NORWAY

NORWAY

Aftenposten, Oslo, Oct. 7: Tomorrow, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced. Will the Swedish Academy finally acknowledge that it’s possible to create art within the parameters of popular culture?

Reacting to the claim made by academy member Horace Engdahl that American literature is provincial, the Danish professor Anne-Marie Mai chose to announce publicly that she had nominated Bob Dylan for this year’s Nobel Prize in literature. In the same breath, she noted that many of her colleagues had done the same.

Mai writes in the Danish newspaper Politiken that Bob Dylan has at once returned poetry to its tonal and musical source and transformed poetry into a form of artistic expression that speaks directly to our contemporary world.

Bad decisions

The history of the Nobel prize is full of bad decisions. It’s a catastrophe that theater jack of all trades Dario Fo got the prize in 1997, while Ingmar Bergman never did. Fo made an impact on the theater world, but he’s no great writer; Bergman wasn’t just a poet of the cinema, he was also a great wordsmith. And that must be a criteria for the literature prize: whether a given nominee is good with words.

I’m glad that the Swedish Academy at times excavates neglected authors, as they did last year with J.M.G. Le Clezio, or when the totally unknown Polish poet Szymborska got the prize in 1996.

But if the Nobel Prize in Literature is to retain its significance, then it must go to a writer with cultural value that reaches beyond the confines of academia.

JAPAN

Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, Oct. 7: In Europe, a fresh wave of political support is growing rapidly for efforts to deepen regional integration.

Last week, Ireland held its second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which would set basic rules for the European Union. The treaty was ratified with support from nearly 70 percent of Irish voters.

Bloc’s future

In the country’s first referendum in June last year, more than half of voters said “no” to the treaty, raising doubts about the fate of the painstakingly negotiated blueprint for the bloc’s future.

Ireland’s ratification has revived the treaty, which was in danger of falling apart.

The new pact, which must be accepted by all 27 member states to come into force, would create the EU’s first full-time president and foreign policy chief as the union’s “public faces.”