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Among the five prizes provided for in Alfred Nobel's will (1895), one was intended for the person who, in the literary field, had produced "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction". The Laureate should be determined by "the Academy in Stockholm", which was specified by the statutes of the Nobel Foundation to mean the Swedish Academy. These statutes defined literature as "not only belles-lettres, but also other writings which, by virtue of their form and style, possess literary value".
As guidelines for the distribution of the Literature Prize, the Swedish Academy had the general requirement for all the prizes – the candidate should have bestowed "the greatest benefit on mankind" – and the special condition for literature, "in an ideal direction". Both prescriptions are vague and the second, in particular, was to cause much discussion. What did Nobel actually mean by ideal? In fact, the history of the Literature Prize appears as a series of attempts to interpret an imprecisely worded will. The consecutive phases in that history reflect the changing sensibility of an Academy continuously renewing itself. The main source of knowledge of the principles and criteria applied is the annual reports which the Committee presented to the Academy. Also the correspondence between the members is often enlightening. There is an obstacle though: all Nobel information is to be secret for 50 years.
A chapter in the history of the Literary Prize could be entitled "A Literary Policy of Neutrality". The objectives laid down by the new chairman of the Academy's Nobel Committee at the beginning of the First World War kept the belligerent powers outside, giving the small nations a chance. This policy partly explains the Scandinavian overrepresentation on the list in this period.
Another period, approximately coinciding with the 1920s, could be labeled "The Great Style". This key concept in the reports of the Committee reveals the connections with Wirsén's epoch and its traits of classicism. With such a standard the Academy was, of course, out of touch with what happened in contemporary literature. It could appreciate Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks – a masterpiece "approaching the classical realism in Tolstoy" – but passed his Magic Mountain over in silence.
In line with the requirement "the greatest benefit on mankind", the Academy of the 1930s tried a new approach, equating this "mankind" with the immediate readership of the works in question. A report of its Committee stated "universal interest" as a criterion and the Academy decided on writers within everybody's reach, from Sinclair Lewis to Pearl Buck, repudiating exclusive poets like Paul Valéry and Paul Claudel.
Given a pause for renewal by the Second World War and inspired by its new secretary, Anders Österling, the post-war Academy finished this excursion into popular taste, focusing instead on what was called "the pioneers". Like in the sciences, the Laureates were to be found among those who paved the way for new developments. In a way, this is another interpretation of the formula "the greatest benefit on mankind": the perfect candidate was the one who had provided world literature with new possibilities in outlook and language.
The “pioneers" criterion lost weight, however, as the heroic period of the international avant-garde turned into history and literary innovation became less ostentatious. Instead, the instruments pointed at the "pioneers" of specific linguistic areas. The 1988 Prize was awarded a writer who, from a Western point of view, rather administers the heritage from Flaubert and Thomas Mann. In the Arabic world, on the other hand, Naguib Mahfouz appears as the creator of its contemporary novel.
Another policy, partly coinciding with the one just outlined, partly replacing it, is "the pragmatic consideration". A growing number within the Academy wanted to call attention to important but unnoticed writers and literatures, thus giving the world audience masterpieces they would otherwise miss, and at the same time, giving an important writer due attention. The criterion gives poetry a prominent place. In no other period were the poets so well provided for as in the years 1990- 1996 when four of the seven prizes went to Octavio Paz, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and Wislawa Szymborska, all of them earlier unknown to the world audience.
The criteria discussed sometimes alternate, sometimes coincide. The spotlight on the unknown master Canetti in 1981 is thus followed by the laurel to
the universally hailed "pioneer" of magic realism, Gabriel García Márquez, in 1982. Some Laureates answer both requirements, like Faulkner, who was not only "the great experimentalist among twentieth-century novelists" – the Academy was here fortunate enough to anticipate Faulkner's enormous importance to later fiction - but also, in 1950, a fairly unknown writer.
It is also realized that on the whole the serious literature that is worthy of a prize furthers knowledge of man and his condition and endeavours to enrich and improve his life.
The Literary Prize has often given rise to discussion of its political implications. The Swedish Academy, for its part, has on many occasions expressed a desire to stand apart from political antagonisms. The guiding principle, in Lars Gyllensten's words, has been "political integrity". This has quite often not been understood.
The history of the Literature Prize is also the history of its reception in the press and in other media. Apart from overlooking the changes in outlooks and criteria within the Swedish Academy, international criticism has tended to neglect the crowd of likely names around the Prize a specific year. The Academy cannot have the ambition to crown all worthy writers. What it cannot afford is giving Nobel's laurel to a minor talent. Its practice during the last full half-century has also largely escaped criticism on that point.
Adapted from the text by Kjell Espmark nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature
