The Swedish Academy has already announced the decision of one of the most important literary prizes, the Nobel Prize in Literature. And the laureate has been the Canadian writer Anne Carson. Although among the favorites there were names such as her compatriot Margaret Atwood, the American Joyce Carol Oates, or writers of the stature of the American Thomas Pynchon, the Spanish Enrique Vila-Matas, and the French Michel Houellebecq.
She takes over from the Hungarian László Krasznahorkai and, in the category of female winners, from Han Kang, who achieved it a year earlier, in 2024. Carson is the nineteenth woman to win it, alongside names like Annie Ernaux, Louise Glück, Olga Tokarczuk or Alice Munro, among others. With the Canadian poet, there are now more women Nobel Prize in Literature winners this century than in the entire 20th century.
XXCrystal, Irony and God, Economy of What Is Not Lost, Albertine/ Exercise Routine or Decreation are the titles of some of her poetic works, which in our country have been published by the publisher Vaso Roto or Autobiography of Red. A Novel in Verse and Men in Their Off Hours by the Pre-Textos publishing house. As for the essays, in which she combines intellectual precision and emotional rawness, they have been translated in our country by the publisher Lumen.
Passion for the Classics
Carson is the third Canadian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, alongside Alice Munro and Saul Below. Born in Toronto in 1950, the author has revealed on numerous occasions that her literary career began at the age of 15, when she came across a bilingual edition of the poems of the Greek poet Sappho. After another move for her father’s work, a banker, she ended up at a new school where she encountered a Latin teacher, a somewhat eccentric woman, who when she learned of my interest in learning Greek offered to give me lessons at lunchtime. Her name was Alice Cowan and I owe my career and my happiness to her.
Anne Carson in an archival image.
Although she dropped out of university twice in the first two years, and did not publish her first book until 1986, Carson is regarded by literary criticism as the most important living poet of Anglophone letters. Her ability to break the boundaries of literary genres, mixing verse, essays, diaries and imaginary interviews or prose fragments, is one of the defining characteristics of her works.
Anne Carson’s works are permeated by her passion, and her training in the Hellenic world, with references to Greek mythology and authors such as Homer. With precise, direct language and often concise, the Canadian poet addresses in her works topics such as romantic love, eroticism, marriage or loss, sometimes with irony and emotional depth.
Anne Carson in Spain
The Canadian essayist and poet was recognized in 2020 with the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, but she could not attend to receive it due to the pandemic and the circumstances surrounding any public event, six months after the arrival of Covid in our lives. However, Carson sent a lovely acceptance speech, in which she recalled her visit to Spain when she was 33 years old.
Anne Carson in the video of her acceptance speech for the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.
“When I crossed Spain on foot in 1983 from the French Pyrenees to the city of Santiago de Compostela, stopping at all the pilgrimage sites along the way, I noticed one thing in particular about Spaniards: they are not of easy smiles. The Spanish face is a serious face, a stern face; it does not smile without a reason to do so. Until I got used to it, I was constantly worried that I was doing something wrong. North American faces, as you know, smile continuously, with all their teeth, for no reason at all. But a Spanish smile is hard to earn,” she wrote.
“That’s why,” she continued, “it is especially important to me that you have chosen to smile at me today with the awarding of this astonishing and extraordinary prize, sponsored by the Princess of Asturias. I wanted to express my gratitude and also say something about gratitude because it is an interesting word.” In her speech she explained the etymological origin of the word, kharis in Greek, which “is generally translated as grace or favor. Grace is both objective and subjective,” she noted, before pointing out that “it is always reciprocal” and to thank “deeply this grace we have exchanged among us.”
