(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Finally, Bob Dylan received his Nobel Prize in Literature. Maybe the Swedish Academy's 18 – or rather 17 – have finally understood that heavy rock rhythm can bring poetry and culture? Maybe they have read and fallen in love? Or maybe they just gave in to 25 years of bullying?
Stockholm 2013. I went down the worn stone stairs under the Nobel Museum in Gamla Stan to the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Library. The old building trembles with well-worn dignity. The library's task is to feed the academy members with reading material by and about good candidates for the generous prize. Every day, new books are placed on the table for members who drop by for a coffee or "coffee" – or just to confirm that they have a place on the "de adertons" fashionable leather seats.
On chair # 17, Dag Hammarskjöld held to the time he had time for it, on the same chair as his father, Prime Minister Hjalmar Hungerskjöld. The 18 is appointed by the "king" and therefore cannot choose to resign himself. For the king, must know, is appointed by God, so just wait until He disposes of you – at death. Today, chair 15 stands empty after Kerstin Ekman left – ie stopped coming – in protest.
Under Horace Engdal's and Peter Englund's leadership, it became clear that it was of little help that Bob Dylan now had to receive the Nobel Prize. Thousands of recordings over more than fifty years helped little. Concerts on average every three days for fifty years and poetry that filled all three-generation radio channels helped even less. Dylan did not belong in the nobility, seemed aloof among commentators.
But so far from the price – as it often sounded in the media – there is no reason to believe Dylan has been. Down the stairs in 2013, and into the beautiful library room, I laughed when I suddenly found myself face to face with the rock icon, ie with his name. Right below the picture of VS Naipaul, the Trinidadian writer who received the award in 2001. There it was dylan shelf! Naipaul had made a living as a writer in the trade magazine Cement and Concrete, and had in many ways broken a limit for what Nobel Prize winners should be. So why not, just below him you could see the Dylan shelf with thirteen, of course – 13 – books. Our own Tore Rems thin but weighty, Bob Dylan stood there alongside the classics of Michael Grays, Howard Sounes and John Marshall. And indeed, it looked like they had been read too, the books. Being a non-candidate, Dylan was certainly present.
And so. Three years later. He finally got it. Maybe they just gave in to avoid more than 25 years of bullying? Or maybe they have read and fallen in love? They too.
