 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Henri Bergson | ||||
 "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented." | ||||
| Date |
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| Location | Stockholm, Sweden | |||
| Presented by | Swedish Academy | |||
| First award | 1901 | |||
| Website | Official website | |||
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The1927Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the French philosopherHenri Bergson (1859–1941) "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented."[2] He was the second philosopher to gain the Nobel Prize afterRudolf Christoph Eucken won in1908.
Bergson was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and at theÉcole Normale Supérieure, where he studied philosophy.[3] He developed his philosophy through a series of publications that were well known for their original perspectives on life as well as their effective application of metaphor, imagery, and analogy. InEssai sur les Données Immédiates de la Conscience ("Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness", 1889), Bergson proposed the idea that consciousness exists on two levels, the first of which can only be attained by intense introspection, and the second of which is an exterior projection of the first.[3][4] The notion of time that Bergson had previously proposed in his prior writings was expanded upon and used to investigate living things inL'Évolution Créatrice ("Creative Evolution", 1907).[5] His other principal works includeMatière et Mémoire ("Matter and Memory", 1896),Le Rire. Essai sur la Signification du Comique ("Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic", 1900) andLes Deux Sources de la Morale et de la Religion ("The Two Sources of Morality and Religion", 1932).[3][4][5]
Bergson was not nominated in 1927 but in1928[6] was awarded for this year. He received a total of ten nominations beginning in1912 made Scottish authorAndrew Lang. In 1928, he received three separate recommendations from members of theFrench Academy, members of theAcademy of Political and Moral Sciences and professors ofhistory of philosophy.[7]
In total, the Nobel Committee received 29 nominations in 1927 for authors such asKostis Palamas,Hugo von Hofmannsthal,Thomas Hardy,Guglielmo Ferrero,Rudolf Maria Holzapfel,Olav Duun,Ada Negri andJohannes V. Jensen (awarded in1944). There were six authors newly nominated namelyCesare Pascarella,Eduard Meyer,Samuel Parsons Scott,Edith Wharton,Édouard Estaunié andErwin Guido Kolbenheyer. Of the 21 nominees, four were women: Ada Negri, Edith Wharton,Concha Espina de la Serna andGrazia Deledda (awarded for1926).[6]
The authorsRyūnosuke Akutagawa,Bernhard Alexander,Mikhail Artsybashev,Hugo Ball,Kazimir Barantsevich,Margret Holmes Bates,Martin Stanislaus Brennan,Clara Louise Burnham,John Bagnell Bury,Mabel Collins,Roi Cooper Megrue,James Oliver Curwood,Minnie S. Davis,Robert de Flers,Federico De Roberto,Manuel Díaz Rodríguez,Osório Duque-Estrada,Georges Eekhoud,Adolfo León Gómez,Ricardo Güiraldes,Lesbia Harford,Hubert Harrison,Fukuda Hideko,Jerome K. Jerome,Kang Youwei,Gaston Leroux,Agnes Maule Machar,Harriet Earhart Monroe,Süleyman Nazif,Jessie Penn-Lewis,Stanisław Przybyszewski,Fyodor Sologub,Borisav Stanković,Stephan G. Stephansson,Mary Webb,Philip Wicksteed died in 1927 without having been nominated for the prize.
| No. | Nominee | Country | Genre(s) | Nominator(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Olaf Bull (1883–1933) |  Norway | poetry | Jens Thiis (1870–1942) |
| 2 | Grazia Deledda (1871–1936) |  Italy | novel, short story, essays | Henrik Schück (1855–1947) |
| 3 | Olav Duun (1876–1939) | Norway | novel, short story | Halvdan Koht (1873–1965) |
| 4 | Concha Espina de la Serna (1869–1955) |  Spain | novel, short story | Salomon Leopold Rosenberg (1869–1934) |
| 5 | Paul Ernst (1866–1933) |  Germany | novel, short story, drama, essays | German professors[b] |
| 6 | Édouard Estaunié (1862–1942) |  France | novel, literary criticism | Erik Staaff (1867–1936) |
| 7 | Guglielmo Ferrero (1871–1942) | Italy | history, essays, novel |
|
| 8 | Vilhelm Grønbech (1873–1948) |  Denmark | history, essays, poetry | Johannes Pedersen (1883–1977) |
| 9 | Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) |  United Kingdom | novel, short story, poetry, drama |
|
| 10 | Ferenc Herczeg (1863–1954) |  Hungary | novel, drama, essays | Hungarian Academy of Sciences |
| 11 | Rudolf Maria Holzapfel (1874–1930) |  Austria | philosophy, essays |
|
| 12 | Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer (1878–1962) | Austria | novel, short story, poetry, drama | Austrian professors[d] |
| 13 | Josip Kosor (1879–1961) |  Yugoslavia(  Croatia) | novel, poetry, drama | Branislav Petronijević (1875–1954) |
| 14 | Eduard Meyer (1855–1930) | Germany | history | Georg Wittrock (1876–1957) |
| 15 | Ada Negri (1870–1945) | Italy | poetry, novel, essays |
|
| 16 | Kostis Palamas (1859–1943) |  Greece | poetry, essays | Simos Menardos (1872–1933)[e] |
| 17 | Cesare Pascarella (1858–1940) | Italy | poetry, essays |
|
| 18 | Samuel Parsons Scott[f] (1846–1929) |  United States | essays, history, law | Edgar Ewing Brandon (1865–1957) |
| 19 | Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) | Austria | novel, poetry, drama, essays | Walther Brecht (1876–1950)[e] |
| 20 | Edvard Westermarck (1862–1939) |  Finland | philosophy, essays | 8 members of theFinnish Scientific Society |
| 21 | Edith Wharton (1862–1937) | United States | novel, short story, poetry, essays | 7 professors at theYale University |
In November 1927, theSwedish Academy announced that the postponed prize for 1926 was awarded to the Italian writerGrazia Deledda, but that no Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 1927 would be awarded with the following explanation:
"During the selection process, the Nobel Committee for Literature decided that none of the year's nominations met the criteria as outlined in Alfred Nobel's will. 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 the following year, the Nobel Committee awarded Henri Bergson the prize for 1927 andSigrid Undset theprize for 1928.[8]Maxim Gorky andKostis Palamas were the main contenders for the 1927 prize, but the Nobel committee were divided between the candidates and, as a compromise, Henri Bergson was the chosen laureate.[9] Bergson's candidacy had previously been dismissed by the committee as they found it difficult to properly evaluate his work in a field of literature where few other writers were nominated. But in 1928 the committee were convinced that Bergson was a worthy recipient of the prize, noting his major influence on literature and that his work was representative of the "Nobel spirit".[10]
