Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)
Having no facility for
speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish
to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.
No writer who knows the
great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with
humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his
own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.
It would be impossible
for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer
said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately
discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but
eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he
possesses he will endure or be forgotten.
Writing, at its best, is
a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I
doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his
loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if
he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
For a true writer each
book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is
beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done
or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
How simple the writing
of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what
has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past
that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can
help him.
I have spoken too long
for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again
I thank you.
