Bob Dylan and a noble refusal of the Nobel prize for literature | Letters
The history of Jean-Paul Sartre’s refusal of the 1964 Nobel prize for literature (Silence broken on Dylan’s Nobel – after five days, 21 October) is complicated. Sartre did in fact get wind of his imminent Nobelling from an article in Le Figaro littéraire shortly before the Swedish Academy was to announce it, and wrote immediately to the Nobel committee to ask them to revoke their choice. His letter was misaddressed and failed to reach the committee on time, and the rest is history, up to a point. In 1966 the critic Max-Pol Fouchet argued that Sartre, who refused all honours, declined the Nobel in defence of “the solitude of the revolutionary writer”, in denunciation of “worldly and external self-importance”. Sartre set this out movingly in his funeral oration for the Italian communist leader and revolutionary writer Palmiro Togliatti, who died on 21 August 1964, a few months before the Nobel episode.
Bruce Ross-Smith
Oxford
Alfred Nobel made his fortune from arms and explosives. In Masters of War, Dylan sang about “You that build all the guns / You that build the death planes / You that build all the bombs.” The song’s final verse includes the lines “And I hope that you die / And your death’ll come soon.” I hope Dylan stands alongside Sartre in refusing this tainted award (Dylan thinks twice about Nobel acknowledgment, 21 October).
Andy Ashenhurst
Canterbury
Before making fools of themselves by awarding the Nobel prize for literature to Bob Dylan, the Nobel committee should have taken into account the experience of St Andrews University, which in 2004 made the songster a Doctor of Music for “his outstanding contribution to musical and literary culture”.
Arriving with his entourage 50 minutes into a 90-minute ceremony, Dylan sat glassy-eyed on the stage, yawning occasionally as the speaker burbled on about how his music “moved everything on to a place it never expected to go and left the deepest imprint on human consciousness”, even comparing him to Pablo Picasso. After which, ignoring the university choir and its rendition of Blowin’ in the Wind, and without a word of thanks or farewell, the new doctor and his train left the building.
Harry Watson
Edinburgh
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The second letter was amended on 25 October 2016. An earlier version said Einsten refused the Nobel prize; he accepted the prize, although he did not attend the award ceremony.