Nobel Prize in Literature for the American poet Glück: Strict beauty without sequels

Der Literaturnobelpreis 2020 geht an Louise Glück.

© ROBIN MARCHANT

By Joachim Leitner

To call Stockholm – Louise Glück an insider in the German-speaking world would be a huge overstatement. The 77-year-old poet is basically a stranger to the national book market. Glück has written more than a dozen books, only two are translated into German. Both “Averno” (2007) and “Wilde Iris” (2008) are sold out. New editions of the works translated by Ulrike Draesner are now being considered. “We are currently in the process of renegotiating the rights,” says Luchterhand Literaturverlag in Munich when asked.

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Once again, the Swedish Academy has managed to create a surprise, at least from a local perspective. Once again, one can expect a discovery. Like in 1992, when Derek Walcott received an award, or in 2011, when the award went to Tomas Tranströmer. Once again, the lists of promising contenders compiled over the past few days based on the relevant betting providers led to black ice. Because yesterday at noon Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Academy, announced that Louise Glück, born in New York in 1943, would receive the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature. She is recognized “for her unmistakable voice”, with which she “makes the individual existence in strict beauty ”. This year the Nobel Prize for Literature is endowed with ten million crowns (about 950,000 euros).

Glück was surprised by the news, but was happy despite the early morning in the United States, Malm said. He still didn’t know what the award really meant, the winner announced a bit later, but he was worried that his everyday life would change. “The phone is already ringing non-stop.”

The Nobel Prize in Literature will be officially awarded on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. The traditional ceremony in which the Nobel medal is presented has been canceled this year due to the corona pandemic. It will be replaced by a televised event at Stockholm City Hall. Louise Glück will offer her Nobel Prize lecture as a video link.

Schriftsteller und Literaturnobelpreisträger Peter Handke hat im vergangenen Jahr für hitzige Diskussionen gesorgt.

© BARBARA GINDL

Anders Olsson, a member of the Nobel Prize Committee, yesterday praised the steadfastness of Glücks’s writings, which “sincerely and uncompromisingly try to be understood.”

After Bob Dylan in 2016, the Swedish Academy once again awarded prizes to American literature. Four years ago, the award was also understood as a political signal. During a presidential campaign that ended with Donald Trump’s entry into the White House, a voice from “the other America” ​​was honored. Now Trump is requesting a second term in office, and the Nobel Prize is heading back to a job that can hardly be reconciled with the vulgar uproar of America that is rumored in the media. However: while the academy took a chance on Dylan because his choice explored the current limits of supposedly award-winning literature, Stockholm is on the safe side with Glück, a natural, academically highly respected and multi-award-winning lyricist, trained in classical forms. . After the drama about Dylan and the controversy over last year’s award winner Peter Handke, freestyle should be avoided in big sequels this year.

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