American poet Glück has received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature for her unmistakable voice, capable of making the individual universal.
"Her unmistakable poetic voice, with austere beauty, makes the individual existence universal." For this reason, Louise Glück, a poet born in 1943 in New York, United States, has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Glück teaches at Yale University, in the state of Connecticut. She made her debut in 1968 with the collection Firstborn, soon coming to be acclaimed as one of the most influential poets in contemporary American literature.
Glück has published 12 poetry collections and various essays. All of her works are characterised by great clarity, while the main themes addressed by the poet include childhood and family relationships, as well as dreams that sometimes do nothing but delude us. Despite the weight of her personal history in her work, Glück is able to make her stories universal, drawing also on mythology.
The Triumph of Achilles and Ararat consecrated her fame in the United States and abroad, but it is with The Wild Iris that the writer received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1993. In the poem Snowdrops she describes the miraculous rebirth of life after the winter season.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring –afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joyin the raw wind of the new world.
Louise Glück
Her latest collection was published in 2014, is titled Faithful and virtuous night and earned her the National book award. Within it, the poet manages to confront the theme of death with grace and luminosity.
Last year the Nobel Prize in Literature had been awarded to Austrian author Peter Handke for his "influential work which with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of the human experience".
In 2018 the award, conferred on Olga Tokarczuk, had not been presented due to the scandal that had embroiled the Swedish Academy, following which Jean-Claude Arnault, the husband of one of its members, had been sentenced to two years' imprisonment for rape.
