1992 Nobel Prize in Literature

1992 Nobel Prize in Literature
Derek Walcott
"for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment."
Date	8 October 1992 (1992-10-08) (announcement) 10 December 1992 (ceremony)
Location	Stockholm, Sweden
Presented by	Swedish Academy
First awarded	1901
Website	Official website

The 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Saint Lucian poet Derek Walcott (1930–2017) "for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment." He became the first and as of yet only Caribbean writer to be awarded with the prize.

Laureate

Main article: Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott's works often deal with Caribbean history, while he simultaneous searches for vestiges of the colonial era. Western literary canon is revised and given a completely new form, as in the poetry collection Omeros (1990). His poetic voice reflected a blend of his ear for the English language and his sense of his own people. In his writing, Walcott explores the complexity of living and working in two cultures. Aside from poetry, Walcott also wrote plays which brought him theatre recognitions such as Henri Christophe: A Chronicle in Seven Scenes (1950), Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967), and Beef, No Chicken (1987).

Reactions

Stephen Breslow of University of Tampa had since the mid-1980s predicted that Walcott would become a Nobel laureate in literature and explained that the likely reasons why Swedish Academy chose Derek Walcott was because his work had "a strong regional voice that transcends its topical locality, through the depth and breadth of its poetic resonance and through its global human implication." It was Walcott's ability to be more than just "exotic" that brought his work critical attention. Breslow explains that "Walcott has merged a profound, rhapsodic reverie upon his remote birthplace – its people, its landscape, and its history – with the central, classical tradition of Western civilization." This ability shows the importance of multiculturalism and literary mastery to the Swedish Academy. Walcott's works represent how different cultures can enrich one another to produce even more compelling works.

A. James Arnold, director of New World Studies at the University of Virginia and organizer of the conference "Stories of American Identities: 500 Years After the Columbian Encounter," said: "The selection of Walcott seems already somehow inevitable. Of all the writers in the Western world, he's the one who ties us together best. From the Native Americans through the Europeans and the descendants of Africans, he moves apparently effortlessly but with great art from his small island across space and time. He gives enormous breadth and depth to our experience in the Americas."

Some critics complained that Walcott was chosen for political correctness reasons as much as for his poetry, but Herbert Leibowitz, editor of Parnassus: Poetry in Review, said, "He will be a popular choice in the poetry world. He has one of the most wonderful ears of any poet now writing."

Nobel lecture

In his Nobel acceptance speech, Walcott describes life on Antilles and what it means to discover identity. He describes all of the "broken fragments" of his "diasporic" identity. People need books, he says, but they are not enough to encompass all that a culture is. Walcott says that "the visible poetry of the Antilles, then. [is] Survival" because "all of the Antilles, every island, is an effort of memory; every mind, every racial biography culminating in amnesia and fog." He encompasses the diasporic identity found in Caribbean literature by looking at how insignificant he feels because he cannot, alone, fully bring together a cultural identity.

External links

• 1992 Press release nobelprize.org
• Award ceremony speech nobelprize.org