morrissey

Hemingways Nobelpristal

« Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you. »

Jag vill tipsa om den intressanta samlingen av intervjuer från det legendariska litterära magasinet The Paris Review. The Paris Review startade 1953 och dessa tre pocketböcker (på engelska) innehåller samtal med vår tids största författare. Läs om träffen med Hemingway, i ett gulkaklat sovrum utanför Havanna på 60-talet, träffa Karen Blixen, Harold Pinter och Dorothy Parker som medan hon blir intervjuad oupphörligen kastar en boll åt sin pekignes. Och den sällsamma Evelyn Waugh (som bland annat skrev Brightshead Revistited) och som bäddar ner sig bekvämt på ett hotellrum i London, i sidenpyjamas, medan intervjun äger rum.

Böckerna finns på t ex Hedengrens i Stockholm eller på adlibris.se

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Jag tycker om Matisse.

Underbara Wislawa Szymborska

Krakowpoeten och Nobelpristagaren Wislawa är aktuell med ny diktsamling  som heter ”Här”.

Ett smakprov:

”Livet på jorden betalar du inte dyrt.
För drömmar, till exempel, inte ett vitten.
För illusioner först när de är förlorade.
För innehav av kropp, endast med kroppen.”

Fina bokomslag