Not our our prize

Why We're So Nervous About the Nobel Prize in Literature

On October 10, the names of two Nobel Prize winners in literature will be announced in Stockholm. For this year and last. In 2018, the award was not presented - for scandalous reasons. As it turned out, a member of the Academy, writer Katarina Frostenson, told her friends the names of the winners before the announcement - so that they could make the “correct” bets at the bookmakers. In addition, her husband Jean-Claude Arnault, a permanent photographer at the Swedish Academy, was accused of harassment and even rape. As a result, not only Mrs. Frostenson herself was forced to leave her post, but also other members of the Academy who were responsible for literature. So the present presentation of the award after a one-year interval is something like a reboot, a new start.

As you know, the Nobel Prize does not have a shortlist visible to everyone. For the public, this role is played to some extent by the top ten names on the bookmakers list - over the years it has become a kind of waiting list for authors, sorted as the popular understanding of writer's relevance changes. And this year there are some changes. Old-timers descended to the lower places - the Syrian poet Adonis and the American writer Carol Oates. Upstairs now is the Canadian poet Ann Carson (I think she's wonderful) and the French writer from the Caribbean, Maryse Condé (I don't think she's very wonderful). In fourth place is Haruki Murakami. And he is followed by Lyudmila Ulitskaya.

Judging by social networks, the appearance of a domestic writer in such a high place (that is, unofficial, but still recognition that she has a chance) excited our literary community. And the excitement is mostly not joyful.

Claims are like this.

• Why is Ulitskaya being considered when authors much more important for the development of Russian literature are still alive - for example, Sasha Sokolov or Lyudmila Petrushevskaya?

• Isn't there an "Aleksievich syndrome" here, when the award - we are sure - is given for reasons not literary, but momentarily political?

In general, the Russian public has long had some kind of nervous relationship with the Nobel Prize in Literature. It, we believe, is constantly handed over to the wrong person. For the whole new century, only our beloved and practically native Pamuk and Llosa pleased us, and perhaps a little Ishiguro. And when the award was given by Doris Lessing or Jean-Marie Leklezio, whom almost no one in Russia knew, an unpleasant feeling of innocence appeared, so that the conversation immediately turned to “orders” according to gender and some other principle. And, on the contrary, we were pissed off by the success of Svetlana Aleksievich, whom we just know too well and who, in our opinion, did not meet the high Nobel standards.

This is translated into human language as follows - we ourselves did not appreciate it highly enough, but the Nobel Academy appreciated it, and now we are unpleasant.

Anatoly Naiman recalled how once, in the presence of Akhmatova, they began to discuss who was fair, who was unfairly given the Stalin Prize. “Leave them alone,” said Akhmatova, “they give them to anyone they want.”

Of course, speaking of "their award", Akhmatova primarily had in mind "their - Soviet" and "them, with their tastes and views, which are unacceptable to us." But in principle, this is an ideal formulation by which you need to build an attitude towards any extraneous premium process. It is obvious that the world championship in literature, which Hemingway dreamed of, is impossible - after all, there can be no objective indicators here.

All awards are the fruit of ideas about the beautiful and the most important of those who are directly related to them, those who sit on the jury, those who found them.

By the way, about the founders. Now it is customary to dismiss the wording from Nobel's will, according to which the prize should go to "the one who created the most significant literary work of an idealistic orientation!". Like, almost 130 years have passed since then, and what is an “idealistic orientation” in our time? We are embarrassed to say such words.

But this very idealistic orientation, or, more simply, humanism (here is another word that is usually embarrassed) is the thing that is least of all lost in translation, a thing that is truly internationally understandable.

Svetlana Aleksievich and Lyudmila Ulitskaya, each in their own way, work with the collision of "a defenseless person against a soulless system." Some may think that they are not innovative enough or even deep enough, but in any case, they do it in such a way that they are heard.

We don't like that the Nobel Committee has them in mind and not the more difficult authors. Only now we ourselves do not give awards to these authors (Petrushevskaya received a consolation award for merit in the year of her eightieth birthday, Sokolov, who has not written for a long time, has not received any mainstream awards).

Well, the Nobel Prize is their prize. To whom they want, they give.

In conclusion, I must say that there are practically no chances that Lyudmila Ulitskaya will become a laureate this year.