The Nobel Prize in Literature is an annual award for literary achievement given by the Nobel Committee in Stockholm. Contents 1 Requirements for nominating candidates 2 List of laureates 2.1 1900s ... Wikipedia
Medal awarded to the laureate Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes (Swedish Nobelpriset, English Nobel Prize) are one of the most prestigious international prizes awarded annually for outstanding Scientific research, revolutionary inventions or ... ... Wikipedia
Medal of the laureate of the State Prize of the USSR The State Prize of the USSR (1966 1991) is one of the most important prizes in the USSR along with the Lenin Prize (1925 1935, 1957 1991). Established in 1966 as a successor to the Stalin Prize awarded in 1941-1954; laureates ... ... Wikipedia
The building of the Swedish Academy The Nobel Prize in Literature is an award for achievements in the field of literature, awarded annually by the Nobel Committee in Stockholm. Contents ... Wikipedia
Medal of the laureate of the State Prize of the USSR The State Prize of the USSR (1966 1991) is one of the most important prizes in the USSR along with the Lenin Prize (1925 1935, 1957 1991). Established in 1966 as a successor to the Stalin Prize awarded in 1941-1954; laureates ... ... Wikipedia
Medal of the laureate of the State Prize of the USSR The State Prize of the USSR (1966 1991) is one of the most important prizes in the USSR along with the Lenin Prize (1925 1935, 1957 1991). Established in 1966 as a successor to the Stalin Prize awarded in 1941-1954; laureates ... ... Wikipedia
Medal of the laureate of the State Prize of the USSR The State Prize of the USSR (1966 1991) is one of the most important prizes in the USSR along with the Lenin Prize (1925 1935, 1957 1991). Established in 1966 as a successor to the Stalin Prize awarded in 1941-1954; laureates ... ... Wikipedia
Books
- According to the will. Notes on the Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Ilyukovich A. The publication is based on biographical essays on all the Nobel Prize winners in literature for 90 years, from the moment of its first award in 1901 to 1991, supplemented by ...
RUSSIAN HISTORY
Prix Nobel? Oui, ma belle". So joked Brodsky long before receiving the Nobel Prize, which is the most important award for almost any writer. Despite the generous scattering of Russian literary geniuses, only five of them managed to receive the highest award. However, many of them, if not all, having received it, suffered enormous losses in their lives.
Nobel Prize 1933 "For the truthful artistic talent with which he recreated in prose a typical Russian character."
Bunin became the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize. The fact that Bunin had not even appeared in Russia for 13 years, even as a tourist, gave a special resonance to this event. Therefore, when he was informed of the call from Stockholm, Bunin could not believe what had happened. In Paris, the news spread instantly. Every Russian, regardless of financial status and position, spent his last pennies in a tavern, rejoicing that their compatriot turned out to be the best.
Once in the Swedish capital, Bunin was almost the most popular Russian person in the world, they stared at him for a long time, looked around, whispered. He was surprised, comparing his fame and honor with the glory of the famous tenor. 
Nobel Prize ceremony.
I. A. Bunin in the first row, far right.
Stockholm, 1933
Nobel Prize in 1958 "For significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for the continuation of the traditions of the great Russian epic novel"
Pasternak's candidacy for the Nobel Prize was discussed in the Nobel Committee annually, from 1946 to 1950. After a personal telegram from the head of the committee and Pasternak's notice of the award, the writer replied with the following words: "Grateful, glad, proud, embarrassed." But some time later, after the planned public harassment of the writer and his friends, public persecution, sowing an impartial and even hostile image among the masses, Pasternak refused the prize, writing a letter with a more voluminous content.
After the prize was awarded, Pasternak bore the entire burden of the “persecuted poet” firsthand. Moreover, he carried this burden not at all for his poems (although it was for them, for the most part, that he was awarded the Nobel Prize), but for the “anti-Sovestvenny” novel Doctor Zhivago. Nes, even refusing such an honorary award and a solid amount of 250,000 crowns. According to the writer himself, he still would not have taken this money, sending it to another, more useful place than his own pocket.
On December 9, 1989, in Stockholm, the son of Boris Pasternak, Yevgeny, at a reception dedicated to the Nobel Prize laureates of that year, was awarded a diploma and the Nobel medal of Boris Pasternak. 
Pasternak Evgeny Borisovich
Nobel Prize 1965 "for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia".
Sholokhov, like Pasternak, repeatedly appeared in the field of view of the Nobel Committee. Moreover, their paths, like their offspring, involuntarily, and voluntarily too, crossed more than once. Their novels, without the participation of the authors themselves, "prevented" each other from winning the main award. It is pointless to choose the best of two brilliant, but such different works. Moreover, the Nobel Prize was given (and is being given) in both cases not for individual works, but for the overall contribution as a whole, for a special component of all creativity. Once, in 1954, the Nobel Committee did not award Sholokhov an award only because the letter of recommendation from Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences Sergeev-Tsensky arrived a couple of days later, and the committee did not have enough time to consider Sholokhov's candidacy. It is believed that the novel ("Quiet Flows the Don") at that time was not beneficial to Sweden politically, and artistic value always played a secondary role for the committee. In 1958, when the figure of Sholokhov looked like an iceberg in the Baltic Sea, the prize went to Pasternak. Already a gray-haired, sixty-year-old Sholokhov in Stockholm was awarded his well-deserved Nobel Prize, after which the writer read the same pure and honest speech as all his work. 
Mikhail Alexandrovich in the Golden Hall of the Stockholm City Hall
before the start of the Nobel Prize.
Nobel Prize 1970 "For the moral strength gleaned from the tradition of great Russian literature."
Solzhenitsyn learned about this award while still in the camps. And in his heart he aspired to become its laureate. In 1970, after he was awarded the Nobel Prize, Solzhenitsyn replied that he would come for the award "in person, on the appointed day." However, just like twelve years earlier, when Pasternak was also threatened with deprivation of his citizenship, Solzhenitsin canceled his trip to Stockholm. It's hard to say that he regretted it too much. Reading the program of the gala evening, he kept coming across pompous details: what and how to say, a tuxedo or tailcoat to wear at a particular banquet. "... Why is it necessary white butterfly- he thought, - but you can’t wear a camp jacket?" "And how to talk about the main business of all life at the" banquet table "when the tables are laden with dishes and everyone drinks, eats, talks...".
Nobel Prize 1987 "For a comprehensive literary activity distinguished by clarity of thought and poetic intensity."
Of course, it was much "easier" for Brodsky to receive the Nobel Prize than for Pasternak or Solzhenitsyn. At that time, he was already a hunted emigrant, deprived of citizenship and the right to enter Russia. The news of the Nobel Prize caught Brodsky at lunch in a Chinese restaurant near London. The news practically did not change the expression of the writer's face. He only joked to the first reporters that now he will have to talk his tongue whole year. One journalist asked Brodsky whether he considers himself a Russian or an American? “I am a Jew, a Russian poet and an English essayist,” Brodsky replied.
Known for his indecisive nature, Brodsky took to Stockholm two versions of the Nobel Lecture: in Russian and in English. Until the last moment, no one knew in which language the writer would read the text. Brodsky stopped in Russian.
On December 10, 1987, the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his all-encompassing work, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity."
Dedicated to the great Russian writers.
From October 21 to November 21, 2015, the Library and Information Complex invites you to an exhibition dedicated to the work of Nobel laureates in literature from Russia and the USSR.
The Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015 was awarded to a Belarusian writer. The award was given to Svetlana Aleksievich with the following wording: "For her many-voiced work - a monument to suffering and courage in our time." At the exhibition, we also presented the works of Svetlana Alexandrovna.
The exposition can be found at the address: Leningradsky Prospekt, 49, 1st floor, room 100.
The prizes established by the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel are considered the most honorable in the world. They are awarded annually (since 1901) for outstanding work in the field of medicine or physiology, physics, chemistry, literary works, for his contribution to the strengthening of peace, the economy (since 1969).
The Nobel Prize in Literature is an award for literary achievement presented annually by the Nobel Committee in Stockholm on 10 December. According to the statute of the Nobel Foundation, the following persons can nominate candidates: members of the Swedish Academy, other academies, institutions and societies with similar tasks and goals; professors of the history of literature and linguistics of universities; laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature; chairmen of authors' unions representing literary creativity in the respective countries.
Unlike the winners of other prizes (for example, in physics and chemistry), the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature is made by members of the Swedish Academy. The Swedish Academy brings together 18 figures from Sweden. The Academy is composed of historians, linguists, writers and one lawyer. They are known in the community as "The Eighteen". Membership in the academy is for life. After the death of one of the members, the academicians choose a new academician by secret ballot. The Academy elects from among its members the Nobel Committee. It is he who deals with the issue of awarding the prize.
Nobel laureates in literature from Russia and the USSR :
- I. A. Bunin(1933 "For the rigorous skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose")
- B.L. Parsnip(1958 "For significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel")
- M. A. Sholokhov(1965 "For the artistic power and honesty with which he depicted the historical era in the life of the Russian people in his Don epic")
- A. I. Solzhenitsyn(1970 "For the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature")
- I. A. Brodsky(1987 "For a comprehensive work imbued with the clarity of thought and the passion of poetry")
Russian laureates in literature are people with different, sometimes opposing views. I. A. Bunin and A. I. Solzhenitsyn are staunch opponents of Soviet power, and M. A. Sholokhov, on the contrary, is a communist. However, the main thing they have in common is their undoubted talent, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prizes.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a famous Russian writer and poet, an outstanding master of realistic prose, an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1920 Bunin emigrated to France.
The most difficult thing for a writer in exile is to remain himself. It happens that, having left the Motherland because of the need to make dubious compromises, he is again forced to kill the spirit in order to survive. Fortunately, this fate passed Bunin. Despite any trials, Bunin always remained true to himself.
In 1922, Ivan Alekseevich's wife, Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, wrote in her diary that Romain Rolland nominated Bunin for the Nobel Prize. Since then, Ivan Alekseevich lived in hopes that someday he would be awarded this prize. 1933 All newspapers in Paris on November 10 came out with large headlines: "Bunin - Nobel laureate." Every Russian in Paris, even a loader at the Renault factory, who had never read Bunin, took this as a personal holiday. For the compatriot turned out to be the best, the most talented! In Parisian taverns and restaurants that evening there were Russians who sometimes drank for "their own" for their last pennies.
On the day of awarding the prize on November 9, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin watched "merry stupidity" - "Baby" in the "cinema". Suddenly, a narrow beam of a flashlight cut through the darkness of the hall. They were looking for Bunin. He was called by phone from Stockholm.
“And my whole old life immediately ends. I go home pretty quickly, but feeling nothing but regret that I didn’t manage to watch the film. But no. You can’t not believe it: the whole house is lit up with lights. ... Some kind of turning point in my life," recalled I. A. Bunin.
Exciting days in Sweden. AT concert hall in the presence of the king, after the report of the writer, member of the Swedish Academy Peter Galstrem on the work of Bunin, he was awarded a folder with a Nobel diploma, a medal and a check for 715 thousand French francs.
When presenting the award, Bunin noted that the Swedish Academy acted very boldly by awarding the émigré writer. Among the contenders for this year's prize was another Russian writer, M. Gorky, however, largely due to the publication of the book "The Life of Arseniev" by that time, the scales still tipped in the direction of Ivan Alekseevich.
Returning to France, Bunin feels rich and, sparing no money, distributes "allowances" to emigrants, donates funds to support various societies. Finally, on the advice of well-wishers, he invests the remaining amount in a "win-win business" and is left with nothing.
Bunin's friend, poetess and prose writer Zinaida Shakhovskaya, in her memoir book "Reflection", noted: "With skill and a small amount of practicality, the prize should have been enough to the end. But the Bunins did not buy either an apartment or a villa ..."
Unlike M. Gorky, A. I. Kuprin, A. N. Tolstoy, Ivan Alekseevich did not return to Russia, despite the exhortations of the Moscow "messengers". He never came to his homeland, even as a tourist.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960) was born in Moscow into a family famous artist Leonid Osipovich Pasternak. Mother, Rosalia Isidorovna, was a talented pianist. Maybe that's why in childhood the future poet dreamed of becoming a composer and even studied music with Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin. However, the love of poetry won. Glory to B. L. Pasternak was brought by his poetry, and bitter trials - "Doctor Zhivago", a novel about the fate of the Russian intelligentsia.
The editors of the literary magazine, to which Pasternak offered the manuscript, considered the work anti-Soviet and refused to publish it. Then the writer sent the novel abroad, to Italy, where in 1957 it was published. The very fact of publication in the West was sharply condemned by Soviet colleagues in the creative workshop, and Pasternak was expelled from the Writers' Union. However, it was Doctor Zhivago that made Boris Pasternak a Nobel laureate. The writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize starting in 1946, but was awarded it only in 1958, after the release of the novel. The conclusion of the Nobel Committee says: "... for significant achievements both in modern lyric poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition."
In his homeland, the award of such an honorary prize to an "anti-Soviet novel" aroused the indignation of the authorities, and under the threat of expulsion from the country, the writer was forced to refuse the award. Only 30 years later, his son, Yevgeny Borisovich Pasternak, received a diploma and a medal for his father. Nobel laureate.
The fate of another Nobel laureate, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, is no less dramatic. He was born in 1918 in Kislovodsk, and his childhood and youth were spent in Novocherkassk and Rostov-on-Don. After graduating from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Rostov University, A. I. Solzhenitsyn taught and at the same time studied in absentia at the Literary Institute in Moscow. When did the Great Patriotic War, the future writer went to the front.
Shortly before the end of the war, Solzhenitsyn was arrested. The reason for the arrest was the critical remarks about Stalin found by military censorship in Solzhenitsyn's letters. He was released after Stalin's death (1953). In 1962, the Novy Mir magazine published the first story, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which tells about the life of prisoners in the camp. Literary magazines refused to print most of the subsequent works. There was only one explanation: anti-Soviet orientation. However, the writer did not back down and sent the manuscripts abroad, where they were published. Alexander Isaevich was not limited literary activity- he fought for the freedom of political prisoners in the USSR, spoke out with sharp criticism of the Soviet system.
The literary works and political position of AI Solzhenitsyn were well known abroad, and in 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. The writer did not go to Stockholm for the award ceremony: he was not allowed to leave the country. Representatives of the Nobel Committee, who wanted to present the prize to the laureate at home, were not allowed into the USSR.
In 1974 A. I. Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the country. He first lived in Switzerland, then moved to the United States, where he was, with a considerable delay, awarded the Nobel Prize. In the West, such works as "In the First Circle", "The Gulag Archipelago", "August 1914", "The Cancer Ward" were printed. In 1994, A. Solzhenitsyn returned to his homeland, having traveled through all of Russia, from Vladivostok to Moscow.
The fate of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, the only one of Russian laureates the Nobel Prize in Literature, who were supported by government agencies. M. A. Sholokhov (1905-1980) was born in the south of Russia, on the Don - in the center of the Russian Cossacks. He later described his small homeland - the farm Kruzhilin of the village of Vyoshenskaya - in many works. Sholokhov graduated from only four classes of the gymnasium. He actively participated in the events of the civil war, led the food detachment, which selected the so-called surplus grain from wealthy Cossacks.
Already in his youth, the future writer felt a penchant for literary creativity. In 1922, Sholokhov arrived in Moscow, and in 1923 he began to publish his first stories in newspapers and magazines. In 1926, the collections "Don Stories" and "Azure Steppe" were published. Work on "Quiet Don" - a novel about the life of the Don Cossacks in the era of the Great Break (First World War, revolutions and Civil War) - began in 1925. In 1928, the first part of the novel was published, and Sholokhov completed it in the 30s. "Quiet Don" became the pinnacle of the writer's work, and in 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize "for the artistic strength and completeness with which he depicted a historical phase in the life of the Russian people in his epic work about the Don." "Quiet Flows the Don" has been translated into several dozen languages in 45 countries.
By the time of receiving the Nobel Prize in the bibliography of Joseph Brodsky, there were six collections of poems, the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov", the play "Marble", many essays (written mainly in English language). However, in the USSR, from where the poet was expelled in 1972, his works were distributed mainly in samizdat, and he received the award, already being a citizen of the United States of America.
For him, the spiritual connection with the homeland was important. As a relic, he kept the tie of Boris Pasternak, he even wanted to wear it to the Nobel Prize, but the rules of the protocol did not allow it. Nevertheless, Brodsky still came with Pasternak's tie in his pocket. After perestroika, Brodsky was repeatedly invited to Russia, but he never came to his homeland, which rejected him. "You can't step into the same river twice, even if it's the Neva," he said.
From Brodsky's Nobel lecture: “A person with taste, in particular literary, is less susceptible to repetition and rhythmic incantations, characteristic of any form of political demagogy. It's not so much that virtue is no guarantee of a masterpiece, but that evil, especially political evil, is always a bad stylist. The richer the aesthetic experience of the individual, the firmer his taste, the clearer his moral choice, the freer he is - although perhaps not happier. It is in this rather applied than Platonic sense that Dostoyevsky's remark that "beauty will save the world" or Matthew Arnold's saying that "poetry will save us" should be understood. The world will probably not be saved, but an individual person can always be saved.
These works are more than thousands of other books that fill the shelves of bookstores. Everything is perfect in them - from the laconic language of talented writers to the topics raised by the authors.
"Scenes from Provincial Life" by John Maxwell Coetzee
South African John Maxwell Coetzee is the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice (in 1983 and 1999). In 2003, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for creating countless guises for amazing situations involving outsiders." Coetzee's novels are characterized by well thought out composition, rich dialogue and analytical skill. He subjects the brutal rationalism and artificial morality of Western civilization to merciless criticism. At the same time, Coetzee is one of those writers who rarely talks about his work, and even less often about himself. However, Scenes from a Provincial Life, an amazing autobiographical novel, is an exception. Here Coetzee is extremely frank with the reader. He talks about the painful, suffocating love of his mother, about the hobbies and mistakes that followed him for years, and about the path that he had to go through to finally start writing.
The Humble Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa is an eminent Peruvian novelist and playwright who received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his cartography of the structure of power and his vivid images of resistance, rebellion and defeat of the individual." Continuing the line of great Latin American writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, he creates amazing novels that balance on the verge of reality and fiction. In Vargas Llosa's new book, The Humble Hero, in an elegant rhythm, the mariners masterfully twist two parallel storylines. The hard worker Felicito Yanake, decent and trusting, becomes a victim of strange blackmailers. At the same time, a successful businessman, Ismael Carrera, in the twilight of his life, seeks revenge on his two idle sons, who long for his death. And Ismael and Felicito, of course, are not heroes at all. However, where others cowardly agree, the two stage a quiet rebellion. On the pages of the new novel, old acquaintances also flicker - the characters of the world created by Vargas Llosa.
Moons of Jupiter, Alice Munro
Canadian writer Alice Munro is a master of the modern short story, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Critics constantly compare Munro to Chekhov, and this comparison is not without foundation: like a Russian writer, she knows how to tell a story in such a way that readers, even those who belong to a completely different culture, recognize themselves in the characters. So these twelve stories, presented in a seemingly simple language, reveal amazing plot abysses. On some twenty pages, Munro manages to create a whole world - alive, tangible and incredibly attractive.
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature for a writer "who, in her dreamy and poetic novels, brought to life an important aspect of American reality." Her most famous novel, Beloved, was published in 1987 and won the Pulitzer Prize. At the heart of the book real events that took place in Ohio in the 80s of the nineteenth century: this amazing story black slave Sethy, who decided on a terrible act - to give freedom, but take life. Sethie kills her daughter to save her from slavery. A novel about how difficult it is sometimes to tear out the memory of the past from the heart, about the difficult choice that changes fate, and about people who will forever remain loved.
"Woman from Nowhere" by Jean-Marie Gustave Leclezio
Jean-Marie Gustave Leclezio, one of the most important living French writers, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2008. He is the author of thirty books, including novels, short stories, essays and articles. In the presented book, for the first time in Russian, two stories by Leklezio are published at once: “The Tempest” and “The Woman from Nowhere”. The action of the first takes place on an island lost in the Sea of Japan, the second - in Côte d'Ivoire and the Parisian suburbs. However, despite such a vast geography, the heroines of both stories are very similar in some ways - they are teenage girls who are desperately striving to find their place in an unfriendly, hostile world. The Frenchman Leklezio, who lived for a long time in the countries of South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Japan, Thailand and on his native island of Mauritius, writes about how a person who grew up in the bosom of pristine nature feels himself in the oppressive space of modern civilization.
"My Strange Thoughts" Orhan Pamuk
Turkish prose writer Orhan Pamuk received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006 "for finding new symbols for the collision and interweaving of cultures in search of the melancholic soul of his native city." "My Strange Thoughts" is the author's last novel, on which he worked for six years. Main character, Mevlut, works on the streets of Istanbul, watching the streets fill with new people, and the city gains and loses new and old buildings. Coups are taking place before his eyes, the authorities are replacing each other, and Mevlut is still wandering the streets on winter evenings, wondering what distinguishes him from other people, why he is visited by strange thoughts about everything in the world, and who is really him sweetheart to whom he has been writing letters for the past three years.
"Legends of Modernity. Occupation Essays, Czeslaw Miloš
Czesław Milosz is a Polish poet and essayist who received the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature "for showing with fearless clairvoyance the insecurity of man in a world torn by conflict." “Legends of Modernity” is the “confession of the son of the century” translated into Russian for the first time, written by Milos in the ruins of Europe in 1942-1943. It includes essays on outstanding literary (Defoe, Balzac, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Gide, Witkevich) and philosophical (James, Nietzsche, Bergson) texts, and polemical correspondence between C. Miloš and E. Andrzejewski. Exploring modern myths and prejudices, appealing to the tradition of rationalism, Milosz tries to find a foothold for European culture, humiliated by the two world wars.
Photo: Getty Images, press archive
