so closely and immediately, a simple soul not wanting to complicate his life with the things that others have.  For me I understood him so deeply, the need to be innocent with a wide eyed wonder about the world against the odds.  To think that the book was written in 1917 shows how much of a searching of the soul the German Hesse has done, which gives it so much more of a poignant taste to Knulp's character.
 
Simply written and reflective it offers up a depth of feeling that other writers cannot achieve like Hesse.

The last part of the book was the most affecting aspect of the story where Knulp wonders if he has completely wasted his life, whether anything about it was good.  This turns him into a fully rounded character where his experience catches up with him with a profound insight.

It is a wonderfully short novella that inspires as much as it consoles, about usual lives and our resolving ourselves to ourselves.  One of my three favourite books, along with 'Auto-da-Fe' and 'The Clown' (what is it about German writers?) I highly recommend this book, particularly if you have become lost.

'The Clown' by Heinreich Böll

The tears of a clown is an old cliche and in Heinreich Böll's novel 'The Clown' we drink it deep.

Hans Schnier is the eponymous clown who befalls a romantic tragedy in his life during his late twenties.  He is in love with Marie, a good Catholic, who wishes to be married traditionally while Hans has spurned such a life and wants nothing of the sort.  One day Marie leaves him for another man, Zupfer, and Hans, being monogamous, is heartbroken.

Of all the novels of the Nobel Prize list this, to me, is one of the greatest, second only to Auto-Da-Fe by Elias Canetti. 

So why do I think this?

I've always liked Böll's short stories and thought that they were works of great moral strength, and this seems true with his longer works.  Secondly I was just leaving my twenties behind when I read this and so I could identify with the main character very well, his depression and disappointments.  Lastly it is a great work of art who through one character we see the workings of a hypocritical society always talking about love and never practising it.

It's story works very well as a novel as it is told in flashbacks while having a positive narrative drive.  Though Schnier is a depressed clown he is never morose, often funny and is particularly poignant as an innocent making his way through the wicked world of deceptions and betrayal.  But I think some of it, especially the middle scene with his father, could be made into a good radio/ stage play.  Reading it I could see it in a very cinematic  way.  Which is often a way of discovering if the writer is imaginatively acute or not.

Schnier's attempts to find out where Marie has gone and his obstruction from her friends and family are rigorous through a constant process of loss.  Not only loss of his love but also a loss of his job as a clown.  As he drinks more and becomes less and less in control of himself he finds that he is taking less money for the jobs he does.  His agent, another source of agitation, is in some sense his only friend and even he cannot help him.

This clown is very much a man who in losing the one thing he does love, loses all other things and he is willing to drop out of society completely and be in the gutter.  The layers of interaction give him no pleasure as he becomes increasingly at odds with those around him. 

What clinches it for me as a great book is the grace of it's ending.  Humble and ennobling it rescues Schnier from the very depths of tragedy and gives him a wholeness that he had lost but in a very different sense.  For me this book is about the act of standing up, of trying to restore order, and failing knowing that one had tried, about living honestly and all the pain it gives you. 

I enjoy German writers very much and this book is one of the finest, definitely one for book-worn humanists who need to be told such stories.
     

'Snow Country' by Yasunari Kawabata

The poetry of coldness and heat are evocatively captured in Yasunari Kawabata's slim novel, serialised in the late '30s, 'Snow Country', with a doomed yet elegant love affair.

Shimamura  is a Japanese man who has come to the hot springs of Yuzawa taking a break from his city affairs.  At the hot spring he falls in love with a Geisha, Komako, which is a short, intense, affair but cannot last as Shimaura has to return to the city.  In the novel the fleetingness of life is explored, how pleasure comes and goes from moment to moment to how best this fleetingness should be enjoyed.

It is a very Japanese style of story that looks for the importance in the smallness of things, actions and words, and is very restraint on not overwhelming the reader with too many details.  The hot springs themselves serve for a unique location where this love story is played out.  The steam rising into the cold air is an apt metaphor for what Kawabata looks to describe in 'Snow Country'.

The descriptions are really what makes this book as it sets the tone for the dialogue between Shimamura and Yuzawa.  This could be adapted into a stage play as it is all set in one place and having the snow fall around them while they sit in the hot spring comes across as a good image for the fragility of life, the fragility of relationships and the security that comes with these things.

'Snow Country' is the perfect story for our snowy times, to be read with hot water bottle and hot chocolate at hand.

Winner of the Nobel Prize 2017

The Nobel Prize Winner of 2017 is Kazuo Ishiguro,

"who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world"

I wrote this about him in my prediction series a few years ago:

'For some reason Ishiguro reminds me of Oran Pamuk though I now how distinct they both are from each other.  What I am reminded of is the attempts of the individual to reconcile him with the world around them.  Like in ‘Snow’ ‘When We Were Orphans’ is about getting caught in political situations when the main characters have personal problems that they would much rather solve than the wider underlying conditions of society.  It’s not that the characters do not care about the world in which they live but simply they are displaying the fundamental problem of being an individual who acquires personal burdens while expected to be part of something bigger and, almost therefore, more meaningful.  It is a universal trickiness that people have to deal with but the writers’ style is marked into this worldwide condition and therefore making it their own while being applicable to the reader, whoever they might be.' 

A belated congratulations to Ishiguro for the award.