The Grail

Banquet of the blessed

Beautiful Minds: The Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Prize

7 December 2005 - 15 March 2006

The British Library

96 Euston Road

London NW1 2DB 

020 7412 7332 (Visitor Services)

www.bl.uk

Produced by NobelMuseum

Date of visit: 20 December 2005

by Roger Howe

The banquet scene in Strindberg’s play To Damascus starts well, readers may recall, with speeches and fine sentiments, before degenerating rapidly into a melee of criminals and skeletons.

If not actually the inspiration behind the Nobel Prize the image is one to keep in mind while touring the current British Library exhibition.  This is someone’s idea of the best the twentieth century had to offer: the world community made manifest. 

The exhibition centrepiece is The Nobel Banquet, a mock-up of the 1991 commemorative banquet in Stockholm.  The theme is ‘four’, the traditional number of prizes chosen in Sweden.  A four-sided table set with plates, glasses, green and black grapes and flowers, topped by an unexplained glass obelisk.

On a film-loop Literature laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer jokes that at the end of time generations of Yiddish-speakers will spring up from their graves clamouring for something new to read: ‘ghosts love Yiddish - they all speak it’.

There are loudspeakers in the mirrored pillars supporting a Heath-Robinson contraption: two-foot white banners bearing pictures and citations of the laureates, some five hundred of them now, moving around a rail high in the air, as if being presented.

Behind the banquet stands the Network, a glittering wall of mesh and silver wire studded with lights, evoking both concentration camp and starry sky.  Beyond this A Century of Nobel Prizes, stands commemorating laureates from each decade.

Many of the faces are familiar: Marie Curie, Einstein, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi.

All this the result of the will of Alfred Nobel, the lonely inventor of dynamite.  ‘I am sick of the explosives trade, wherein one continually stumbles over accidents, restrictive regulations, red tape, pedants, knavery and other nuisances.  I long for quiet and wish to devote my time to scientific research, which is impossible when every day brings new worry.’

The original prizes were for Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace; Economics was added later.

There were problems from the very start.  It took five years to fight off Nobel’s relatives.  Eventually, on 10 December 1901, anniversary of his death, the first awards were made.

The famous Count Tolstoy, well known author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, was available and seemed in the running for the first Nobel Prize for Literature.

Was he the bookies’ favourite?  History does not record.  Tolstoy was out of favour with the Tsarist regime, excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church.  A hundred years ago the Swedish prize-givers were reluctant to tread on such people’s toes.

The prize went instead to the French allegorical poet Sully-Prudhomme.  A day-trip to Parnassus.  Like awarding the prize to Philip Sidney over Shakespeare.

Perhaps as well.  Without it Sully-Prudhomme would be forgotten: ‘All life is a conflict between faith without proof and reason without charm.’

Even so 42 Swedish writers protested the prize had not gone to Tolstoy.  ‘We see in you not only the most venerable patriarch of modern literature, but also one of the greatest and profoundest poets.’

Fritz Haber’s 1918 Chemistry Prize drew protests.  His synthesised ammonia had been used in fertilisers - and in explosives.  Ironic given Nobel’s background.

The exhibition guides visitors through this abundance.  There is a Nobel e-Museum with four computer terminals providing information on the prize-winners, famous and obscure.

Those so inclined can ‘Play the Peace Doves Game (15 min).  Take on the mission to disarm the world of nuclear weapons!’  ‘Play the Author Village Game.’

It is no longer just someone emerging from behind the big door with a name.  The Nobel Peace Prize award in Oslo now boasts festivities clearly modelled on the Oscars.

Francis Sejerstet of the Norwegian Nobel Committee talks in a film-clip about the principles on which awards are made.  Non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries has been abandoned, ‘We take our stand on the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  We are making history, in our modest way.’

This is what the Nobel Prize does best.  Shining light into darkness, perhaps never more so than in the Ossietzky case.  Rewarding Alexander Solzhenitsyn the year after he had been officially silenced.  Saving others from obscurity rather than persecution; adding to the lustre of those already famous.

Some monsters and brutes have slipped through.  Bad taste Peace Prize awards include Henry Kissinger and Menachem Begin.  There is the hope that setting up this ideal will restrain some leaders.

Boris Pasternak was forced by the Soviet authorities to return his Literature Prize for Doctor Zhivago.  Jean-Paul Sartre turned his down voluntarily.

Bill Clinton may be on course for a Nobel Peace Prize, possibly Victor Yushchenko.  George W. Bush rather less likely.  Philip Roth has been mentioned for a Literature gong.

There are films in an alcove: Creative Milieus.  The anti-landmine campaign, Budapest as a cradle of prize-winners, Rabindranath Tagore’s school at Santiniketan, full of ardent young admirers long after he faded from the consciousness of the world.

A series of lectures accompanies the exhibition in January, February and March, including Richard Dawkins (1 February), Lord Putnam (18 January) and Dame Anita Roddick (13 March).

There is the Audio Pavilion where one can hear the voices of prize-winners through earphones.  William Faulkner, asked by Swedish radio if he considers himself more writer than farmer: ‘Well, nobody’s given me a Nobel Prize for farmin’.’

A gruff Ernest Hemingway, interviewed in Cuba in 1954, delivering sentences as blunt as his written prose: ‘I am writing a book about Africa.  I hope it will be good.’

There are relics in glass cases around the gallery.  Many reminders of oppression.  Kim Dae-jung’s prison clothes, a single sheet of paper inscribed with 14,000 tiny characters.  Wole Soyinka’s cap, worn to hide his bushy hair from the military.  Joseph Brodsky’s typewriter.

Selma Lagerlof’s shoes.  A DNA molecule.  Tagore’s slate.  Plastics.  X-rays.  Prions.  A Mobius strip.

Artistically the Nobel ideal belongs to the Art Deco era.  Earnest, sad, slightly camp.  Alfred Nobel in profile gazes wistfully from one gold medal at three naked youths symbolising fraternity among the nations embracing on the reverse of another.

The ultimate decoration.

Trumpets sound.  Film-loops whir.  The contraption with the banners clicks.  Isaac Bashevis Singer repeats himself.

Much to see.  Too much to take in.  An endless school prize-giving.  Record of humanity’s achievements and its falling short.

Further information: www.nobelprize.org