1945 Nobel Prize in Literature

1945 Nobel Prize in Literature
Gabriela Mistral
"for her lyric poetry, which inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world"
Date	15 November 1945 (announcement) 10 December 1945 (ceremony)
Location	Stockholm, Sweden
Presented by	Swedish Academy
First awarded	1901
Website	Official website

The 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957) "for her lyric poetry, which inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world." She is the fifth female and first Latin American recipient of the literature prize.

Laureate

Main article: Gabriela Mistral

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga borrowed the pseudonym, Gabriela Mistral, from her favorite poets, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral. Her poetry is distinguished by intense emotion and straightforward language, having been influenced also by the modernist movement. Affection, deceit, sorrow, nature, travel, and love for children are some of their major themes. Mistral's first prominent poetry collection was Desolación ("Despair"), published in 1922. Ternura ("Tenderness"), published in 1924, contains nursery rhymes and lullabies for children whereas Tala ("Harvesting", 1938) makes use of strange imagery and free verse. She was well-known for writing op-eds for major Chilean newspapers such as El Coquimbo: Diario Radical and La Voz de Elqui. In her country, she became the first female to be awarded the National Prize for Literature.

Deliberations

Nominations

Mistral received eight nominations beginning in 1940. For 1945, she was nominated by the newly inducted Swedish Academy member Elin Wägner (1882–1949) by which she was eventually awarded. In total, the Nobel Committee received 23 nominations for 18 writers. Four of the nominees were nominated first-time: Thomas Stearns Eliot (awarded in 1948), Yiorgos Theotokas, Edward Morgan Forster, and Marie Under. There were four female nominees namely Elisaveta Bagryana, Maria Madalena de Martel Patrício, Gabriela Mistral and Marie Under.

The French poet Paul Valéry was nominated for the tenth, eleventh and twelfth time by three members of the Swedish Academy. It is believed that the Academy intended to award Valéry the prize in 1945, but he died in July.

The authors Maurice Baring, Ursula Bethell, Robert Brasillach, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ernst Cassirer, Mário de Andrade, Margaret Deland, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Robert Desnos, Jelena Dimitrijević, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Maurice Donnay, Alfred Douglas, E. R. Eddison, Ioan Constantin Filitti, Zinaida Gippius, Ellen Glasgow, Josef Hora, Else Lasker-Schüler, Régis Messac, Arthur Morrison, Otto Neurath, Kitaro Nishida, Charles Gilman Norris, Else Lasker-Schüler, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Alexander Roda Roda, Felix Salten, Lurana W. Sheldon, Antal Szerb, Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Charles Williams died in 1945 without having been nominated for the prize. The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga and Austrian-Bohemian author Franz Werfel died months before the announcement.

Official list of nominees and their nominators for the prize

No.	Nominee	Country	Genre(s)	Nominator(s)
1	Elisaveta Bagryana (1893–1991)	Bulgaria	poetry, translation	Stefan Mladenov (1880–1963)
2	Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948)	Soviet Union (Ukraine)	philosophy, theology	Alf Nyman (1884–1968)
3	Edmund Blunden (1896–1974)	United Kingdom	poetry, essays, biography	Heinrich Wolfgang Donner (1904-1980)
4	Maria Madalena de Martel Patrício (1884–1947)	Portugal	poetry, essays	António Baião (1878–1961)
5	Georges Duhamel (1884–1966)	France	novel, short story, poetry, drama, literary criticism	Hjalmar Hammarskjöld (1862–1953)
6	Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965)	United States United Kingdom	poetry, essays, drama	Anders Österling (1884–1981)
7	Johan Falkberget (1879–1967)	Norway	novel, short story, essays	Eugenia Kielland (1878–1969)
8	Edward Morgan Forster (1879–1970)	United Kingdom	novel, short story, drama, essays, biography, literary criticism	Greta Hedin (1889–1949)
9	Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)	Netherlands	history	Willem van Eysinga (1878–1961) Hjalmar Hammarskjöld (1862–1953)
10	Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957)	Chile	poetry	Elin Wägner (1882–1949)
11	Arvid Mörne (1876–1946)	Finland	poetry, drama, novel, essays	Gustav Suits (1883–1956)
12	Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878–1947)	Switzerland	novel, poetry, short story	Marcel Raymond (1897–1981)
13	Jules Romains (1885–1972)	France	poetry, drama, screenplay	Holger Sten (1907–1971)
14	John Steinbeck (1902–1968)	United States	novel, short story, screenplay	Gustaf Munthe (1896–1962)
15	Yiorgos Theotokas (1906–1966)	Greece	novel, short story, drama, essays	Sigfrid Siwertz (1882–1970)
16	Marie Under (1883–1980)	Soviet Union (Estonia)	poetry	Ants Oras (1900–1982)
17	Paul Valéry (1871–1945)	France	poetry, philosophy, essays, drama	Anders Österling (1884–1981) Sigfrid Siwertz (1882–1970) Fredrik Böök (1883–1961)
18	Franz Werfel (1890–1945)	Czechoslovakia	novel, short story, drama, poetry	Ragnar Josephson (1891–1966) John Landquist (1881–1974) Walter Arthur Berendsohn (1884–1984)

Prize decision

Gabriela Mistral had been proposed by the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy in 1940 and 1942 and again in 1945, when she was awarded the prize.

External links

• Presentation Speech by Hjalmar Gullberg nobelprize.org