When receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature becomes a curse

The highest literary award, or a kiss of death? For some winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which will be awarded this Thursday in Stockholm, receiving the prize, worth 10 million Swedish kronor (almost $1 million), was more of a curse than a reason for joy. One of the most tragic examples is that of the Swedish writer Harry Martinson, who felt that getting the award in 1974 had ruined his existence as an author and as a person. The poet was a member of the Swedish Academy, which has been in charge of awarding the prize since 1901, so the decision was highly controversial. The criticism deeply depressed Martinson, who committed suicide by hara-kiri four years later.

“Over the years, a small number of Nobel Prize winners in literature have experienced the award as a misfortune or even as a curse,” admits Horace Engdahl, who was permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy from 1999 to 2009, in an email. Martinson’s case is the most dramatic, but there were others. “It is said that some lost the gift of writing because they felt intimidated by the situation, constantly asking themselves: is this a page worthy of a Nobel Prize winner?” However, Engdahl considers this to be “more of a myth than a reality.” While it is true that some literary masters wrote mediocre books after receiving the prize, most “became more prolific or even embarked on new styles.” For example, W. B. Yeats, Ivan Bunin, Thomas Mann or Samuel Beckett.

At the turn of the millennium, the term “Nobel curse” became popular to mean winners in scientific categories who, having achieved the highest recognition in their fields, stopped doing rigorous research, spoke out on issues in which they were not experts, or rested on their laurels, having already demonstrated their excellence. For example, the physicist Roger Penrose, the doctor Luc Montagnier, and the economist Joseph Stiglitz were accused of this “disease.” “An analogy can be established with scientific awards,” says Javier Aparicio Maydeu, a professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. “Getting a Nobel Prize never hurts, but some of the authors who won it, such as Camilo José Cela, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. G. Le Clézio or Herta Müller, did not write anything significant after receiving it and today they are dead in literary terms, so to speak: very few people read them anymore,” he adds.

However, this misfortune does not affect all the winners equally. “Writers with a long body of work and a universe of their own, such as Patrick Modiano, are not affected in the least. Those who are awarded the prize for reasons that are not strictly artistic or literary, but for geopolitical reasons, such as Orhan Pamuk, can be affected. Many become luxury lecturers, lose their creative intensity and are wasted as authors,” says Aparicio Maydeu.

Annie Ernaux lamented the writing time the Nobel Prize had taken away from her: “Before this I was just a writer. Now I am an icon, a symbol, all these pompous words that have no meaning for me”

Gabriel García Márquez also feared winning the Nobel Prize, but for different reasons. He believed that the prize was equivalent to a death sentence: he had observed that many winners, such as Albert Camus, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Pablo Neruda, Luigi Pirandello and André Gide had died less than seven years after receiving it. John Steinbeck, who was also part of that unfortunate group, described the Nobel Prize for Literature as a “kiss of death” shortly before his own demise, according to Saul Bellow, who also won it and did not always enjoy it. In 1982, García Márquez won the prize and defied the curse twice over: he did not die until 2014 and published some of his best books, such as Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) and The General in his Labyrinth (1989), after collecting the prize in Stockholm.

Similarly, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway considered it a swan song, a recognition granted to authors in the final stretch of their careers. More recent winners have also had negative opinions. The Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, who won the prize in 1996, claimed that it had destroyed her private life and turned her into an “official person.” Doris Lessing, who won it in 2007, found out about it when she got out of a taxi on her way home. “Oh, Christ!” she said in an exasperated tone. Elfriede Jelinek and Herta Müller, jealous of their privacy and with a reputation for surliness, did not jump for joy either.

One of the latest winners, Annie Ernaux, who won the prize in 2022, admitted that the Nobel Prize did not make her “happy at all”: the official part was “heavy” and took away “time from writing.” “The prize has made me a public figure. Before this, I was just a writer. Now I am an icon, a symbol, all those pompous words that have no meaning for me,” she told EL PAÍS in May at her home in Cergy, on the outskirts of Paris. “I felt like that Virgin, Notre-Dame de Boulogne, whose effigy was paraded through parishes all over France at the end of World War II.”

For writers unaccustomed to public attention, the prize is a leap into the void that, especially if they are older, can be difficult to cope with. In the late 1990s, shortly after becoming the first Nobel Prize winner from the Caribbean, Derek Walcott declared that it had been “a really terrible time” because of how “demanding” it was to respond to requests from half the world. “The prize involves a significant personal effort because of the promotion and enormous visibility it entails,” says Diego Moreno, editor of Nórdica, an independent publishing house that has three Nobel Prize winners in its catalog — Tomas Tranströmer, Peter Handke and Jon Fosse. “I don’t think it has had any harmful effects on them, but there are authors who enjoy the public exposure more, and others who are not so inclined to be present in the media,” says Moreno.

“The award is an immense honor, but also a responsibility and a commitment,” agrees Pilar Reyes, editorial director of Penguin Random House. “It becomes problematic when the winner is forced to represent a country or a language, which conflicts with one of the essential characteristics of being a writer: absolute freedom and the fact that he or she is not called upon to support any cause,” says Reyes.

For Sigrid Kraus, editorial director of Salamandra until 2022, everything depends on “the character of the writers and the moment in which they receive it.” “For retiring authors, it can be a real curse. At first, they give themselves over to this new stage of their life, but after a while it is a burden,” says Kraus, who believes that those who receive the prize as a consecration savor it more. “What unites everyone is the pleasure of seeing their books republished and, let us not fool ourselves, the financial reward that comes with this prize.” Despite the criticism, almost none have renounced it. In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre rejected the Nobel Prize and its financial endowment for fear that it would affect “the impact of his writings” and to avoid being “institutionalized.” He is the only writer to have refused it in its entire history.

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