 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature | |
|---|---|
| George Bernard Shaw | |
 "for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty." | |
| Date |
|
| Location | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Presented by | Swedish Academy |
| First award | 1901 |
| Website | Official website |
The1925Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Irish playwrightGeorge Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) "for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty."[2] The prize was awarded in 1926.[2] Shaw was thesecond Irish Nobel laureate in literature afterW. B. Yeats won in1923.[3]
George Bernard Shaw, the son of a government servant, was born inDublin. At the age of 20, he relocated toLondon after working as areal estate agent. Five of his novels had been turned down before he rose to prominence as a literary and music critic. He was a member of theFabian Society, a socialist thinktank that hadVirginia Woolf among its members. He simultaneously promoted racial biology and made flattering remarks aboutMussolini,Stalin, andHitler.[4]
As a theater critic and commentator, Shaw wrote essays to support his critiques of modern British theater. He claimed that art should be educational and address societal issues in his first plays,Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898). Allegories, provocation, and satire are hallmarks of Shaw's plays. The most well-known of his more than 60 plays isPygmalion (1912). Shaw advanced the theory of "creative evolution," a form of racial biology that denied each person's inherent value. Among his major plays includeCaesar and Cleopatra (1898),Man and Superman (1902),Major Barbara (1905),Saint Joan (1923).[4][5]
George Bernard Shaw was nominated seven times before he, in 1926, was awarded the 1925 prize.[6] He was first recommended to theNobel Committee in1911 by British scholarGilbert Murray and in1912 by Norwegian academicKristian Birch-Reichenwald Aars. His nominations came back in 1921 to 1926, when he was nominated annually by three different nominators,Henrik Schück,Tor Hedberg andNathan Söderblom, all of which are members of theSwedish Academy.[6]
In total, theSwedish Academy received 25 letters nominating 21 writers from Europe includingThomas Hardy,Georg Brandes,Guglielmo Ferrero (with 5 nominations – the highest),Willem Kloos,Paul Sabatier,Paul Claudel,Kostis Palamas,Roberto Bracco,Johan Bojer,Olav Duun andPaul Ernst. Six of the authors were newly nominated, namelyJohannes Vilhelm Jensen (awarded in1944), Giovanni Schembari,Paul Elmer More,Paul Raynal,Ferenc Herczeg andRudolf Maria Holzapfel. There were only three female authors nominated, namelyGrazia Deledda (awarded in1926),Matilde Serao andSigrid Undset (awarded in1928).[7]
The authorsHugo Bettauer,George Washington Cable,Mary Cholmondeley,Gottlob Frege,Mikhail Gershenzon,René Ghil,Pyotr Gnedich,Gerhard Gran,H. Rider Haggard,Emma Curtis Hopkins,José Ingenieros,Gustav Kastropp,Amy Lowell,Felix Liebermann,Pierre Louÿs,Antun Branko Šimić,Rudolf Steiner,Elisabeth von Heyking,Friedrich von Hügel andSergei Yesenin died in 1925 without having been nominated for the prize.
| No. | Nominee | Country | Genre(s) | Nominator(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Johan Bojer (1872–1959) |  Norway | novel, drama | Christen Collin (1857–1926) |
| 2 | Roberto Bracco (1861–1943) |  Italy | drama, screenplay | Haakon Shetelig (1877–1955) |
| 3 | Georg Brandes (1842–1927) |  Denmark | literary criticism, essays | Harry Fett (1875–1962) |
| 4 | Otokar Březina (1868–1929) |  Czechoslovakia | poetry, essays | 6 professors of theUniversity inBrno |
| 5 | Grazia Deledda (1871–1936) | Italy | novel, short story, essays | Henrik Schück (1855–1947) |
| 6 | Olav Duun (1876–1939) | Norway | novel, short story | Hjalmar Lindroth (1893–1979) |
| 7 | Paul Ernst (1866–1933) |  Germany | novel, short story, drama, essays | Emil Ermatinger (1873–1953) |
| 8 | Guglielmo Ferrero (1871–1942) | Italy | history, essays, novel |
|
| 9 | Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) |  United Kingdom | novel, short story, poetry, drama | Robert Eugen Zachrisson (1880–1937) |
| 10 | Ferenc Herczeg (1863–1954) |  Hungary | novel, drama, essays | Hungarian Academy of Sciences |
| 11 | Rudolf Maria Holzapfel (1874–1930) |  Austria | philosophy, essays |  Romain Rolland (1866–1944) |
| 12 | Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1873–1950) | Denmark | novel, short story, poetry | Frederik Poulsen (1876–1950) |
| 13 | Willem Kloos (1859–1938) |  Netherlands | poetry, essays, literary criticism | Dutch authors and professors[b] |
| 14 | Paul Elmer More (1864–1937) |  United States | theology, essays, literary criticism | Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931) |
| 15 | Paul Raynal (1885–1971) |  France | drama, essays | Tor Hedberg (1862–1931) |
| 16 | Paul Sabatier (1858–1928) | France | history, theology, biography | Carl Bildt (1850–1931) |
| 17 | Giovanni Schembari (1894–1959) | Italy | essays | Achille Loria (1857–1943) |
| 18 | Matilde Serao (1856–1927) | Italy | novel, essays | 4 professors of the Academy in Naples |
| 19 | George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) |  Ireland | drama, essays, novel | Tor Hedberg (1862–1931) |
| 20 | Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) | Norway | novel, memoir, essays | 2 members of theRoyal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters[c] |
| 21 | Ludwig von Pastor (1854–1928) | Germany | history | Olof Kolsrud (1885–1945) |
In November 1925, theSwedish Academy declared that no Nobel Prize in Literature would be awarded with the following statement:
"During the selection process in 1925, the Nobel Committee for Literature decided that none of the year's nominations met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel. According to the Nobel Foundation's statutes, the Nobel Prize can in such a case be reserved until the following year, and this statute was then applied."[2]
After the deliberations in 1926, it was revealed that Shaw would be its 1925 recipient but its 1926 awardee was not yet decided, hence the decision was moved to 1927.[2]
At first, Shaw declined the prize stating "I can forgive Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel prize". He later changed his mind and accepted the honour, but refused to receive the prize money.[3][8]
Shaw recommended that the prize money instead used to fund the translation of works by Swedish playwrightAugust Strindberg to English.[8]
At the award ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December 1926,Per Hallström, chairman of the Nobel committee of theSwedish Academy, said:
[George Bernard Shaw's] somewhat abstract logical radicalism (...) combined with a ready wit, a complete absence of respect for any kind of convention, and the merriest humour – all gathered together in an extravagance which has scarcely ever before appeared in literature. (...)
Early he became a prophet of revolutionary doctrines, quite varied in their value, in the spheres of aesthetics and sociology, and he soon won for himself a notable position as a debater, a popular speaker, and a journalist. He set his mark on the English theatre as a champion ofIbsen and as an opponent of superficial tradition, both English and Parisian. (...)
[Shaw] came to create what is to some extent a new kind of dramatic art, which must be judged according to its own special principles. Its novelty does not lie so much in structure and form; from his wide-awake and trained knowledge of the theatre, he promptly and quite simply obtains any scenic effect he feels necessary for his ends. But the directness with which he puts his ideas into practice is entirely his own.[9]
