Nobel Literature Chair Talks Harvard

Before an audience of wide-eyed freshmen, Per Wästberg ’55, the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature, conjured images of Harvard in a different age last night.

John Updike, Henry Kissinger, and e.e. cummings ’15 roamed the Yard, walking in and out of classes while T.S. Eliot lectured in a nearby building. And holed up in Widener, surrounded by the translated literature not found in his course books, was Wästberg.

“I must say I had never worked so hard and so joyfully as in those two years. I won’t do it again,” he said of his time studying literature at the College, a period in his life he said helped shape his literary career.

Wästberg was invited to speak to freshmen by Harvard Foundation President S. Allen Counter—the two are old friends—and the Freshman Dean’s Office.

The Nobel Committee Chairman fielded questions in a town-hall setting on subjects ranging from his own experience at Harvard to the inner workings of the Nobel committee.

“[The questions were] quite wide-ranged. It’s exciting that young students are not afraid to ask anything,” Wästberg said afterward. “Swedish students would be much more timid.”

Questions ranged from the expansive and lofty—“These are huge questions, I feel really diminished,” Wästberg laughed—to the specific and controversial.

Tengbo Li ’12 raised the recent criticism—leveled by Horace’s Engdahl, the secretary of the Swedish Academy—that Americans are too insular in their literary perspective and that Europe remains at the center of the literary universe.

At that point, from the audience, Dean of Freshman Thomas A. Dingman ’67 gave Counter a quick eyebrow raise.

“[Engdahl] said many things out of frustration at the end of an interview...that were not wise,” Wästberg said. “I regret that.”

He went on to say that he agreed with Engdahl’s view of the American literature as provincial, explaining that Americans do not read enough international literature. But Wästberg added that he disagreed with Engdahl’s claim that America is removed from the worldwide literary dialogue.

Other questions were aimed more directly at the subject of the Prize—how recipients are chosen, the effects of the award on recipients’ careers, and Wästberg’s favorite laureates.

“I was sort of surprised by the extent to which the questions focused on the Nobel Prize but not on Dr. Wästberg’s humanitarian work,” said audience member Spencer B.L. Lenfield ’12. Wästberg is also known for his anti-Apartheid work in South Africa and for founding the Swedish arm of Amnesty International.

Lenfield added that he was “caught off guard” by what he saw as a low turnout for the event—the Fong auditorium was only half-full.

However, those who did attend said they gained important insight.

“What I came away from the event with was a much stronger snapshot of how someone in the Nobel committee evaluates the state of literature in the world at this moment,” Lenfield said.

After the discussion, Wästberg returned to his former abode—Adams House, not Widener—for dinner and a reading from his memoir about his time at Harvard.