Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

nobelprize.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 106 posts

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#21

Post by simonh »

pavlov wrote: post #17
b2ccb2 wrote: post #10

I am a bit confused as to why he was chosen. Not to diminish his tremendous body of work, but rather by the definition of the rules laid down by Alfred Nobel in his will: "All of my remaining realisable assets are to be disbursed as follows: the capital, converted to safe securities by my executors, is to constitute a fund, the interest on which is to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the precedi…

The Nobel Prize in all fields has become an award for lifetime achievement, even though the wording of Nobel's will could also be interpreted as meaning that it should be awarded for work that had the greatest impact during the preceding year.

I don't know, but I suspect the interpretation is that the impact should be during the preceding year, the wording doesn't say the work has to occur in the preceding year. So arguably the work could have been decades ago, but if the impact has only recently become apparent that counts.

I think that's fine. Often it's not really possible to assess the impact of a contribution until long after, it takes a lot of context to be able to do that.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#23

Post by ajkjk »

b2ccb2 wrote: post #10

I am a bit confused as to why he was chosen. Not to diminish his tremendous body of work, but rather by the definition of the rules laid down by Alfred Nobel in his will: "All of my remaining realisable assets are to be disbursed as follows: the capital, converted to safe securities by my executors, is to constitute a fund, the interest on which is to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the precedi…

I'm curious about the moral underlying an objection like this. Why do you care about whether the prize exactly reflects his will? And why specifically for this prize, when your objection has applied for most of a century across every field?

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#24

Post by gnfargbl »

b2ccb2 wrote: post #10

I am a bit confused as to why he was chosen. Not to diminish his tremendous body of work, but rather by the definition of the rules laid down by Alfred Nobel in his will: "All of my remaining realisable assets are to be disbursed as follows: the capital, converted to safe securities by my executors, is to constitute a fund, the interest on which is to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the precedi…

I don't see a requirement that the work was created or released during the preceding year, only that it conferred benefit to humankind during that time. Presumably the argument is that Nobel-worthy acts continue to confer benefit for long periods.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#27

Post by jacquesm »

redbell wrote: post #8

A little bit of history.. In 1974, The Swedish Academy was heavily criticized for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to two of its own members. One laureate, Harry Martinson, was so shaken by the backlash he committed suicide 4 years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Martinson#Later_life_and...

That has absolutely nothing to do with this article.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#28

Post by throw_m239339 »

diego_moita wrote: post #20
kome wrote: post #12

[flagged]

From a Latin American perspective, racism seems to be a rising thing in the "old world" (i.e. northern hemisphere, east of the Atlantic). In particular, it seems to be inversely proportional to fertility rate. The lower the fertility rate, the more racist countries seem to be (e.g: Italy, Korea, Hungary, Japan, etc).

> From a Latin American perspective, racism seems to be a rising thing in the "old world" (i.e. northern hemisphere, east of the Atlantic).

Plenty of racism in India, Pakistan, China, MENA (where slavery is common, Libya has open air black slave markets), and Africa itself. And let's not even get started how plenty of these places are ravaged by petty sectarian, ethnical violence, or straight out civil wars between communities.

You just don't hear about all that because most of these places don't have a free press, or people are too busy trying to survive another day to testify.

There are at least 4/5 genocides happening right now in Africa & MENA, and I don't include whatever is going on in Gaza, can you name them?

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#29

Post by ctxc »

redbell wrote: post #8

A little bit of history.. In 1974, The Swedish Academy was heavily criticized for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to two of its own members. One laureate, Harry Martinson, was so shaken by the backlash he committed suicide 4 years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Martinson#Later_life_and...

That's sad. It says post humusly he was celebrated as the greatest writer after August someone.

But what's the point, he was gone .-.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#30

Post by cool_dude85 »

zpeti wrote: post #15
kome wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Considering the amount of threats and hate jewish people with no connection get about Israel vs Palestine, you don't think there's at least some legitimacy for his position? Considering there was literally just an attack on a UK synagogue by an arab, after which many people protested on the side of the attacker in London, you don't think there's a tiny legitimacy to his views? Of course this is a rhetorical question,…

Can you give some info on people "protesting on the side of the attacker in London"? That is, people coming out in support of the attack on the synagogue?
Post reply on HN