1944 Nobel Prize in Literature

Award

1944 Nobel Prize in Literature

Johannes V. Jensen

"for the rare strength and fertility of his poetic imagination with which is combined an intellectual curiosity of wide scope and a bold, freshly creative style."

Date|

* November 1944 (announcement)
* 10 December 1945
(ceremony)

Location| Stockholm, Sweden
Presented by| Swedish Academy
First award| 1901
Website| Official website
| <- 1943 · | Nobel Prize in Literature | · 1945 ->

|
|

The 1944 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Danish author Johannes V. Jensen "for the rare strength and fertility of his poetic imagination with which is combined an intellectual curiosity of wide scope and a bold, freshly creative style."[1] He is the fourth Danish recipient of the literary prize.

## Laureate

[edit]

Main article: Johannes V. Jensen

Jensens early works was in the fin-de-siècle pessimism style. He found his own voice as a writer with Himmerlandshistorier ("Himmerland Stories", 1898–1910), comprising a series of tales set in the part of Denmark where he was born. This was followed by the acclaimed historical novel The Fall of the King (1900-1901) centred on the Danish 16th century King Christian II. The novel series Den lange rejse ("The Long Journey", 1908–22), spanning the early history of humanity in six volumes with a focus on evolutionary theory, is regarded as Jensens greatest achievement. In addition to these books, Jensen wrote numerous prose works and essays and was also a prominent poet. His Digte ("Poems", 1906) is regarded as the start of modernist poetry in Denmark.[2]

## Nominations

[edit]

Jensen had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on 53 occasions since 1925. He was nominated every year between 1931 and 1944. In 1942 the Nobel committee received seven nominations for Jensen, followed by two nominations in 1943 and two nominations in 1944.[3]

In total, the Nobel committee received 24 nominations for 21 writers including Gabriela Mistral (awarded in 1945), Hermann Hesse (awarded in 1946), Enrique Larreta, Johan Huizinga, Georges Duhamel, John Steinbeck (awarded in 1962) and Paul Valéry. Four were newly nominated namely Abol-Gassem E’tessam Zadeh, Luis Nueda y Santiago, Charles Ferdinand Ramuz and Arnulf Øverland. Maria Madalena de Martel Patrício, Henriette Charasson, Elisaveta Bagryana and Gabriela Mistral were the only women nominated.[4]

The authors George Ade, Joaquín Álvarez Quintero, Marc Bloch, Max Brand, Édouard Bourdet, Joseph Campbell, Jean Cavaillès, Irvin S. Cobb, Olive Custance, Eugénio de Castro, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Enrique Díez Canedo, Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux, Edith Durham, Benjamin Fondane, Giovanni Gentile, Henri Ghéon, Jean Giraudoux, Philippe Henriot, Max Jacob, Napoleon Lapathiotis, Stephen Leacock, Elsa Lindberg-Dovlette, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Kaj Munk, Robert Nichols, Augusta Peaux, Karel Poláček, Armand Praviel, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Miklós Radnóti, Jacques Roumain, Israel Joshua Singer, Ida Tarbell, Florence Trail, Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, Margery Williams, and Harold Bell Wright died in 1944 without having been nominated for the prize.

Official list of nominees and their nominators for the prize  No.  | Nominee  | Country  | Genre(s)  | Nominator(s)

|
|
|
|

1  | Elisaveta Bagryana (1893–1991)  |  Bulgaria | poetry, translation  | Stefan Mladenov (1880–1963)[a]
2  | Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948)  |  Soviet Union
( Ukraine)  | philosophy, theology  | Alf Nyman (1884–1968)
3  | René Béhaine (1880–1966)  |  France | novel, short story, essays  | Maurice Mignon (1882–1962)
4  | Edmund Blunden (1896–1974)  |  United Kingdom | poetry, essays, biography  | Heinrich Wolfgang Donner (1904-1980)
5  | Henriette Charasson (1884–1972)  |  France | poetry, essays, drama, novel, literary
criticism, biography  |

* Serge Barrault (1887–1976)
* Pierre Moreau (1895–1972)

6  | Maria Madalena de Martel Patrício (1884–1947)  |  Portugal | poetry, essays  | António Baião (1878–1961)
7  | Teixeira de Pascoaes (1877–1952)  |  Portugal | poetry  | João António Mascarenhas Júdice (1898–1957)
8  | Georges Duhamel (1884–1966)  |  France | novel, short story, poetry, drama, literary criticism  | Hjalmar Hammarskjöld (1862–1953)
9  | Abol-Gassem E'tessam Zadeh (?)  |  Iran | novel, essays  | Issa Sepahbodi (1896–?)
10  | Vilhelm Grønbech (1873–1948)  |  Denmark | history, essays, poetry  | Sven Lönborg (1871–1959)
11  | Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)  |  Germany
Switzerland | novel, poetry, essays, short story  | Anders Österling (1884–1981)
12  | Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)  |  Netherlands | history  | Willem van Eysinga (1878–1961)
13  | Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1873–1950)  |  Denmark | novel, short story, essays  |

* Harry Fett (1875–1962)
* Carl Adolf Bodelsen (1894–1978)

14  | Enrique Larreta (1875–1961)  |  Argentina | history, essays, drama, novel  |

* Carlos Obligado (1889–1949)
* Carlos Ibarguren (1877–1956)

15  | Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957)  |  Chile | poetry  | Hjalmar Hammarskjöld (1862–1953)
16  | Charles Langbridge Morgan (1894–1958)  |  United Kingdom | drama, novel, essays, poetry  | Sigfrid Siwertz (1882–1970)
17  | Luis Nueda y Santiago (1883–1952)  |  Spain | essays  | Julio Casares (1877–1964)
18  | Arnulf Øverland (1889–1968)  |  Norway | poetry, essays  | Rolv Thesen (1896–1966)
19  | Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878–1947)  |  Switzerland | novel, poetry, short story  | Sigfrid Siwertz (1882–1970)
20  | John Steinbeck (1902–1968)  |  United States | novel, short story, screenplay  | Erik Lönnroth (1910–2002)
21  | Paul Valéry (1871–1945)  |  France | poetry, philosophy, essays, drama  | Ernst Paulus Bendz (1880–1966)

## Award ceremony

[edit]

On 10 December 1944 a luncheon was held at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in place of the customary ceremony in Stockholm. Per Hallström, chairman of the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy, delivered a lecture on the Nobel Prize laureate in literature that was broadcast the same day. Unable to attend the 1944 award ceremony, Johannes V. Jensen received his prize at Stockholm on 10 December 1945.[5]

At the award ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December 1945 Anders Österling, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy said:

> This child of the dry and windy moors of Jutland has, almost out of spite, astonished his contemporaries by a remarkably prolific production. He could well be considered one of the most fertile Scandinavian writers. He has constructed a vast and imposing literary œuvre, comprising the most diverse genres: epic and lyric, imaginative and realistic works, as well as historical and philosophical essays, not to mention his scientific excursions in all directions.[6]

## Notes

[edit]

1. ^ This nomination was originally sent in 1943 but was moved to the nomination list for 1944.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1944". nobelprize.org.
2. ^ Helmer Lång Hundra nobelpris i litteratur 1901-2001, Symposion 2001, p.157-160
3. ^ "Johannes V. Jensen - Nominations". nobelprize.org.
4. ^ "Nomination archive". nobelprize.org. April 2020.
5. ^ "Presentation". nobelprize.org.
6. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1944 Award Ceremony speech". nobelprize.org.

## External links

[edit]

* Presentation Lecture by Per Hallström, chairman of the Nobel committee.
* Award ceremony speech by Anders Österling.

* v
* t
* e

Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature

1901–1920|

* 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

1921–1940|

* 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

1941–1960|

* 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

1961–1980|

* 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

1981–2000|

* 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

2001–2020|

* 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–present|

* 2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah
* 2022: Annie Ernaux
* 2023: Jon Fosse
* 2024: Han Kang
* 2025: to be determined

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