Nobel Prize in Literature 2020: Louise Glück awarded for ‘her unmistakable poetic voice'

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2020 has been awarded to the American poet Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”. The Swedish Academy announced the much-coveted prize on October 8, saying the works by the 2020 Literature Laureate are characterized by a striving for clarity.

“Childhood and family life, the close relationship with parents and siblings, is a thematic that has remained central with her,” the academy said in a statement.

Born in 1943 in New York, the America poet made her debut in 1968 with Firstborn and was soon acclaimed as one of the most prominent poets in American contemporary literature. She has received several prestigious awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize (1993) and the National Book Award (2014). Glück has published twelve collections of poetry and some volumes of essays on poetry. 

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Glück is a professor of English at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Anders Olsson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, said that the Nobel laureate is not only engaged by the shifting conditions of life, she is also a poet of radical change and rebirth, where the leap forward is made from a deep sense of loss. 

“In her poems, the self listens for what is left of its dreams and delusions, and nobody can be harder than she in confronting the illusions of the self,” the statement read.

The Swedish Academy highlighted the masterly collection in ‘Averno’, a visionary interpretation of the myth of Persephone’s descent into hell in the captivity of Hades, the god of death. The academy also recalled the spectacular achievement of Glück in her latest collection, ‘Faithful and Virtuous Night’ (2014).

“She writes oneiric, narrative poetry recalling memories and travels, only to hesitate and pause for new insights. The world is disenthralled, only to become magically present once again,” Olsson stated.

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