THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN LITERATURE

By courtesy of The American-Scandinavian Foundation

ALFRED NOBEL

THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN LITERATURE

By ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK :: MCMXXVII :: LONDON

Copyright, 1925, by

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

PAUL AND ANNA

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PREFACE

These studies of Nobel Prize Winners in Literature have been the result of research for several years and lectures upon the subject in University Extension courses, before college clubs and other groups. The vast scope of the subject suggests temerity in one who attempts to treat it in such limited space. The writer realizes the inadequacy of the book and possible conflicting statements because of diverse authorities that have been consulted. After careful “siftings,” it is offered as an incentive to further study, as a roadmap to many paths of literary research. Biographical data and brief criticism of the authors’ works are followed by a bibliography which is suggestive rather than exhaustive.

The writer of these chapters has been, in large measure, the recorder of research by many individuals and educational institutions, with personal deductions from wide reading. Among many books that have been stimulating are Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century by Georg Brandes, Studies from Ten Literatures by Ernest Boyd, books upon the drama and translations by John Garrett Underhill, Ludwig Lewisohn [Pg viii]and Barrett H. Clark, and studies of Knut Hamsun by Josef Wiehr and Hanna Arstrup Larsen. Other specific books of interpretation are emphasized in text and footnotes, as well as in bibliography.

Gratitude that defies fitting words would be here expressed to Miss Anna C. Reque of the Bureau of Information of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, to the Svenska Akademien Nobelinstitut of Stockholm, to Mrs. Velma Swanston Howard, Miss Svea Boson and Thekla E. Hodge for translations, to Mr. R. F. Sharp of the British Museum, to Eugen Diederichs Verlag in Jerla, to The Danish National Library, Copenhagen, to Prof. Josef Wiehr, Prof. Kuno Francke, Francis Rooney, Esq., to Mr. Theodore Sutro, Mr. Rupert Hughes, Miss Harriet C. Marble, and to librarians of the Widener Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Miss Grace W. Wood, Mrs. Helen Abbott Beals, and to librarians of the Widener Library, Cambridge, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Free Public Library of Worcester and many other sources of encouragement and coöperation.

Appreciation of permission to quote extracts from printed works and to use illustrations is acknowledged to Sir Edmund Gosse, Mr. Rudyard Kipling and his agents, A. P. Watt & Son, to editors of The Atlantic Monthly, The Bookman, The Edinburgh Review, and [Pg ix]the publishing houses of American-Scandinavian Foundation, D. Appleton & Co., Boni & Liveright, The Century Co., Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc., Doubleday, Page & Company, Ginn and Company, Henry Holt and Company, Houghton Mifflin Company, B. W. Huebsch, Inc., Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Little, Brown & Company, J. B. Lippincott Company, Longmans, Green & Co., The Macmillan Company, Oxford University Press, American Branch, The Pilgrim Press, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Thomas Seltzer, Inc., Leonard Scott Publication Company, Herman Struck, W. P. Trumbauer, The University of Pennsylvania and Yale University Press.

Annie Russell Marble

Worcester, Massachusetts, September, 1925

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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CHAPTER I ALFRED NOBEL: THE CONDITIONS OF HIS WILL AND LITERARY RESULTS

Nobilius was the ancestral name, by tradition, of that family whose representative, Alfred Nobel, has left a name synonymous with inventiveness and large benefactions to humanity. The grandfather, Imanuel, an army surgeon, is accredited with changing the family name to Nobel. His son, Emanuel, father of Alfred, taught science in Stockholm, as a young man. With inventive ability he experimented with explosives, submarine mines, and other destructive forces and, by paradox, became designer of surgical appliances and India-rubber cushions to relieve suffering. He was interested in ship construction and spent some time in Egypt. To his sons he transmitted his spirit of scientific research, with all the dangers as well as the inspiration of such ambition. Two explosions, during experiments with nitroglycerine and other chemicals, [Pg 2]caused severe loss. The first, occurring about 1837 in Stockholm, shattered the nerves of the people as well as their windows, so that Emanuel went to Russia, on the advice of friends prominent in affairs of industry

and government. Here he was employed by the Russians to continue his experiments with submarine mines; with his family, he remained here until after the Crimean War, contributing to naval warfare by his inventions. An older son, Ludwig, remained in Russia when his family returned to Sweden. This son gained repute as an engineer and discovered the petroleum springs at Baku.⁠[1] A second explosion in one of the factories of Sweden, in 1864, caused the death of a younger son of Emanuel Nobel and shocked the father so severely that he was an invalid physically for the rest of his life.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born at Stockholm in 1833. He was less robust than his brothers; he was sensitive and nervous, suffering from headaches all his life. His mother, Karoline Henriette Ahlssell, was his devoted comrade from the early days when he would lie on the couch while she read to him or told him sagas and hero-stories. She was wise and happy by nature, confident that Alfred would become “a great man,” in spite of poor physique and moods of depression. He never married, although he loved a young [Pg 3]girl who died in her youth, but he was devoted to his mother to the end of her life. Letters and frequent visits to her in Sweden, in his later life, kept alive his affectionate nature and his idealism.

Like his father he showed studious interest in chemistry, physics, and mechanical engineering. Shipbuilding attracted his attention for a time and, when he was about seventeen, he was sent to the United States to increase his knowledge of mechanics, as applied to ships, by association with John Ericsson. At the home of the latter on Franklin Street, New York, where a tablet has been placed to commemorate the services of this inventor in the Civil War, young Nobel lived for a time. His father sent him to John Ericsson in order to investigate an invention of his, an engine which was supposed to work by heat from the sun. He stayed several months, probably not more than a year. Ericsson was passing through a period of fluctuating fortunes. At the end of 1849 his balance was only $132.32—his total receipts for the year had been but $2,000. Two years later he recorded a balance of $8,690.10. In the interval he had sold several patents and had received congratulations from the King of Sweden upon the great future for his “test caloric engine.” This was the goal of

his experiments during these years; its success was to be tested in the trial trip of The Ericsson, February 11, [Pg 4]1853. A squall came up as the boat was launched and making headway, and it sank, carrying with it hopes of the inventor after years of experiment, and half a million dollars of invested capital. Ericsson was crushed for a few weeks. How pluckily he recovered his courage, made his plans for The Monitor, offered that to the United States government and won success for the cause of the North, is familiar history.⁠[2]

Upon Alfred Nobel, with his quick, impressionable temperament, this direct contact with Ericsson must have left strong influences. Perhaps he decided then that, should fortune favor him, he would leave a fund to aid scientists in their experiments and to protect them against financial duress during periods of discouragement. When he returned to Sweden and Russia, he coöperated with his father and brothers in manufacturing nitroglycerine and other explosives; he was constantly seeking for a compound which would be more powerful and less dangerous. In 1857, at St. Petersburg, he had taken out a patent for a gasometer. It has been said that the discovery of what was later known as dynamite came by accident to Alfred Nobel, during an experiment about 1865-66. Some nitroglycerine had escaped into the siliceous sand of the [Pg 5]packing and this brought about a partial solution of his problem. Dynamite, which was composed of 75 per cent nitroglycerine and 25 per cent kieselguhr, or infusorial earth, was produced. He applied for patents

in several countries, and sought for funds to start factories which he believed would make a fortune by manufacture of this new explosive. It was sometimes called “Nobel’s blasting-oil.” He told French bankers that he had invented “an oil that would blow up the world”; a facetious commentator declared, “French bankers thought it for their interest to leave the globe undisturbed” and refused him credit.⁠[3]

Napoleon III became interested and arranged for funds for Nobel’s factories in France. With some samples of dynamite in his hand bag, Alfred Nobel came to the United States on the same commercial mission. New York hotels received him with suspicion because of rumors about the “deadly explosive”; he went to California where, through the aid of Dr. Bandman, a friend of Nobel’s brother, a factory was started near Los Angeles. In a few years manufactories were in operation in Italy, Spain, France and Scotland, as well as England and Sweden. When Alfred Nobel was forty years old he was making his fortune out of this “giant powder.” For several years he lived in Paris where he had laboratories for [Pg 6]further experiments with gelatin, balastite, and forms of smokeless powder. In his later home, in San Remo, he carried on developments and took out more patents in petroleum and artificial gutta-percha. He received the tribute of scientists and educators but the ignorant people regarded him with a mixture of awe and fear—“he had put the long hammer of Thor

to work again among the giants.”

In spite of his inspiring life-work and many successes, in spite of his wealth and honors, Alfred Nobel was a lonely man. His health was unstable; he often worked with bandaged head and in intense pain, accentuated by the gaseous fumes of his laboratory. He was self-distrustful and fearful that people were attracted to him only by his wealth. One of the few individuals who gained and kept his confidence was Baroness Bertha von Suttner. In her Memoirs the personality of Alfred Nobel is revealed in comments and letters. She came to him in response to an advertisement in a Paris newspaper, asking for a secretary for “a very wealthy, cultured gentleman.” She remained only a few days in her joint capacity of secretary and housekeeper, for a happy solution of her interrupted romance with the Baron von Suttner eventuated in her speedy marriage. She exchanged letters and visits with Alfred Nobel for many years and was devoted to him in life and in memory. She [Pg 7]describes him as somewhat below average height, without physical attractiveness but in no sense “repulsive,”

as he imagined himself to be. He was a fine linguist, somewhat of a philosopher, a good conversationalist and entertaining as a story-teller. He allowed her to read a long philosophical poem which he had written in English and she found it “simply splendid.” He was critical of the shallow, false-hearted people, especially those who importuned him with low motives; but he had faith in a better development of humanity as education progressed. One of his few intellectual companions in Paris was Madame Juliette Adams, author and editor of the Nouvelle Revue; at her salon in Rue Juliet, Nobel would meet, occasionally, men of science and letters.

In the Memoirs of Baroness von Suttner may be located the first intimations of Nobel’s motives which led to the Nobel prizes, especially the specific form which was known as “the Peace Prize.” It will be recalled that the Baroness von Suttner was one of the early winners of this prize by her widely-read romance, Die Waffen nieder (Lay Down Your Arms!). In 1890, after the publication of this story, advocating world peace, Nobel wrote letters of high commendation. On another occasion he said to her, “I wish I could produce a substance or a machine of such [Pg 8]frightful efficacy for wholesale devastation that wars should thereby become altogether impossible.”⁠[4] He contended, with the mind of a prophet, that a day might come when “two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second”; then he believed that “all civilized nations will recoil and disband their troops.” On January 7, 1893, three years before his death, he wrote to the Baroness from Paris.⁠[5] “I should like to dispose of a part of my fortune by founding a prize

to be granted every five years—say six times, for if in thirty years they have not succeeded in reforming the present system they will infallibly relapse into barbarism.... If the Triple Alliance, instead of comprising only three states, should enlist all states, the peace of the centuries would be assured.” Affirming his belief in “reasonable Socialism,” he deplored the custom of leaving large fortunes to heirs; too often the results were lapses in mental ambitions and industry.

On December 10, 1896, Alfred Nobel died suddenly in his workshop at San Remo. For a long time he had realized his condition of reduced vitality. He consulted doctors unwillingly and heeded their counsel with reluctance. He kept a record of his own pulse [Pg 9]and heart action but he never desisted from a full day’s work in his laboratory. His last letters have a sad note that is sometimes sarcastic yet he kept faith in and with humanity to the last. He had been carefully considering the disposal of his fortune, determined that it should contribute to progress in science and literature, for the welfare of mankind and the education towards world peace. His will startled the civilized world by its originality and idealism. The man who had been most successful in inventing elements of destruction, by a paradox, had left most of his large fortune to constructive, creative purposes.

Because he distrusted many lawyers he had been his own legal adviser in large measure; sometimes he had acted as his own secretary, lest an outsider might abuse his confidence. In appointing M. Ragnar Sohlmann as executor, he explained that here “was a man who had never asked anything of me.” (Later the manager of the factory at Bergen became associate executor.) He left legacies of five thousand pounds each to his nephews but some efforts to “break the will” were threatened. Emanuel, then head of the family, refused to sanction such interference and, after many complications and delays, the will was allowed, and varied equivocal, or impractical, conditions were interpreted by “Code of Statutes,” issued by the King of Sweden, June 29, 1900.

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From this pamphlet is quoted here the extract from the will:⁠[6] “Extract from the Will and Testament of Dr. Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Engineer, which was drawn on the 27th day of November, 1895: ‘With the residue of my convertible estate I hereby direct my executors to proceed as follows: They shall convert my said residue of property into money, which they shall then invest in safe securities; the capital thus secured shall constitute a fund, the interest accruing from which shall be annually awarded in prizes to those persons who shall have contributed most materially to benefit mankind during the year immediately preceding. The said interest shall be divided into five equal amounts, to be apportioned as follows: one share to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention in the domain of Physics; one share to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one share to the person who shall have made the most important discovery in the domain of Physiology or Medicine; one share to the person who

shall have produced in the field of Literature the most distinguished work of an idealistic tendency; and finally, one share to the person who shall have most [Pg 11]or best promoted the Fraternity of Nations and the Abolishment or Diminution of Standing Armies and the Formation and Increase of Peace Congresses.’”

In further details the will provides: “The prizes for Physics and Chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Science in Stockholm; the one for Physiology or Medicine by the Caroline Medical Institute in Stockholm; the one for Literature by the Academy in Stockholm (i.e. Svenska Akademien) and that for Peace by a Committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storthing. I declare it to be my express desire that in the awarding of prizes, no consideration whatever be paid to the nationality of the candidates, that is to say, that the most deserving be awarded the prize, whether of Scandinavian origin or not.”

Because of difficulties in interpreting certain sections and elucidating other phrases, this Code of Statutes was drawn up “in consultation with a representative, nominated by Robert Nobel’s family, and submitted to consideration of the King.” After adjustments of interests had been “amicably entered into” by the testator’s heirs, June 5, 1898, it was decreed that “The instructions of the will above as set forth shall serve as a criterion for the administration of the Foundation (Nobel) in conjunction with the elucidations and further stipulations contained in this Code.” One [Pg 12]“stipulation” was that “each of the annual prizes founded by the said will shall be awarded at least once during each ensuing five-year period after the year in which the Nobel Foundation comes into force.” The phrase used by Nobel in the words relating to the prize in Literature, “the Academy at Stockholm,” was interpreted “as understood to be the Swedish Academy—Svenska Akademien.” Another significant explanation was—the “term, ‘Literature,’ used in the

will shall be understood to embrace not only works falling under the category of Polite Literature, but also other writings which may claim to possess literary value by reason of their form or their mode of exposition.” This last provision, which seems elastic and somewhat vague, has not led thus far to undue difficulties and criticisms.

The phrase “during the preceding year,” as applied to scientific and literary achievements alike, was a strange, impractical provision which was well interpreted broadly in the Code thus: “only such works or inventions shall be eligible as have appeared ‘during the preceding year’ is to be understood, that a work or invention for which a reward under the terms of the will is contemplated, shall set forth the most modern results of work being done in that of the departments as defined in the will to which it belongs; works or inventions of older standing to be taken into consideration [Pg 13]only in case their importance has not previously been demonstrated.”