When the poet W.B.YEATS was told that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature he uttered the immortal words – “How much?” His reputation for having his head in the clouds was reflected in a cartoon featuring himself and George Russell (“AE”) who lived two doors from each other on Merrion Square. They each set off from their respective homes to call on the other, but as “AE” walked with his head down and Yeats looking at the sky, each man passed without seeing the other.
But it seems Yeats had his feet firmly grounded, even if he was not fumbling in the greasy till. It was December 1923, twelve months after the establishment of the Irish Free State, of which Yeats had been appointed a Senator, and but seven months after the end of the Civil War. No Irish person had received the Nobel prize before and its award was partly a political matter. In the run up to the Civil War Desmond Fitzgerald, himself a published poet and acquaintance of Ezra Pound, found time on a trip to Paris to visit James Joyce and suggest that the latter consent to nomination for the award. The latter demurred and Fitzgerald was a leading Cabinet Minister in the Free State when Yeats got the award.
Politics is always a factor, and it’s unlikely that if World War II had a different ending, Winston Churchill would have got the prize. Churchill was always after the Main Chance, politically and financially, and would not write or broadcast a syllable when out of office without charging a huge fee. That said, though he habitually lied through his teeth, he wrote magnificent prose.
Barack Obama never earned his Nobel Peace Prize either before or since he was awarded it. As for Henry Kissinger, well!!!!!
I’m not jealous of Bob Dylan. I’m the same age as him, but none of his lines are lyrical or capture the imagination. “Lay, lady lay” doesn’t measure up to “Come Fly With Me and Be My Love”, “Gather ye rosebuds while you may”, “Baby, it’s cold outside”, any line by Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Lennon and
McCartney, Noel Coward, Learner and Lowe or loads of others.
I think Irving Welsh made the best comment on the award
After a serious motor cycle accident in 1966, whether co-incidentally or otherwise. Bob Dylan never, in my opinion wrote anything remotely comparable to his ‘early stuff’ Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Highway 71 revisitedn ‘Blond on Blond’. It is pointless to compare Dylan (inter alia) with Cole Porter, Noel Coward or Lennon and McCartney.
Dylan had a social conscience and a burning passionate hatred of injustice and racism, as manifested angrily and poignantly in ‘The Death of Emmett Till” and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’. deep insight into social mores, human emotions, sexual passion and mind games.
Then there were his anti-war Ballads “Masters of War” “God On Our Side” “A Hard rain’s Gonna Fall” and the apocalyptic “Gates of Eden”. The sheer breadth, variety and versatility of his early work makes him unique among songwriters. And if you really think “none of his lines are lyrical or capture the imagination” I suggest you read or better still listen to the lyrics of Mr. Tambourine Man.
Oh! And if anyone can quote a more moving, inspiring, lyrical and passionate anthem for the oppressed, marginalised and disposessed than “The Chimes of Freedom”,I’d love to hear it.
Yeats to me not only wrote about fairys but was away with them he definitely had a way with words and his poetry seemed to me to be plagiarised from the fairy tales of old Ireland which were the Chinese whispers of days gone by,and he wasnt as good at it as John Millington Synge,we should have had Patrick Kavanagh as the recipient on the basis of Raglan Road alone a poem that became a song, although we would have had to wait until 1946 and Kavanagh didnt have the political clout Yeats had ,but it would have definitely been worth the wait ,as for Bob Dylan ,well my choice would have been posthumously presented to John Lennon A Working Class Hero ,now thats something to be .