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The
Nobel Prize reaches its century. It was first awarded in 1901, established
by Swedish industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel, who was born in Stockholm
in 1833, died at San Remo in Italy in 1896, and whose name is linked
for ever to the discovery of dynamite.
It
seems right to recall the names of the first winners. For physics, the
German Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, discoverer of X-rays. For chemistry,
the Dutchman Jacobus Van’t Hoff, the founder of stereo-chemistry. For
medicine, the German Emil Von Behring, the discoverer of diphtheria
serum. For literature, the French poet Sully-Prudhomme. For peace, the
Swiss philanthropist Jean-Henry Dunant, who promoted the foundation
of the Red Cross, and the French economist Frederic Passy, who in 1867
founded the International League for Peace and in 1870 the Society for
Arbitration between Nations. To mention of the weak point of this list
comes spontaneously.
The
Frenchman Sully-Prudhomme was not a poet who merited such glory. That
year, there was a giant like Tolstoy not only alive (he died in 1910)
but still very active, who had just published one of his masterpieces,
the novel “Resurrection”. Literature, in fact, has a very distinctive
history in the history of the Nobel prizes. While one can reasonably
claim that almost all the winners in the scientific sectors fully merited
their prize, the same cannot be said for the writers and poets. Overlooking
Tolstoy was the first sign of a future that led, over the years, to
overlooking other great writers including Joyce, Musil, Frost, Borges
and (why not) D’Annunzio and Simenon.
The
short list of those forgotten does not include Proust and Kafka, most
of whose work was published posthumously. On the other hand, who were
Gjellerup, von Heidenstam, Karlfeldt and Jensen, who had their moment
of glory with the Nobel prize, and what did they write? Perhaps there
may still be someone in their own countries who still studies or remembers
them, but only there. The Italian winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature
are Giosuè Carducci (1906), Grazia Deledda (1926), Luigi Pirandello
(1934), Salvatore Quasimodo (1959), Eugenio Montale (1975) and Dario
Fo (1997). With the exception of the elderly Carducci, who died in February
1907, soon after receiving the prize and Pirandello, whose fame as a
playwright is truly world-wide, the other awards aroused controversy
and dissent. The most criticised were to Quasimodo and Fo. What happens
at the concluding ceremony for the Nobel?
Having
accompanied Eugenio Montale to Stockholm, I was an eye witness of the
event. It was the 10th of December 1975.
The
inflexible Nobel liturgy granted Montale a variant. King Karl Gustav
of Sweden made a few steps more than those prescribed. He stood up from
the gilded armchair where he was seated and reached the point where
Montale was standing waiting. The variant had been planned since the
final rehearsal that morning. Montale was unable to walk without someone
to support him and the Nobel liturgy has its oddities. As an exception
it might allow the king to come to the poet, but not the poet to be
supported as he walked.
Montale’s
magic moment lasted fourteen minutes in all. First the prizes were awarded
to the winners for chemistry, physics and medicine (one of the winners
was Renato Dulbecco, the naturalised American biologist of Italian origin).
The Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra played a piece from Respighi’s
Ancient Airs and Dances. The tic on Montale’s hollow, pallid face seemed
unstoppable.
The
poet’s emotion was profound. The words of Anders Osterling, the ninety-year-old
Italianist who had argued harder than anyone in favour of Montale, were
heard. The old Swedish academic said that “Montale’s poetry does not
approach the reader with open arms. Montale’s lyric style has absorbed
a character that seems tinged with the harsh profile of the Ligurian
coastline, with the stormy sea that beats against the bastions of its
rocky shores”. The enchantment was brief but very intense, It seemed
that the sea hymned by the Genoese Montale had reached Stockholm, where
another sea, colder and gloomier, flowed in front of the city’s avenues
and palaces. Osterling spoke again about the “negativity” of which the
poet was often accused. He did so with quick references to the period
in which the poet lived: one world war, fascism, another world war,
a post-war period of deep and disturbing changes.
“There
is a certain negativity,” said Osterling, “that arises not from contempt
for man, but from an indestructible feeling for the life and dignity
of man”. It was 17.50 when Osterling finished, saying in Italian, “Caro
Signor Montale..”
It
was then that the king brought the certificate and the gold medal with
the effigy of Alfred Nobel to the armchair where the poet had got to
his feet, supporting himself with somewhat trembling hands on its arms.
The king said a few words, then gave the signal for applause. The magic
moment had ended. The ceremony resumed immediately (for us, who had
come to Stockholm only in the name of Montale) its rigid procedures
halfway between fashionable and boring. Three thousand people are almost
a small football crowd. To accommodate them all, the prize-giving takes
place in a huge pavilion, built for the St Henry Fair and located in
a rather desolate suburb. The final of the Eurovision Song Festival
had been held there in 1974.
That 10th of December 1975, the sky was an incredibly clear blue. Only
the cold wind recalled the North, with temperatures as low as twenty
degrees below zero. It was impossible to speak to Montale, impeccable
in evening dress. The poet’s blue gaze found friends in the crowd, and
his smile was immediately ready as a sign of understanding. But his
nervousness was obvious. He puffed out his cheeks and released them
in a just detectable puff. For those who knew him, this was a sign that
the crowd rather frightened him, that a king and queen, an orchestra
and three thousand people all together was just too large a spectacle.
That
all those blue velvets, those flowers, that rigidity of gestures, those
incomprehensible voices that gave subdued orders, belonged to a world
which, though splendid, was a long way from his. For that reason, when
Osterling called him “Caro Signor Montale” it would have been marvellous
to stop the clocks and hear again that tremulous voice in a greeting
so different from the solemn words of the glory.
(traduzione
Interpres sas-Giussano)
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