Nobel Prize
for Literature - 2015
Needless
attempt at killing the dead ghost of USSR
Indrasena
Kancharla, Former Professor of English, Kakatiya University, Warangal, India
Announcement of the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 2015 to the 1948 born Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich springs a
big surprise on everyone including the writer herself. In any case, the Swedish Academy of the Nobel
Committee maintains in its official note in respect of the Award in terms of
“the polyphonic writings” of Alexievich as a “monument to suffering and courage
of our time.” Fine!
The ways of god and the judgement of
the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prizes on several occasions since its
inception at the beginning of the 20th century, will remain
mysterious forever, baffling the imagination of ordinary mortals often branded as ‘elitist’ category. Award of the Nobel
Peace Prize to Malala in 2014 at an incredible young age, and President Obama
in the very first year of his Inauguration as the President of the USA in 2009,
kept many intellectuals wondering about the reasons and rationale about such
hasty decisions by the Nobel Committees concerned.
Sventlanta Alexievich happens to be
the 14th woman to have bagged the highest literary reward for
Literature in the Nobel Prize history of 115 years. Now she finds a place in
the company of Nobel Laureates of the
stature of Pearl Buck, Gabriel Mistral, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing and
Alice Munroe and several others. The Nobel Committee chose to push under the
carpet the claims of other writers like Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Adonis,
a Syrian poet, Rajendra Bhandari of Nepal, K. Sachinadanadan of India and
several others in preference to Alexievich.
It was, perhaps, with a sense of awe
and surprise, if not disbelief, that Svetlanta Alexievich received the official
communication regarding the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to her for
2015 from the Swedish Academy when she was busy ironing her dress at home
yesterday (8th September, 2015). Her immediate response to the
official message of the Award is: “It immediately evokes such great names as Ivon
Bunin, Boris Pasternak… On the one hand, it’s such a fantastic feeling, it is a
bit disturbing.” She added further that the award left behind a “complicated
feeling.” She is candid enough to share
her feelings with the literary world that she takes 5 to ten years to write a
book and that the award money of 775,000 Pounds would take care of her future
needs and the necessary freedom to write in future with ease and in comfort.
Unlike most other Noble Awardees for
Literature so far, her corpus of writings is rather limited while her thematic
concerns are confined to the portrayal of ‘the Red Man’ of the yesteryears of
the USSR, but already consigned to the pages of history. The focus of her
writings, rather her obsession for the last 3, 4 decades, has been to
historicize the oral accounts of the USSR on the unpleasant episodes of
Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the miseries of the
people of the “Post-Soviet Individual” women and children in particular.
Svetlana Alexievich’s first book,
“The Unwomanly Face of the War” seeks to portray the miseries of over one
million women in the age groups of 15 to 30 who fought on the frontlines of
World War –II, and the writer’s indictment of how men appropriated the credit
for the victory in the War to their credit. The book contains the writer’s
interviews with hundreds of women victims of the War while her second book,
“The Last Witnesses: The Book of Unchild like Stories” reminisce the writer’s
empathy for the child victims of the War in the age groups of 7-12. The third
book, “Boys in Zinc” is devoted to the Soviet-Afghan War whereas her fourth
book, “The Chernobyl Prayer: Chronicles of the Future” serves the purpose of a
whistle blower for many such tragedies in the offing when robots are likely to
replace human beings in the second half of the present century for both
civilian and military purposes. Her fifth book, “Second-hand Time” is likely to
be published in its English version in 2016.
All her books can be looked at as
oral stories of history, and they tell the tales of women from women’s
perspective. Her view of history in her
own words is: “ … History is only interested in facts; … I look at the world as
a writer, not strictly an historian. I am fascinated by people.” One unique and
positive side of the Noble Prize to Svetlanta Alexievich is that it inaugurates
the new trend of interviews and non-fictional prose writings also as deserving
subject matter for the Nobel Prize. But the other side of the coin is that the narratives of Svetlanta Alexievich are no
more than an attempt to kill the invisible ghost of the USSR.
while the vast corpus of writings of
individual writers like Ken Sara Viva only sent him to the gallows by the
Nigeraian regime; Ngigi wa Thiong’o, an exile for life in the USA, can never hope
to get the Noble Prize for Literature; and even the writings of Mario Vargas
Llosa cannot attract the attention of the Noble Committee for the purpose of
awarding the Nobel Prize. Thus, the Swedish Academy once again reiterates its stand
by its own established practice of being pro-European and pro-imperialist in
its policy, ignoring the deserving claims of the writer activists for the Nobel
Prize through their writings in a single polar world.
