Bob Dylan glimret with his absence when the nobel prize in literature was awarded in Stockholm on Saturday evening. But Dylan had written an acceptance speech that was read during the feast of the us ambassador in Sweden. This speech is now posted in its entirety and can be read in the original version of nobelkomiteens website. Below you can read the text translated into English.
see also Geir Rakvaags summary of nobelfesten for Dylan: Hard rain hard times
“Good evening all together. I send my warmest greetings to the members of The Swedish Academy, and to all other distinguished guests who are present tonight.
I’m sorry I can’t be present, but be sure that I really am with you in spirit and honored to receive such a prestigious award.
To be awarded the nobel Prize in literature is something I could never have imagined or seen coming. From a young age have known, read and absorbed the works of those who have been worthy of such an honor: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants within the literature, with works that are taught in the classrooms, which are in libraries around the world and it is spoken about in reverent tones, has always made a deep impression on me. I now stop me to this series of names, I have no words for.
I don’t know if these men and women ever thought that they should be honored with Nobel, but I guess everyone who writes a book, or a poem, or a piece of one or another place in the world, maybe go with such a secret dream, right at the head. A dream that is buried so deep that they don’t even know that it is there.
If someone had ever said to me that I had the slightest chance to win the nobel prize, I would have thought that I would have had about the same odds for it to stand on the moon. The year I was born, and some years afterwards, there was actually no one in the world , which was considered good enough to win this nobel prize. So I acknowledge, to say the least, that I’m in a very rare company.
I was on tour when I received the surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to really grasp it. I began to think of William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I guess that he perceived himself as a playwright. The thought that he wrote the literature may not have dropped him in. His words were written for the stage. Written to be spoken, not read. When he wrote Hamlet, I’m sure he thought of many different things: “Who are the right actors for these roles? How should the iscenesettes? Will I really have this in Denmark?” It that occupied him the most was without a doubt his creative vision and ambition, but it was also more practical things that should be considered and handled. “Is the financing in place?” “There are plenty of good places for my patrons?” “Where should I get a menneskekranium?” I bet that Shakespeare thought least of all about was: “Is this literature?”
When I started to write songs as a teenager, and even then I began to get a certain fame for the capabilities of my stretched not my hope for these songs longer than this. I thought that they could be heard in cafes or bars, maybe later in places like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was dreaming really big I might imagine me to make a record and hear my songs on the radio. It was for me the biggest thing I could achieve. To make discs and to hear your songs on the radio meant that you reached out to a large audience, and that you may be able to do what you had decided.
Now I’ve done it I decided for a long time. I have made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all over the world. But it is my songs that are in the centre for almost everything I do. They seem to have found a place in the lives of many people and in many different cultures, and I’m grateful for.
But there is one thing I must say. As a musician, I’ve played for 50,000 people, and I’ve played for 50, and I can tell you that it is more difficult to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a single personality, but it is not so with the 50. Each one has its own individual identity, each in their own world. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent, are put to the test. The fact that the nobel committee is so small has not escaped my attention.
But as with Shakespeare, I also am often busy with my creative endeavors and to deal with all of life’s praktikaliteter. “Who are the best musicians for these songs.” “I play into the right studio?” Is this the song in the right key?” Some things never changes, not even on 400 years.
Not a single one has ever had time to ask myself: “Are my songs literature?”
So I would like to thank The Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider just that question, and finally, in order to come to such a wonderful response.
My best wishes to you all,
Bob Dylan”
© The Nobel Foundation 2016
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