 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature | |
|---|---|
| Wladyslaw Reymont | |
 "for his great national epic, The Peasants" | |
| Date |
|
| Location | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Presented by | Swedish Academy |
| First awarded | 1901 |
| Website | Official website |
The 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Polish author Wladyslaw Reymont "for his great national epic, The Peasants". [1]
Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont (1867-1925) wrote novels and short stories that was strongly influenced by naturalism. He is best known for Chłopi (1904-1909, The Peasants ), a novel in four volumes that chronicles peasant life in Poland during the four seasons of the year, for which he specifically was awarded the Nobel prize. An earlier success was the novel Ziemia obiecana ( The Promised Land , 1899). [2]
Wladislaw Reymont was first nominated in 1919 by the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. It was followed in 1920, 1922 and 1924 wherein he was recommended by Nobel Committee members. [3] In total, the Committee received 22 nominations for 18 authors which included Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Guglielmo Ferrero (who earned the three nominations - the highest), Thomas Hardy, Paul Ernst, Stefan Żeromski, Roberto Bracco, Paul Sabatier, George Bernard Shaw (awarded in 1925), . Three of the nominees were newly nominated: Thomas Mann (awarded in 1929), Max Neuburger and Olav Duun. There were two female nominees namely the Italian novelists Grazia Deledda (awarded in 1926) and Matilde Serao. [4]
The authors Marie-Louise-Félicité Angers (known as Laure Conan), Valery Bryusov, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Joseph Conrad, Jacob Israël de Haan, Herman Heijermans, Franz Kafka, Arnold H. S. Landor, Laura Jean Libbey, Lin Shu, Mary Mackay (known as Marie Corelli), Paul Milliet, Edith Nesbit and Gene Stratton-Porter died in 1924 without having been nominated.
| No. | Nominee | Country | Genre(s) | Nominator(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Roberto Bracco (1861–1943) |  Italy | drama, screenplay |
|
| 2 | Grazia Deledda (1871–1936) | Italy | novel, short story, essays | Carl Bildt (1850–1931) |
| 3 | Olav Duun (1876–1939) |  Norway | novel, short story | Oscar Albert Johnsen (1876–1954) |
| 4 | Paul Ernst (1866–1933) |  Germany | novel, short story, drama, essays | Professors [lower-alpha 1] |
| 5 | Guglielmo Ferrero (1871–1942) | Italy | history, essays, novel |
|
| 6 | Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) |  United Kingdom | novel, short story, poetry, drama | Robert Eugen Zachrisson (1880–1937) |
| 7 | Arno Holz (1863–1929) | Germany | poetry, drama, essays | Eugen Wolf (1850–1912) |
| 8 | Einar Hjörleifsson Kvaran (1859–1938) |  Iceland | novel, poetry, drama, essays | Valtýr Guðmundsson (1860–1928) |
| 9 | Thomas Mann (1875–1955) | Germany | novel, short story, drama, essays |  Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946) |
| 10 | Max Neuburger (1868–1955) |  Austria | history, essays | Adolf Fonahn (1873–1940) |
| 11 | Władysław Reymont (1867–1925) |  Poland | novel, short story | Anders Österling (1884–1981) |
| 12 | Paul Sabatier (1858–1928) |  France | history, theology, biography | Carl Bildt (1850–1931) |
| 13 | Matilde Serao (1856–1927) | Italy | novel, essays | Francesco Torraca (1853–1938) |
| 14 | George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) |  Ireland | drama, essays, novel | Tor Hedberg (1862–1931) |
| 15 | Hermann Türck (1856–1933) | Germany | essays, biography |
|
| 16 | Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) | Austria | novel, poetry, drama, essays | Walther Brecht (1876–1950) |
| 17 | Ludwig von Pastor (1854–1928) | Germany | history | Olof Kolsrud (1885–1945) |
| 18 | Stefan Żeromski (1864–1925) | Poland | novel, drama, short story | Richard Ekblom (1874–1959) |
As no official award ceremony took place, Per Hallström, chairman of the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy, wrote a critical essay on Reymont in lieu of a presentation speech. In it he concluded:
To sum up, this epic novel is characterized by an art so grand, so sure, so powerful, that we may predict a lasting value and rank for it, not only within Polish literature but also within the whole of that branch of imaginative writing which has here been given a distinctive and monumental shape. [5]
Władysław Stanisław Reymont was a Polish novelist and the laureate of the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known work is the award-winning four-volume novel Chłopi.
The Peasants is a novel written by the Polish author Władysław Reymont in four parts between 1904 and 1909. He started writing it in 1897, but because of a railway accident and health problems, it took seven years to complete. The first parts of the story were published in the weekly magazine Tygodnik Illustrowany. The novel has been translated into at least 27 languages. Władysław Reymont received the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature for this work.
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The 1931 Nobel Prize in Literature was posthumously awarded to the Swedish poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1864–1931) with the citation: "The poetry of Erik Axel Karlfeldt." He was the third Swede to win the prize and remains the only recipient to be posthumously awarded. Karlfeldt had been offered the award already in 1919 but refused to accept it, because of his position as permanent secretary to the Swedish Academy (1913–1931), which awards the prize.
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The 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West." He is the first and remains only the Indian recipient of the prize. The award stemmed from the idealistic and accessible nature of a small body of translated material, including the translated Gitanjali.
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The 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Icelandic writer Halldór Kiljan Laxness (1902–1998) "for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland." He is the first and only Icelandic recipient of the Nobel prize in all categories. The literary critic Sveinn Hoskuldsson described him, saying:
"His chief literary works belong to the genre... [of] narrative prose fiction. In the history of our literature Laxness is mentioned beside Snorri Sturluson, the author of "Njals saga", and his place in world literature is among writers such as Cervantes, Zola, Tolstoy, and Hamsun... He is the most prolific and skillful essayist in Icelandic literature both old and new..."
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