2004 Nobel Prize in Literature
- 7 October 2004 (2004-10-07) (announcement)
- 10 December 2004
(ceremony)
← 2003 · | Nobel Prize in Literature | · 2005 → |
The 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek (born 1946) "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power".[1] She is the tenth female and the first Austrian Nobel laureate followed by Peter Handke in 2019.
Laureate
Elfriede Jelinek literary career includes drama and poetry as well as prose. Among her most famous works we find the novels Die Klavierspielerin ("The Piano Teacher", 1983), Lust (1989), and Gier ("Greed", 2000), all of which are characterized by a satirical sharpness, an experimental urge and an uncompromising outspokenness. Through her work she has made herself known as a harsh critic of modern consumer society, uncovering hidden structures of sexism, sadism and submission. She has expressed that she taps on language to hear its hidden ideologies, much as a doctor might tap on a patient's chest. Among her other well-known works are Die Ausgesperrten ("Wonderful, Wonderful Times", 1980), Die Kinder der Toten ("The Children of the Dead", 1995), and the play Ein Sportstück ("Sports Play", 1998).[2][3]
Reactions
Jelinek said she felt very happy to receive the Nobel Prize, but felt "despair for becoming a known, a person of the public". Known for her modesty and subtle self-irony[broken anchor], she – a reputed feminist writer – wondered whether she had been awarded the prize mainly for "being a woman", and suggested that among authors writing in German, Peter Handke, whom she praised as a "living classic", would have been a more worthy recipient.[4] (Handke subsequently won the Nobel Prize in 2019.)
Jelinek was criticized for not accepting the prize in person; instead, a video message[5] was presented at the ceremony. Others appreciated how Jelinek revealed that she suffers from agoraphobia and social phobia, paranoid conditions that developed when she first decided to write seriously.[6]
She has said her anxiety disorders make it impossible for her to go to the cinema or board an airplane (in an interview she wished to be able to fly to New York to see the skyscrapers one day before dying), and incapable of taking part in any ceremony.[6]
In 2005, Knut Ahnlund left the Swedish Academy in protest, describing Jelinek's work as "whining, unenjoyable public pornography", as well as "a mass of text shovelled together without artistic structure". He said later that her selection for the prize "has not only done irreparable damage to all progressive forces, it has also confused the general view of literature as an art".[7]
In an interview Jelinek gave to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung after receiving the Nobel Prize, Jelinek said that until then, she had written against great inner resistance ("like constantly having to vomit") out of a sense of social and political obligation.[8]
References
- ^ The Nobel Prize in Literature 2004 nobelprize.org
- ^ Elfriede Jelinek – Facts nobelprize.org
- ^ Elfriede Jelinek britannica.com
- ^ Honegger, Gitta (2006). "How to Get the Nobel Prize Without Really Trying". Theater. 36 (2): 5–19. doi:10.1215/01610775-36-2-4.
- ^ "Elfriede Jelinek – Nobel Lecture". nobelprize.org.
- ^ a b "Portrait of the 2004 Nobel Laureate in Literature", nobelprize.org; retrieved 21 May 2021.
- ^ "Member's abrupt resignation rocks Nobel Prize community". Boston Globe, 12 October 2005. Retrieved 21 May 2021
- ^ Agee, Joel (15 April 2007). "Greed – Elfriede Jelinek – Books – Review". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
External links
- Prize announcement 2004 nobelprize.org
- Award ceremony speech nobelprize.org
- v
- t
- e
- 1901: Sully Prudhomme
- 1902: Theodor Mommsen
- 1903: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
- 1904: Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray
- 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz
- 1906: Giosuè Carducci
- 1907: Rudyard Kipling
- 1908: Rudolf Eucken
- 1909: Selma Lagerlöf
- 1910: Paul Heyse
- 1911: Maurice Maeterlinck
- 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann
- 1913: Rabindranath Tagore
- 1914
- 1915: Romain Rolland
- 1916: Verner von Heidenstam
- 1917: Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan
- 1918
- 1919: Carl Spitteler
- 1920: Knut Hamsun
- 1921: Anatole France
- 1922: Jacinto Benavente
- 1923: W. B. Yeats
- 1924: Władysław Reymont
- 1925: George Bernard Shaw
- 1926: Grazia Deledda
- 1927: Henri Bergson
- 1928: Sigrid Undset
- 1929: Thomas Mann
- 1930: Sinclair Lewis
- 1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt (posthumously)
- 1932: John Galsworthy
- 1933: Ivan Bunin
- 1934: Luigi Pirandello
- 1935
- 1936: Eugene O'Neill
- 1937: Roger Martin du Gard
- 1938: Pearl S. Buck
- 1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
- 1940
- 1941
- 1942
- 1943
- 1944: Johannes V. Jensen
- 1945: Gabriela Mistral
- 1946: Hermann Hesse
- 1947: André Gide
- 1948: T. S. Eliot
- 1949: William Faulkner
- 1950: Bertrand Russell
- 1951: Pär Lagerkvist
- 1952: François Mauriac
- 1953: Winston Churchill
- 1954: Ernest Hemingway
- 1955: Halldór Laxness
- 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez
- 1957: Albert Camus
- 1958: Boris Pasternak
- 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo
- 1960: Saint-John Perse
- 1961: Ivo Andrić
- 1962: John Steinbeck
- 1963: Giorgos Seferis
- 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre (declined award)
- 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov
- 1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon / Nelly Sachs
- 1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias
- 1968: Yasunari Kawabata
- 1969: Samuel Beckett
- 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- 1971: Pablo Neruda
- 1972: Heinrich Böll
- 1973: Patrick White
- 1974: Eyvind Johnson / Harry Martinson
- 1975: Eugenio Montale
- 1976: Saul Bellow
- 1977: Vicente Aleixandre
- 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer
- 1979: Odysseas Elytis
- 1980: Czesław Miłosz
- 1981: Elias Canetti
- 1982: Gabriel García Márquez
- 1983: William Golding
- 1984: Jaroslav Seifert
- 1985: Claude Simon
- 1986: Wole Soyinka
- 1987: Joseph Brodsky
- 1988: Naguib Mahfouz
- 1989: Camilo José Cela
- 1990: Octavio Paz
- 1991: Nadine Gordimer
- 1992: Derek Walcott
- 1993: Toni Morrison
- 1994: Kenzaburō Ōe
- 1995: Seamus Heaney
- 1996: Wisława Szymborska
- 1997: Dario Fo
- 1998: José Saramago
- 1999: Günter Grass
- 2000: Gao Xingjian
- 2001: V. S. Naipaul
- 2002: Imre Kertész
- 2003: J. M. Coetzee
- 2004: Elfriede Jelinek
- 2005: Harold Pinter
- 2006: Orhan Pamuk
- 2007: Doris Lessing
- 2008: J. M. G. Le Clézio
- 2009: Herta Müller
- 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa
- 2011: Tomas Tranströmer
- 2012: Mo Yan
- 2013: Alice Munro
- 2014: Patrick Modiano
- 2015: Svetlana Alexievich
- 2016: Bob Dylan
- 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro
- 2018: Olga Tokarczuk
- 2019: Peter Handke
- 2020: Louise Glück
- 2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- 2022: Annie Ernaux
- 2023: Jon Fosse
- 2024: to be announced