157-552: Andrew Upton is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, producer and director. He has adapted the works of Gorky , Chekhov , Ibsen , and others for London's Royal National Theatre and the Sydney Theatre Company . He wrote the original play Riflemind (2007), which premiered at the Sydney Theatre Company to favourable reviews, with Hugo Weaving starring and Philip Seymour Hoffman directing
314-741: A Girl " (written in the 1890s); plays The Philistines (1901), The Lower Depths (1902) and Children of the Sun (1905); a poem, " The Song of the Stormy Petrel " (1901); his fictional autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood, In the World, My Universities (1913–1923); and a novel, Mother (1906). Gorky himself judged some of these works as failures, and Mother has been frequently criticized; Gorky thought of Mother as one of his biggest failures. However, there have been warmer appraisals of some of his lesser-known post-revolutionary works such as
471-532: A comeback, at the Sydney Theatre Company on 5 October 2007, and received a favourable review in Variety . The London production of Riflemind , directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman , opened in 2008, but closed as a result of the financial pressure of the Global Financial Crisis after receiving poor popular press reviews. In 2008, Upton and wife Cate Blanchett became joint artistic directors of
628-615: A final decision on this is made by voting of the Odesa City Council . Monuments of Maxim Gorky are installed in many cities. Among them: On 6 December 2022 the City Council of the Ukrainian city Dnipro decided to remove from the city all monuments to figures of Russian culture and history , in particular it was mentioned that the monuments to Gorky, Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lomonosov would be removed from
785-782: A financially successful author, editor, and playwright, Gorky gave financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), as well as supporting liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the "Bloody Sunday" ), which set in motion the Revolution of 1905 , seems to have pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions. He became closely associated with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov 's Bolshevik wing of
942-461: A notion as "literature for dummies." The Swedish Academy awarded the next two prizes to non-Europeans, Chinese author Mo Yan and Canadian short story writer Alice Munro . French writer Patrick Modiano 's win in 2014 renewed questions of Eurocentrism; when asked by The Wall Street Journal "So no American this year, yet again. Why is that?", Englund reminded Americans of the Canadian origins of
1099-583: A paid informer. Before his death from a lingering illness in June 1936, he was visited at home by Stalin, Yagoda, and other leading communists, and by Moura Budberg , who had chosen not to return to the USSR with him but was permitted to stay for his funeral. The sudden death of Gorky's son Maxim Peshkov in May 1934 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky himself in June 1936 from pneumonia. Speculation has long surrounded
1256-413: A personal friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see Matvei Golovinski affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the academy. From 1900 to 1905, Gorky's writings became more optimistic. He became more involved in
1413-566: A playwright, Upton created adaptations of Hedda Gabler , The Cherry Orchard , Cyrano de Bergerac , Don Juan (with Marion Potts), Uncle Vanya , The Maids , Children of the Sun and Platonov for the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and Maxim Gorky 's The Philistines for the Royal National Theatre in London. Upton's original play Riflemind opened with Hugo Weaving , playing an ageing rock star planning
1570-636: A recipient. However, there were concerns that the academy was not in any condition to credibly present the award. The New Academy Prize in Literature , not affiliated with either the Nobel Foundation or the Swedish Academy, was created as an alternative award for 2018 only. The first and only New Academy Prize in Literature was won by Maryse Condé , a writer from Guadeloupe noted for her novels Segu , Tree of Life: A Novel of
1727-505: A renewed Academy changed focus and began to award literary pioneers like Hermann Hesse , André Gide , T. S. Eliot , and William Faulkner . During this era, "the greatest benefit on mankind" was interpreted in a more exclusive and generous way than before. Since the 1970s, the Academy has often given attention to important but internationally unnoticed writers, awarding writers like Elias Canetti and Jaroslav Seifert . Beginning in 1986,
SECTION 10
#17327975482261884-525: A sarcastic saying: Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear." Gorky was a strong and sincere supporter of such Stalinist policies as usage of forced labour, collectivization and " dekulakization " and the show trials against the saboteurs of the Plan, but being a propagandist for such policies wasn't his main role; he was regarded as an "ideological asset" to personify the myth of the "proletarian culture" and bring literature, as Tovah Yedlin writes, under
2041-449: A sensational success and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inner spark of humanity. Gorky's reputation grew as
2198-499: A similar statement that such "legends" represent "the essence of reality", but if the boy existed, it would be impossible for Gorky to "take the boy with him" even with his reputation of a "great proletarian writer": for example, Gorky had to spend over 2 years to free Julia Danzas . Gorky also helped other political prisoners (not without the influence of his wife, Yekaterina Peshkova ). For example, because of Gorky's interference Mikhail Bakhtin 's initial verdict (5 years of Solovki)
2355-555: A strong dislike of Gumilev, but he nevertheless promised to do something. He could not keep his promise because the sentence of death was announced and carried out with unexpected haste, before Gorky had got round to doing anything." In October, Gorky returned to Italy on health grounds: he had tuberculosis . In July 1921, Gorky published an appeal to the outside world, saying that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. The Russian famine of 1921–22 , also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5 million, primarily affecting
2512-457: A strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age...but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man." He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became
2669-432: A unique literary voice from the bottom stratum of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia's social, political, and cultural transformation. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the intelligentsia and the growing numbers of "conscious" workers. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of
2826-405: A work in relation to its contribution to humanity's pursuit of the "ideal." Leo Tolstoy , Henrik Ibsen , Émile Zola , and Mark Twain were rejected in favour of authors who mostly are little read today. Later, the prize has often been controversial due to the Swedish Academy's Eurocentric choices of laureates, or for political reasons, as seen in the years 1970 , 2005 , and 2019 , and for
2983-448: Is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel , "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction" (original Swedish: den som inom litteraturen har producerat det utmärktaste i idealisk riktning ). Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy,
3140-809: Is also inscribed on the reverse. Between 1902 and 2010, the Nobel Prize medals were struck by the Myntverket , the Swedish royal mint , located in Eskilstuna . In 2011, the medals were made by the Det Norske Myntverket in Kongsberg . The medals have been made by Svenska Medalj in Eskilstuna since 2012. Nobel laureates receive a diploma directly from the King of Sweden . Each diploma
3297-476: Is always weak-willed and subject to emotions and moods." Gorky's best-known publication of the period were concerning antisemitism , written in response of the severe Tsarist repressions against the Jews, and an essay "Two Souls", which contrasted "the passive East" with "the active West" and promoted the values of European culture and progress and urged Russia break free from the "Eastern-Asiatic" "soul" and encouraged
SECTION 20
#17327975482263454-504: Is frequently seen as an indicator of who may be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Gabriel García Márquez (1972 Neustadt, 1982 Nobel), Czesław Miłosz (1978 Neustadt, 1980 Nobel), Octavio Paz (1982 Neustadt, 1990 Nobel), Tomas Tranströmer (1990 Neustadt, 2011 Nobel) were first awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature before being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Another award of note
3611-495: Is included). In 2009, Horace Engdahl , then the permanent secretary of the Academy, declared that "Europe still is the centre of the literary world" and that "the US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature." In 2009, Engdahl's replacement, Peter Englund , rejected this sentiment ("In most language areas ... there are authors that really deserve and could get
3768-566: Is inscribed " Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes " ("It is beneficial to have improved (human) life through discovered arts"), an adaptation of " inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes " from line 663 of book 6 of the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil . A plate below the figures is inscribed with the name of the recipient. The text "ACAD. SUEC." denoting the Swedish Academy
3925-624: Is possible for "Swedish professors ... [to] compar[e] a poet from Indonesia , perhaps translated into English with a novelist from Cameroon , perhaps available only in French, and another who writes in Afrikaans but is published in German and Dutch...". As of 2021, 16 of the 118 recipients have been of Scandinavian origin. The Academy has often been alleged to be biased towards European, and in particular Swedish, authors. Nobel's "vague" wording for
4082-786: Is the Spanish Princess of Asturias Award (formerly Prince of Asturias Award) in Letters. During the first years of its existence, it was almost exclusively awarded to writers in the Spanish language, but in more recent times, writers in other languages have been awarded as well. Writers who have won both the Asturias Award in Letters and the Nobel Prize in Literature include Camilo José Cela , Günter Grass , Doris Lessing , and Mario Vargas Llosa . The non-monetary America Award in Literature presents itself as an alternative to
4239-420: Is uniquely designed by the prize-awarding institutions for the laureate who receives it. The diploma contains a picture and text that states the name of the laureate and normally a citation of why they received the prize. The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 116 times between 1901 and 2024 to 121 individuals: 103 men and 18 women. The prize has been shared between two individuals on four occasions. It
4396-933: The Neustadt International Prize for Literature , the Jerusalem Prize , Franz Kafka Prize , the International Booker Prize , and the Formentor Prix International . The journalist Hephzibah Anderson has noted that the International Booker Prize "is fast becoming the more significant award, appearing an ever more competent alternative to the Nobel". However, since 2016, the International Booker Prize now recognises an annual book of fiction translated into English. Previous winners of
4553-570: The OGPU ) who vested interest in spying on Gorky, and two other OGPU officers, Semyon Firin and Matvei Pogrebinsky , who held high office in the Gulag . Pogrebinsky was Gorky's guest in Sorrento for four weeks in 1930. The following year, Yagoda sent his brother-in-law, Leopold Averbakh to Sorrento, with instructions to induce Gorky to return to Russia permanently. Gorky's return from Fascist Italy
4710-639: The Perestroika . The essays call Lenin a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression of free discourse, and an anarchist for his conspiratorial tactics; Gorky compares Lenin to both the Tsar and Nechayev . He was a member of the Committee for the Struggle against Antisemitism within the Soviet government. In 1921, he hired a secretary, Moura Budberg , who later became his mistress. In August 1921,
4867-496: The Swedish Academy , has awarded the prize to its own members; Verner von Heidenstam in 1916, the posthumous prize to Karlfeldt in 1931, Pär Lagerkvist in 1951, and the shared prize to Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson in 1974. Selma Lagerlöf was elected a member of the Swedish Academy in 1914, five years after she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909. Three writers have declined the prize, Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1919, Boris Pasternak in 1958 ("Accepted first, later caused by
Andrew Upton - Misplaced Pages Continue
5024-422: The Sydney Theatre Company for what became a five-year term. Upton and Blanchett formed a film production company, Dirty Films, whose projects include the films Bangers (1999) and Little Fish (2005). Upton wrote, produced and directed the short, Bangers , which starred Blanchett. Upton shares writing credits for the feature film Gone (2007). Upton wrote the libretto to Alan John 's opera Through
5181-538: The Wall Street Journal , Joseph Epstein wrote, "You might not know it, but you and I are members of a club whose fellow members include Leo Tolstoy , Henry James , Anton Chekhov , Mark Twain , Henrik Ibsen , Marcel Proust , James Joyce , Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov . The club is the Non-Winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. All these authentically great writers, still alive when
5338-430: The 18-member academy, who select the recipients, is technically for life. Until 2018, members were not allowed to leave, although they might refuse to participate. For members who did not participate, their board seat was left vacant until they died. Twelve active/participating members are required for a quorum. In 1989, three members, including the former permanent secretary Lars Gyllensten , resigned in protest after
5495-423: The 1960 laureate Saint-John Perse was nominated several times by the 1948 laureate T. S. Eliot . Although the Nobel Prize in Literature has become the world's most prestigious literature prize, the Swedish Academy has attracted significant criticism for its handling of the award. Many authors who have won the prize have fallen into obscurity, while others rejected by the jury remain widely studied and read. In
5652-448: The Academy acknowledged the international aspect in Nobel's will, which rejected any consideration of the nationality of the candidates, and awarded authors from all over the world, such as Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, Naguib Mahfouz from Egypt, Octavio Paz from Mexico, Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, Derek Walcott from St. Lucia, Toni Morrison , the first African-American on the list, Kenzaburo Oe from Japan, and Gao Xingjian ,
5809-465: The Academy awarding its own members, as happened in 1974 . The prize's focus on European men, and Swedes in particular, has been the subject of criticism, even from Swedish newspapers. The majority of laureates have been European, with Sweden itself receiving more prizes (8) than all of Asia (7, if Turkish Orhan Pamuk is included), as well as all of Latin America (7, if Saint Lucian Derek Walcott
5966-479: The Academy by 1 February, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee , a working group within the Academy comprising four to five members. By April, the committee narrows the field to around 20 candidates. By May, a shortlist of five names is approved by the Academy. The next four months are spent reading and reviewing the works of the five candidates. In October, members of the Academy vote, and
6123-582: The Academy has been reluctant to award shared prizes, because divisions are liable to be interpreted as a result of a compromise. The shared prizes awarded to Frédéric Mistral and José Echegaray in 1904 and to Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan in 1917 were, in fact, both results of compromises. Shared prizes are exceptional, and more recently, the Academy has awarded a shared prize on only two occasions, to Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Nelly Sachs in 1966, and to Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson in 1974. Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature are awarded for
6280-523: The Bolsheviks, and the founder of the increasingly canonical " socialist realism ". Source: Turner, Lily; Strever, Mark (1946). Orphan Paul; A Bibliography and Chronology of Maxim Gorky . New York: Boni and Gaer. pp. 261–270. In Kharkiv Gorky Park was renamed Central Park of Culture and Recreation in June 2023. In Odesa in June 2023 a Historical and Toponymic Commission proposed renaming its Gorky Park to Park of Children's Dreams,
6437-567: The Caribbean and Windward Heights . The scandal was widely seen as damaging to the credibility of the prize and its authority. As noted by Andrew Brown in The Guardian in a lengthy deconstruction of the scandal: "The scandal has elements of a tragedy, in which people who set out to serve literature and culture discovered they were only pandering to writers and the people who hang around with them. The pursuit of excellence in art
Andrew Upton - Misplaced Pages Continue
6594-589: The Congress of Writers to be rewritten, and in his account of the visit, Kaganovich reported that Gorky's "mood [was] apparently not very good", and that the "aftertaste" with which Gorky was critical about some life aspects in the USSR "reminded [him] of Comrade Krupskaya ", Lenin's wife who supported the Right Opposition , and that Kamenev seemingly had "an important role in shaping" Gorky's "moods"; Kaganovich also proposed to heavily edit Gorky's attack on
6751-520: The Don , he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people". Nominations are kept secret for 50 years until they are publicly available at The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Currently, only nominations submitted between 1901 and 1973 are available for public viewing. What about the rumours circling around the world about certain people being nominated for
6908-592: The Highest Stage of Capitalism , with Lenin's criticisms of Kautsky removed from the text. After the February Revolution, Gorky visited the headquarters of the Okhrana on Kronversky Prospekt together with Nikolai Sukhanov and Vladimir Zenisinov. Gorky described the former Okhrana headquarters, where he sought literary inspiration, as derelict, with windows broken, and papers lying all over
7065-478: The International Booker Prize who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature include Alice Munro , Olga Tokarczuk , and Han Kang . The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is regarded as one of the most prestigious international literary prizes, often referred to as the American equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Like the Nobel Prize, it is awarded not for any one work but for an entire body of work. It
7222-463: The London production. Upton and his wife, actress Cate Blanchett , are the co-founders of the film production company Dirty Films, under which Upton served as a producer for the Australian film Little Fish (2005). Upton and Blanchett became joint artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company from 2008 until 2012. Upton attended The King's School, Parramatta, and University of Sydney. As
7379-688: The Looking Glass , which premiered with the Victorian Opera in Melbourne in May 2008. Upton acted in one of Julian Rosenfeldt's thirteen-part art film , Manifesto (2015). In June, 2014, Upton was recognised with the Rotary Professional Excellence Award, an award instituted "to honour a person who has demonstrated consistent professional excellence in his or her chosen vocation by contributing to
7536-601: The Miguel de Cervantes Prize include Octavio Paz (1981 Cervantes, 1990 Nobel); Mario Vargas Llosa (1994 Cervantes, 2010 Nobel); and Camilo José Cela (1995 Cervantes, 1989 Nobel). José Saramago is the only author to receive both the Camões Prize (1995) and the Nobel Prize (1998) to date. The Hans Christian Andersen Award is sometimes referred to as "the Little Nobel". The award has earned this appellation since, in
7693-799: The Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobel's fortune and organise the prizes. The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed: the Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how
7850-1049: The Nobel Prize and that goes for the United States and the Americas, as well") and acknowledged the Eurocentric nature of the award, saying that, "I think that is a problem. We tend to relate more easily to literature written in Europe and in the European tradition." American critics are known to object that those from their own country, like Philip Roth , Thomas Pynchon , and Cormac McCarthy , have been overlooked, as have Latin Americans such as Jorge Luis Borges , Julio Cortázar , and Carlos Fuentes , while in their place Europeans lesser-known to that continent have triumphed. The 2009 award to Herta Müller , previously little-known outside Germany but many times named favourite for
8007-568: The Nobel Prize in Literature would once again be awarded, and laureates for both 2018 and 2019 would be announced together. The decision came after several changes were made to the structure of the Swedish Academy as well as to the Nobel Committee members selection, in order to "[restore] trust in the Academy as a prize-awarding institution". The Nobel Prize in Literature is not the only literary prize for which all nationalities are eligible. Other notable international literary prizes include
SECTION 50
#17327975482268164-538: The Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of literature academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel literature laureates, and the presidents of writers' organisations are all allowed to nominate a candidate. It is not allowed to nominate oneself. Between the years 1901 and 1950, around 20 to 35 nominations were usually received each year. Today thousands of requests are sent out each year, and as of 2011 about 220 proposals were returned. These proposals must be received by
8321-471: The Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II . According to Nobel's will, the prize in literature should be determined by "the Academy in Stockholm", which was specified by the statutes of the Nobel Foundation to mean the Swedish Academy . Each year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for
8478-427: The Nobel Prize this year? – Well, either it's just a rumour, or someone among the invited nominators has leaked information. Since the nominations are kept secret for 50 years, you'll have to wait until then to find out. Nominated candidates are usually considered by the Nobel committee for years, but it has happened on a number of occasions that an author has been instantly awarded after just one nomination. Apart from
8635-567: The Nobel Prize, re-ignited the viewpoint that the Swedish Academy was biased and Eurocentric . The 2010 prize was awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa , a native of Peru in South America, a generally well-regarded decision. When the 2011 prize was awarded to the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer , permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund said the prize was not decided based on politics, describing such
8792-649: The Nobel Prize. Peter Handke , Harold Pinter , José Saramago , and Mario Vargas Llosa are the only writers to have received both the America Award and the Nobel Prize in Literature. There are also prizes for honouring the lifetime achievement of writers in specific languages, like the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (for Spanish language, established in 1976) and the Camões Prize (for Portuguese language, established in 1989). Nobel laureates who were also awarded
8949-516: The Nobel committee are elected for a period of three years from among the members of the academy and are assisted by specially appointed expert advisers. The award is usually announced in October. Sometimes, however, the award has been announced the year after the nominal year, the latest such case being the 2018 award . In the midst of controversy surrounding claims of sexual assault, conflict of interest, and resignations by officials, on 4 May 2018,
9106-452: The Organising Committee of the Union and demands to let Leopold Averbakh , the leader of RAPP who was executed in 1937, speak at the congress. After his arrest in the beginning of 1935, Kamenev wrote a letter to Gorky: "We didn't talk with you about politics, and when I told you about the feeling of love and respect for Stalin..., about my readiness to sincerely work with him, that all feelings of resentment and anger burned out in me — I told
9263-451: The Russian boureoisie to participate "in the work of reform". Although the Okhrana , the secret police, had failed to find a legal pretext to close the journal, the government decided to do it in January 1917, but these plans failed because of the February Revolution . Gorky distrusted it at first, but in Spring became cautiously optimist about it. In Summer, Gorky's publishing house published one of Lenin's most famous writings, Imperialism,
9420-436: The Russian liberals" in Lenin's words; later he wrote a series of anti-war publications, but succeeded in publishing only one of them, in which he appealed to feelings of international brotherhood and cooperation; one of the articles was confiscated by the censor, and another was condemned and led the journal being confiscated after being published. While not being a strong " defeatist " like Lenin, Gorky supported "a speedy end of
9577-493: The Socialist Realism writers earlier attacked by Gorky, published an answer to him, in which he dismissed his line of criticizing the officially acclaimed Socialist Realism writers while supporting such ostensible enemies of Communism as D. S. Mirsky . David Zaslavsky published an ironic response to Gorky's article defending Demons , in which he accused Gorky in connivance in the formation of the "counter-revolutionary intelligentsia " and directly compared his "liberal position" with
SECTION 60
#17327975482269734-552: The Soviet regime were rather difficult: while being Stalin's public supporter, he maintained friendships with Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin , the leaders of the anti-Stalin opposition executed after Gorky's death; he also hoped to ease the Soviet cultural policies and made some efforts to defend the writers who disobeyed them, which resulted in him spending his last days under unannounced house arrest. Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March [ O.S. 16 March] 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod , Gorky became an orphan at
9891-442: The Soviet vice-premier, Alexei Rykov asking him to tell Leon Trotsky that any death sentences carried out on the defendants would be "premeditated and foul murder." This provoked a contemptuous reaction from Lenin, who described Gorky as "always supremely spineless in politics", and Trotsky, who dismissed Gorky as an "artist whom no-one takes seriously". He was denied permission by Italy's fascist government to return to Capri, but
10048-433: The Swedish Academy announced that the 2018 laureate would be announced in 2019 along with the 2019 laureate. Some years, such as in 1949 , no candidate received the required majority of the votes, and for that reason, the prize was postponed and announced the following year. A Literature Nobel Prize laureate receives a gold medal , a diploma bearing a citation , and a sum of money. The amount of money awarded depends on
10205-458: The Turbins were allowed for staging; Gorky took Andrei Platonov to the "writers' brigades" after he was made unable to be published because of his work critical of the collectivization, although Gorky rejected his "pessimistic" texts; with Gorky's intervention, Bukharin became one of the keynote speakers on the Writers' Congress and proclaimed Boris Pasternak , who was denounced by the Stalinist party critics as "decadent", to be "first poet" of
10362-416: The USSR. Gorky was not a supporter of artistic pluralism and diversity among writers and agreed that some censorship had to be inevitable, often being dismissive and rigid of creative experiments; however, Gorky was concerned with the bureaucratization of the Union of Writers and tried to oppose the increasing pressure on writers and attacked the party-sanctioned authors and them achieving the highest ranks in
10519-407: The Volga and Ural River regions. Gorky left Russia in September 1921, for Berlin. There he heard about the impending Moscow Trial of 12 Socialist Revolutionaries , which hardened his opposition to the Bolshevik regime. He wrote to Anatole France denouncing the trial as a "cynical and public preparation for the murder" of people who had fought for the freedom of the Russian people. He also wrote to
10676-439: The abortive 1905 Russian Revolution , Gorky wrote the play Children of the Sun , nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. He was released from the prison after a European-wide campaign, which was supported by Marie Curie , Auguste Rodin and Anatole France , amongst others. Gorky assisted the Moscow uprising of 1905 , and after its suppression his apartment
10833-411: The academy refused to denounce Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for calling for the death of Salman Rushdie , author of The Satanic Verses . A fourth member, Knut Ahnlund , decided to remain in the academy but later refused to participate in their work and resigned in 2005 in protest of the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Elfriede Jelinek . According to Ahnlund, the decision to award Jelinek ruined
10990-439: The age of eleven. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887 he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing. As a journalist working for provincial newspapers he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida). He started using
11147-457: The artistic power and truth with which he has depicted human conflict as well as some fundamental aspects of contemporary life in his novel-cycle Les Thibault "; Ernest Hemingway in 1954 "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea ; and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style"; and Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965 "for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of
11304-516: The assistance of "Kremlin's doctors" Pletnyov and Lev Levin using substances developed at a special NKVD laboratory in Moscow . In Soviet times, before and after his death, the complexities in Gorky's life and outlook were reduced to an iconic image (echoed in heroic pictures and statues dotting the countryside): Gorky as a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people, a loyal friend of
11461-665: The author's life work, but on some occasions, the Academy has singled out a specific work for particular recognition. For example, Knut Hamsun was awarded in 1920 "for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil "; Thomas Mann in 1929 "principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks , which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature"; John Galsworthy in 1932 "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga "; Roger Martin du Gard in 1937 "for
11618-770: The authorities of his country (Soviet Union) to decline the Prize", according to the Nobel Foundation) and Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964. Alfred Nobel's guidelines for the prize, stating that the candidate should have bestowed "the greatest benefit on mankind" and written "in an idealistic direction," have sparked much discussion. In the early history of the prize, Nobel's " idealism " was read as "a lofty and sound idealism." The set of criteria, characterised by its conservative idealism, holding church, state, and family sacred, resulted in prizes for Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson , Rudyard Kipling , and Paul Heyse . During World War I , there
11775-415: The award is based on an author's body of work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize. The academy announces the name of the laureate in early October. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895. Literature is traditionally the final award presented at the Nobel Prize ceremony. On some occasions, the award has been postponed to
11932-739: The benefit of the wider community beyond their typical workplace role". Upton and Blanchett met in Australia in the mid-1990s and married on 29 December 1997. The couple have three sons and one daughter, the latter adopted in 2015. The couple's children appeared with Upton in segment 11 of the 2015 film Manifesto . Upton and Blanchett purchased a house in East Sussex , England, in early 2016. Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексей Максимович Пешков ; 28 March [ O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky ( Максим Горький ),
12089-552: The book's value as of a work of art. His experiences in the United States—which included a scandal over his travelling with his lover (the actress Maria Andreyeva ) rather than his wife—deepened his contempt for the "bourgeois soul". From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived on the island of Capri in southern Italy , partly for health reasons and partly to escape the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia. He continued to support
12246-460: The boy with him. The boy was executed after Gorky left. Gorky left the room in tears, and wrote in the visitor book "I am not in a state of mind to express my impressions in just a few words. I wouldn't want, yes, and I would likewise be ashamed to permit myself the banal praise of the remarkable energy of people who, while remaining vigilant and tireless sentinels of the Revolution, are able, at
12403-515: The boy's identity, and that the story isn't supported by documents: "In the Solovki Museum... information about the real boy was not found; this story is considered to be a legend." Dmitry Bykov in his biography of Gorky wrote that whether or not did the boy exist, "mass consciousness is structured in such a way that the boy is needed, and it is no longer possible to erase him from Gorky's biography"; Gorky's biographer Pavel Basinsky makes
12560-483: The candidate who receives more than half of the votes is named the Nobel laureate in Literature. No one can get the prize without being on the shortlist at least twice; thus, many authors reappear and are reviewed repeatedly over the years. The academicians read works in their original language, but when a candidate is shortlisted from a language that no member masters, they call on translators and oath-sworn experts to provide samples of that writer's work. Other elements of
12717-458: The circumstances of his death. Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's urn during the funeral. During the Bukharin trial in 1938 (last of the three Moscow Trials ), one of the charges was that Gorky was killed by Yagoda 's NKVD agents. According to several historians, Gorky and his son were poisoned by NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda on the orders from Stalin and possibly with
12874-558: The coal industry, one of whom, Pyotr Osadchy, had visited Gorky in Sorrento . In contrast to his attitude to the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries , Gorky accepted without question that the engineers were guilty, and expressed regret that in the past he had intervened on behalf of professionals who were being persecuted by the regime. During the visit, he struck up friendships with Genrikh Yagoda (deputy head of
13031-410: The common people, and wrote a series of important cultural memoirs, including the first part of his autobiography. On returning to Russia, he wrote that his main impression was that "everyone is so crushed and devoid of God's image." The only solution, he repeatedly declared, was "culture". With Russia entering World War I in 1914 and the outburst of patriotism Gorky became devastated; shortly after
13188-420: The control of the Nobel Committee such as the early death of an author as was the case with Marcel Proust , Italo Calvino , and Roberto Bolaño . According to Kjell Espmark , "the main works of Kafka , Cavafy , and Pessoa were not published until after their deaths, and the true dimensions of Mandelstam's poetry were revealed above all in the unpublished poems that his wife saved from extinction and gave to
13345-409: The control of the party, becoming officially praised as "the founder of Socialist Realism in literature". However, in her political biography of Gorky she also describes his various conflicts with the official cultural policies and the increasing pressure on him towards the end of his life; during his last years, he supported friendly relations with Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin , the leaders of
13502-405: The criteria for the prize has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word idealisk translates as "ideal." The Nobel Committee 's interpretation has varied over the years. In recent years, this means a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. From 1901 to 1912, the committee, led by the conservative Carl David af Wirsén , assessed the literary quality of
13659-415: The decisions by the Academy. Two former permanent secretaries, Sture Allén and Horace Engdahl, called Danius a weak leader. On 10 April, Danius was asked to resign from her position by the Academy, bringing the number of empty seats to four. Although the Academy voted against removing Katarina Frostenson from the committee, she voluntarily agreed to withdraw from participating in the academy, bringing
13816-540: The destruction of the Rheims Cathedral , Gorky wrote Andreeva: "All this is so terrible that I am unable to express even one one-hundredth of my heavy feelings, which are perhaps best described in words such as world catastrophe, the downfall of European culture." At first, Gorky along with the other writers signed a protest against the "barbarism of the Germans", blaming them for the war, "the despicable paper of
13973-458: The evenings from the lack of adequate shelter and food, but even in the middle of the day. Most tellingly, Solzhenitsyn and Dmitry Likhachov document a visit, on 20 June 1929 to Solovki , the "original" forced labour camp, and the model upon which thousands of others were constructed. Given Gorky's reputation, (both to the authorities and to the prisoners), the camp was transformed from one where prisoners (Zeks) were worked to death to one befitting
14130-471: The filthy venom of power", crushing the rights of the individual to achieve their revolutionary dreams. Gorky wrote that Lenin was a "cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat. ... He does not know the popular masses, he has not lived with them". Gorky went on to compare Lenin to a chemist experimenting in a laboratory with the only difference being the chemist experimented with inanimate matter to improve life while Lenin
14287-429: The final candidates some years in the 1960s. Graham Greene was nominated for the prize twenty-six times between the years 1950 and 1971. Greene was a celebrated candidate to be awarded the prize in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Academy was criticised for passing him over. French novelist and intellectual André Malraux was seriously considered for the prize in the 1950s. Malraux was competing with Albert Camus but
14444-420: The first laureate in 1901, Sully Prudhomme , these include Theodor Mommsen in 1902, Rudolf Eucken in 1908, Paul Heyse in 1910, Rabindranath Tagore in 1913, Sinclair Lewis in 1930, Luigi Pirandello in 1934, Pearl Buck in 1938, William Faulkner in 1950 (the prize for 1949) and Bertrand Russell in 1950. Former recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature are allowed to nominate their candidates for
14601-612: The first laureate to write in Chinese. In the 2000s, V. S. Naipaul , Mario Vargas Llosa , and the Chinese writer Mo Yan have been awarded, but the policy of "a prize for the whole world" has been less noticeable as the Academy has mostly continued to award European and English-language writers from the Western literary tradition. In 2015, a rare prize to a non-fiction writer was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich . The Nobel Prize in Literature can be shared between two individuals. However,
14758-574: The floor. Having dinner with Sukhanov later the same day, Gorky grimly predicted that revolution would end in "Asiatic savagery". Initially a supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky , Gorky switched over to the Bolsheviks after the Kornilov affair . In July 1917, Gorky wrote his own experiences of the Russian working class had been sufficient to dispel any "notions that Russian workers are
14915-412: The following year, most recently in 2018. Alfred Nobel stipulated in his last will and testament that his money be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics , chemistry , peace , physiology or medicine, and literature. Although Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, and it
15072-474: The former enemies of proletariat". For other writers, he urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential. For himself, Gorky avoided realism. His denials that even a single prisoner died during the construction of the aforementioned canal was refuted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who claimed thousands of prisoners froze to death not only in
15229-494: The grass and was now chopping off branches, leading Gorky to write that he was "stubborn as a mole, and apparently as blind as one too". Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks became strained, however, after the October Revolution . One contemporary recalled how Gorky would turn "dark and black and grim" at the mere mention of Lenin. Gorky wrote that Vladimir Lenin together with Leon Trotsky "have become poisoned with
15386-456: The highlight is the prize-giving ceremony and banquet on 10 December. It is the second richest literary prize in the world . The literature medal features a portrait of Alfred Nobel in left profile on the obverse . It was designed by Erik Lindberg . The reverse of the medal depicts a 'young man sitting under a laurel tree who, enchanted, listens to and writes down the song of the Muse'. It
15543-417: The human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a "restless man" (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of
15700-541: The human world. In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: "In my early youth I read...the words of...Hillel, if I remember rightly: 'If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou'? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with their profound wisdom...The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel's wisdom served as
15857-699: The ideological enemies, namely Kamenev and Zinoviev : "Next thing you know you'll be calling for publication of White Guard writers", as Korney Chukovsky summarized in his diary; Gorky's second answer to Zaslavsky was not published. During the officially organized campaign against the composer Dmitry Shostakovich , Gorky wrote a letter to Stalin in defense of the composer, demanding a "careful" treatment of him and calling his critics "a bunch of mediocre people, hack-workers" "attack[ing] Shostakovich in every possible way." Such sources as Romain Rolland 's diary demonstrate that because of Gorky's refusal to blindly obey
16014-519: The incarnation of spiritual beauty and kindness". Gorky admitted to feeling attracted to Bolshevism, but admitted to concerns about a creed that made the entire working class "sweet and reasonable – I had never known people who were really like this". Gorky wrote that he knew the poor, the "carpenters, stevedores, bricklayers", in a way that the intellectual Lenin never did, and he frankly distrusted them. During World War I, his apartment in Petrograd
16171-399: The income of the Nobel Foundation that year. The literature prize can be shared between two, but not three, laureates. If a prize is awarded jointly, the prize money is split equally between them. The prize money of the Nobel Prize has been fluctuating since its inauguration but as of 2012 it stood at kr 8,000,000 (about US$ 1,100,000), previously it was kr 10,000,000. This
16328-535: The infinitely varied work of scores of different traditions. And why should we ask them to do that?" Although several Scandinavians were awarded, two of the most celebrated writers, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and Swedish author August Strindberg , were repeatedly bypassed by the committee, but Strindberg holds the singular distinction of being awarded an Anti-Nobel Prize, conferred by popular acclaim and national subscription and presented to him in 1912 by future prime minister Hjalmar Branting . Paul Valéry
16485-851: The invitation of Mark Twain and other writers. An invitation to the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt was withdrawn after the New York World reported that the woman accompanying Gorky was not his wife. After this was revealed all of the hotels in Manhattan refused to house the couple, and they had to stay at an apartment in Staten Island . During a visit to Switzerland, Gorky met Lenin, who he charged spent an inordinate amount of his time feuding with other revolutionaries, writing: "He looked awful. Even his tongue seemed to have turned grey". Despite his atheism , Gorky
16642-474: The literary bureaucracy. Such Stalin's closest associates as Lazar Kaganovich opposed Gorky and Bukharin in their efforts against the increasing party control of literature, and Kaganovich in his letters to Stalin wrote about Gorky's ideological faults and the ostensible influence of the Opposition on him. For example, Kaganovich and several Politburo members visited Gorky and demanded his keynote speech for
16799-636: The members of the Organising Committee and publish it so it wouldn't circulate illegally. Another act which concerned the Politburo was Gorky's support of the members of the RAPP , the former party institution to control literature the members of which fell out of favour after its disbandment; Kaganovich wrote about Gorky supporting the RAPP-led campaign against Stalin's hand-picked leadership of
16956-641: The novels The Artamonov Business (1925) and The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936); the latter is considered by some as Gorky's masterpiece and has been viewed by some critics as a modernist work. Unlike his pre-revolutionary writings (known for their "anti-psychologism") Gorky's later works differ, with an ambivalent portrayal of the Russian Revolution and "unmodern interest to human psychology" (as noted by D. S. Mirsky ). He had associations with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov , both mentioned by Gorky in his memoirs. Gorky
17113-443: The official Soviet idea of "transformation through labour". Gorky did not notice the relocation of thousands of prisoners to ease the overcrowding, the new clothes on the prisoners (used to labouring in their underwear), or even the hiding of prisoners under tarpaulins, and the removal of the torture rooms. The deception was exposed when Gorky was presented with children "model prisoners", one of who challenged Gorky if he "wanted to know
17270-548: The opposition movement, for which he was again briefly imprisoned in 1901. In 1904, having severed his relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre in the wake of conflict with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko , Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod to establish a theatre of his own. Both Konstantin Stanislavski and Savva Morozov provided financial support for the venture. Stanislavski believed that Gorky's theatre
17427-410: The opposition which were executed after Gorky's death, and he could be sympathetic to the centrist and Right Opposition in general; both Bukharin and Kamenev had been friends with Gorky since 1920s. Paola Cioni noted that although there are traits of a conflict in the relations between Stalin and the state and Gorky, it is uncertain when this conflict was provoked by psychological motives, and when it
17584-472: The party, with Bogdanov taking responsibility for the transfer of funds from Gorky to Vpered . It is not clear whether he ever formally joined, and his relations with Lenin and the Bolsheviks would always be rocky. His most influential writings in these years were a series of plays on social and political themes, most famously The Lower Depths (1902). While briefly imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress during
17741-500: The poet Nikolay Gumilev was arrested by the Petrograd Cheka for his monarchist views. There is a story that Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained an order to release Gumilev from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilev had already been shot – but Nadezhda Mandelstam , a close friend of Gumilev's widow, Anna Akhmatova wrote that: "It is true that people asked him to intervene. ... Gorky had
17898-656: The policies of Stalinism, he had lost the Party's goodwill and spent his last days under unannounced house arrest. With the increase of Stalinist repression and especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his house near Moscow in Gorki-10 (the name of the place is a completely different word in Russian unrelated to his surname). His long-serving secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov had been recruited by Yagoda as
18055-555: The previous year's recipient, the Academy's desire for literary quality and the impossibility of rewarding everyone who deserves the prize. In the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature, many critical literary figures were ignored. The literary historian Kjell Espmark admitted that "as to the early prizes, the censure of bad choices and blatant omissions is often justified. Tolstoy , Ibsen , and Henry James should have been rewarded instead of, for instance, Sully Prudhomme , Eucken , and Heyse ." There are omissions which are beyond
18212-450: The prize and sometimes their proposals have subsequently been awarded the prize. The 1912 laureate Gerhart Hauptmann nominated Verner von Heidenstam (awarded in 1916) and Thomas Mann (awarded in 1929), the 1915 laureate Romain Rolland proposed Ivan Bunin (awarded in 1933), Thomas Mann nominated Hermann Hesse (awarded in 1946) in 1931, the 1951 laureate Pär Lagerkvist was proposed by both André Gide and Roger Martin du Gard , and
18369-469: The prize, claimed that Joyce's "stature was not properly recognized even in the English-speaking world," but that Joyce doubtless would have been awarded if he had lived in the late 1940s when the Academy began to award literary pioneers like T. S. Eliot . Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was nominated for the prize several times, but the Academy did not award it to him, though he was among
18526-467: The prize, initiated in 1901, was being awarded, didn't win it." Other notable names from the non-western canon who were ignored despite being nominated several times for the prize include Sri Aurobindo and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan . The prize has "become widely seen as a political one – a peace prize in literary disguise", whose judges are prejudiced against authors with political tastes different from theirs. Tim Parks has expressed skepticism that it
18683-451: The process are similar to those of other Nobel Prizes. The Swedish Academy is composed of 18 members who are elected for life and, until 2018, not technically permitted to leave. On 2 May 2018, King Carl XVI Gustaf amended the rules of the academy and made it possible for members to resign. The new rules also mention that a member who has been inactive in the work of the academy for more than two years can be asked to resign. The members of
18840-578: The pseudonym "Gorky" (from горький; literally "bitter") in 1892, when his first short story, " Makar Chudra ", was published by the newspaper Kavkaz (The Caucasus) in Tiflis where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops. The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы ( Essays and Stories ) in 1898 enjoyed
18997-613: The public space of the city. The monument of Gorky that been erected in 1977 was dismantled on 26 December 2022. Maxim Gorky is depicted on postage stamps: Albania (1986), Vietnam (1968) India (1968), Maldives (2018), and many more. Some of them can be found below. In 2018, FSUE Russian Post released a miniature sheet dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the writer. Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature , here meaning for Literature, ( Swedish : Nobelpriset i litteratur )
19154-406: The publishing house Academia ; Gorky also made efforts to support the literary " fellow travellers " and writers who had troubles with their works being published for ideological or artistic reasons or were disapproved by the official critic. For example, in letters to Stalin he defended Mikhail Bulgakov , and partly because of Gorky, Bulgakov's plays The Cabal of Hypocrites and The Days of
19311-622: The same time, to be remarkably bold creators of culture". In a collection of academic papers about Gorky by the World Literature Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences published in 1995 it was noted that the story about the boy was first told by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The GULAG Archipelago and there was no other testimonies in support of it, that there were never details given about
19468-489: The total of withdrawals to five. Because two other seats were still vacant from the Rushdie affair, this left only 11 active members, one short of the quorum needed to vote in replacements. On 4 May 2018, the Swedish Academy announced that the selection would be postponed until 2019, when two laureates would be chosen. It was still technically possible to choose a 2018 laureate, as only eight active members are required to choose
19625-400: The truth". On the affirmative, the room was cleared and the 14-year-old boy recounted the truth – starvation, men worked to death, and of the pole torture, of using men instead of horses, of the summary executions, of rolling prisoners, bound to a heavy pole down stairs with hundreds of steps, of spending the night, in underwear, in the snow. Gorky never wrote about the boy, or even asked to take
19782-415: The truth... I loved you from the bottom of my heart"; Gorky's secretary Kryuchkov didn't register the letter in Gorky's correspondence receipt book, but the hand-written copy in the Gorky archives contains the writer's characteristic annotations in red pencil; meanwhile, as Gorky's relationship with Stalin worsened, the latter stopped visiting him and replying to his phone calls, and their formal correspondence
19939-432: The war and for peace without annexation or indemnities." In 1915, he launched the publishing house Parus and the magazine Letopis to spread anti-war stance and "defend the idea of international culture against all manifestations of nationalism and imperialism"; among its prominent writers were the poets Sergei Yesenin , Aleksandr Blok and Vladimir Mayakovsky . Lenin was critical of Gorky's position: "In politics Gorky
20096-463: The work of Russian social-democracy, especially the Bolsheviks and invited Anatoly Lunacharsky to stay with him on Capri. The two men had worked together on Literaturny Raspad which appeared in 1908. It was during this period that Gorky, along with Lunacharsky, Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov developed the idea of an Encyclopedia of Russian History as a socialist version of Diderot 's Encyclopédie . In 1906, Maxim Gorky visited New York City at
20253-453: The world long after he had perished in his Siberian exile." British novelist Tim Parks ascribed the never-ending controversy surrounding the decisions of the Nobel Committee to the "essential silliness of the prize and our own foolishness at taking it seriously" and noted that "eighteen (or sixteen) Swedish nationals will have a certain credibility when weighing up works of Swedish literature, but what group could ever really get its mind round
20410-520: The worth of the Nobel Prize in Literature for a long time. In April 2018, three members of the academy board resigned in response to a sexual misconduct investigation involving author Jean-Claude Arnault , who is married to board member Katarina Frostenson . Arnault was accused by at least 18 women of sexual assault and harassment. He and his wife were also accused of leaking the names of prize recipients on at least seven occasions so friends could profit from bets. He denied all accusations, although he
20567-522: Was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism . He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature . Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works are his early short stories " Chelkash ", " Old Izergil ", and " Twenty-six Men and
20724-603: Was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated with the Order of Lenin and given a mansion (formerly belonging to the millionaire Pavel Ryabushinsky , which was for many years the Gorky Museum ) in Moscow and a dacha in the suburbs. The city of Nizhny Novgorod, and the surrounding province were renamed Gorky. Moscow's main park , and one of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, were renamed in his honour, as
20881-475: Was a policy of neutrality, which partly explains the number of awards to Scandinavian writers. In the 1920s, "idealistic direction" was interpreted more generously as "wide-hearted humanity," leading to awards for writers like Anatole France , George Bernard Shaw , and Thomas Mann . In the 1930s, "the greatest benefit on mankind" was interpreted as writers within every person's reach, with authors like Sinclair Lewis and Pearl Buck receiving recognition. In 1946,
21038-534: Was active in the emerging Marxist socialist movement and later supported the Bolsheviks . He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov 's Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . During World War I , Gorky supported pacifism and internationalism and anti-war protests. For a significant part of his life he
21195-420: Was almost entirely maintained by Gorky, with Stalin replying occasionally. Later Gorky tried to defend an issue of Dostoevsky's Demons which was prepared by Kamenev and came out after his arrest; the novel had a reputation of a "counter-revolutionary" work. As the conflict was becoming more visible, Gorky's political and literary positions became weaker. Fyodor Panferov , one of the party-sanctioned leaders of
21352-406: Was among the final candidates for the prize several times, but the Academy favoured other writers. In 1964 Auden and Jean-Paul Sartre were the leading candidates, and the Academy favoured Sartre as Auden's best work was thought "too far back in time." In 1967 Auden was one of three final candidates along with Graham Greene and the awarded Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias . Membership in
21509-472: Was an opportunity to develop the network of provincial theatres which he hoped would reform the art of the stage in Russia, a dream of his since the 1890s. He sent some pupils from the Art Theatre School—as well as Ioasaf Tikhomirov , who ran the school—to work there. By the autumn, however, after the censor had banned every play that the theatre proposed to stage, Gorky abandoned the project. As
21666-531: Was changed to 6 years of exile. Gorky strongly supported efforts in getting a law passed in 1934, making homosexuality a criminal offense . His attitude was coloured by the fact that some members of the Nazi Sturmabteilung were homosexual. The phrase "exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish" is often attributed to him. Writing in Pravda on 23 May 1934, Gorky said: "There is already
21823-412: Was entangled with the pursuit of social prestige. The academy behaved as if the meals in its clubhouse were as much an accomplishment as the work that got people elected there." King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden said a reform of the rules may be evaluated, including the introduction of the right to resign in respect of the current lifelong membership of the committee. On 5 March 2019, it was announced that
21980-640: Was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union (USSR), being critical both of the Tsarism and of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War and the 1920s, condemning the latter for political repressions. In 1928 he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin 's personal invitation and lived there from 1932 until his death in June 1936. After his return he was officially declared the "founder of Socialist Realism ". Despite this, Gorky's relations with
22137-404: Was experimenting on the "living flesh of Russia". A further strain on Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks occurred when his newspaper Novaya Zhizn ( New Life ) fell prey to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war, around which time Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called Untimely Thoughts in 1918, which would not be republished in Russia until after
22294-497: Was having difficulty earning enough to keep his large household, and began to seek an accommodation with the communist regime. The General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin was equally keen to entice Gorky back to the USSR. He paid his first visit in May 1928 – at the very time when the regime was staging its first show trial since 1922, the so-called Shakhty Trial of 53 engineers employed in
22451-431: Was later convicted of rape and sentenced to two years and six months in prison. Sara Danius , the board secretary, hired a law firm to investigate if Frostenson had leaked confidential information and if Arnault had any influence on the Academy, but no legal action was taken. The investigation caused a split within the Academy. Following a vote to exclude board member Frostenson, the three members resigned in protest over
22608-520: Was later depicted by Viktor Govorov in his painting . On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: "This piece is stronger than Goethe's Faust (love defeats death)" Voroshilov also left a "resolution": "I am illiterate, but I think that Comrade Stalin more than correctly defined the meaning of A. Gorky's poems. On my own behalf, I will say: I love M. Gorky as my and my class of writer, who correctly defined our forward movement." As Vyacheslav Ivanov remembers, Gorky
22765-523: Was nominated twelve times between 1930 and 1945 but died just as the Academy intended to award him the prize in 1945. James Joyce wrote the books that rank 1st and 3rd on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels – Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – but Joyce was never nominated for the prize. Kjell Espmark , a member of the Nobel Prize committee and author of the history of
22922-483: Was not a materialist. Most controversially, he articulated, along with a few other maverick Bolsheviks, a philosophy he called " God-Building " (богостроительство, bogostroitel'stvo ), which sought to recapture the power of myth for the revolution and to create religious atheism that placed collective humanity where God had been and was imbued with passion, wonderment, moral certainty, and the promise of deliverance from evil, suffering, and even death. Though 'God-Building'
23079-406: Was not awarded on seven occasions. The laureates have included writers in 25 languages. The youngest laureate was Rudyard Kipling , who was 41 years old when he was awarded in 1907. The oldest laureate to receive the prize was Doris Lessing , who was 88 when she was awarded in 2007. It has been awarded posthumously once, to Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1931. On some occasions, the awarding institution,
23236-467: Was not the first time the prize amount was decreased—beginning with a nominal value of kr 150,782 in 1901 (worth 8,123,951 in 2011 SKr ) the nominal value has been as low as kr 121,333 (2,370,660 in 2011 SKr) in 1945—but it has been uphill or stable since then, peaking at an SKr-2011 value of 11,659,016 in 2001. The laureate is also invited to give a lecture during "Nobel Week" in Stockholm ;
23393-412: Was permitted to settle in Sorrento, where he lived from 1922 to 1932, with an extended household that included Moura Budberg, his ex-wife Andreyeva, her lover, Pyotr Kryuchkov , who acted as Gorky's secretary (initially a spy for Yagoda) for the remainder of his life, Gorky's son Max Peshkov, Max's wife, Timosha, and their two young daughters. He wrote several successful books while there, but by 1928 he
23550-422: Was provoked by his political position. It is certain, however, that Gorky intervened on behalf of such politically persecuted individuals as the historian Yevgeny Tarle and the literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin , succeeded in making possible for the writers Yevgeny Zamyatin and Victor Serge to leave the country, tried to intercede on behalf of Karl Radek and Bukharin, and made Kamenev appointed as director of
23707-547: Was raided by the Black Hundreds . He subsequently fled to Lake Saimaa , Finland . In 1906, the Bolsheviks sent him on a fund-raising trip to the United States with Ivan Narodny . When visiting the Adirondack Mountains , Gorky wrote Mother , his probably most famous novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle; despite its success and political impact, various critics and Gorky himself were harsh of
23864-440: Was rejected several times, especially in 1954 and 1955, "so long as he does not come back to novel." Thus, Camus was awarded the prize in 1957. Malraux was again considered in 1969 when he was competing with Samuel Beckett for the prize. Some members of the Nobel committee supported a prize to Malraux, but Beckett was awarded. W. H. Auden was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nineteen times between 1961 and 1971, and
24021-474: Was ridiculed by Lenin, Gorky retained his belief that "culture"—the moral and spiritual awareness of the value and potential of the human self—would be more critical to the revolution's success than political or economic arrangements. An amnesty granted for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1914, where he continued his social criticism, mentored other writers from
24178-655: Was signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million Swedish kronor ( US$ 198 million, €176 million in 2016), to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. Due to the level of scepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) approved it. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, who formed
24335-580: Was the Moscow Art Theatre . The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the Tupolev ANT-20 was named Maxim Gorky in his honour. He was also appointed President of the Union of Soviet Writers , founded in 1932, to coincide with his return to the USSR. On 11 October 1931 Gorky read his fairy tale poem "A Girl and Death" (which he wrote in 1892) to his visitors Joseph Stalin , Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav Molotov , an event that
24492-520: Was turned into a Bolshevik staff room, and his politics remained close to the Bolsheviks throughout the revolutionary period of 1917 . On the day after the October Revolution of 7 November 1917 , Gorky observed a gardener working the Alexander Park who had cleared snow during the February Revolution while ignoring the shots in the background, asked people during the July Days not to trample
24649-465: Was very upset: They wrote their resolution on his fairy tale "A Girl and Death". My father , who spoke about this episode with Gorky, insisted emphatically that Gorky was offended. Stalin and Voroshilov were drunk and fooling around. In 1933, Gorky co-edited, with Averbakh and Firin, an infamous book about the White Sea–Baltic Canal , presented as an example of "successful rehabilitation of
#225774