Die Lebensanschauungen der großen Denker (1890) (The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers)
Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion (1901) (The Truth of Religion)
Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens (1908) (The Meaning and Value of Life)
Können wir noch Christen sein? (1911) (Can We Still Be Christians?)
Der Sozialismus und seine Lebensgestaltung (1920) (Socialism: an Analysis)

After receiving the Nobel prize Eucken enjoyed much international popularity, and received invitations to lecture at several universities, including England and the USA. His fame was short-lived, however, and today his writings are more or less forgotten.
At the prize giving he said, during his lecture:

“Naturalism cannot give to literature an inner independence or allow it an initiative of its own; for if literature is only a hand of life on the dial of time, it can only imitate and register events as they happen. By means of impressive descriptions it may help the time to understand its own desires better; but since creative power is denied to it, it cannot contribute to the inner liberation and elevation of man.”

Doris Lessing complained to the BBC this week that winning the Nobel Prize for Literature has been “a bloody disaster” to her career as a writer. She told Radio 4’s Front Row program that she has effectively stopped writing under the pressure of media attention: “All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.” This isn’t a new story: Saul Bellow once described the prize as “a kiss of death,” and several other writers have complained that the prize effectively ended their writing careers.

Further In
On the main road into the city
when the sun is low.
The traffic thickens, crawls.
It is a sluggish dragon glittering.
I am one of the dragon’s scales.
Suddenly the red sun is
right in the middle of the windscreen
streaming in.
I am transparent
and writing becomes visible
inside me
words in invisible ink
which appear
when the paper is held to the fire!
I know I must get far away
straight through the city and then
further until it is time to go out
and walk far in the forest.
Walk in the footprints of the badger.
It gets dark, difficult to see.
In there on the moss lie stones.
One of the stones is precious.
It can change everything
it can make the darkness shine.
It is a switch for the whole country.
Everything depends on it.
Look at it, touch it…

The Tree and the Sky
There’s a tree walking around in the rain,
it rushes past us in the pouring grey.
It has an errand. It gathers life
out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear nights
waiting as we do for the moment
when the snowflakes blossom in space.

Copyright © Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Fulton

This is one example of his work:

The ancient lament
The tree to which you stretched out
your little hand,
the green pomegranate
with its beautiful vermilion flowers,

in the silent lonely garden
all the gold is turning green again
and June is restoring it
with light and heat.

You, flower of my
beaten and withered plant,
you, of my useless life
the last, unique flower,

you are in the cold earth,
you are in the black earth;
the sun will not liven you again
nor love awaken you.

–Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907)

Borrowed from Consolation

The suspects have now been remanded in custody, among them retired military officers and the lawyer Kemal Kerincisz. The latter has been instrumental in the pursuit of a series of writers and intellectuals through the courts, filing cases against Pamuk himself as well as the novelists Elif Shafak and Perihan Magden and the murdered journalist Hrant Dink.

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What happens when you publish a blog post? Quite a lot; and almost simultaneously. There is a nice animation on Wired which will explain all.

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The New York Times reports that Amazon, busily adding digital downloads to its vast Web store, has agreed to buy Audible, the largest online seller of audiobooks for $300 million.

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Doris Lessing finally received the Nobel Prize in Fiction at a gathering in London. She told the audience: “Thank you does not seem enough when you’ve won the best of them all. It is astonishing and amazing. I would like to say that there isn’t anywhere to go from here.”
She later joked: “I could get a pat on the head from the Pope.”

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Win a bookshelf full of books from The Book Show on Sky Arts.

Sienkiewicz was born in Poland in 1846 and raised during the country’s partitions. He was a constant fighter for his nation’s independence but died a couple of years before that event took place.

In his presentation speech, Carl David af Wirsén commented:

If one surveys Sienkiewicz’ achievement it appears gigantic and vast, and at every point noble and controlled. As for his epic style, it is of absolute artistic perfection. That epic style with its powerful over-all effect and the relative independence of episodes is distinguished by naive and striking metaphors. In this respect, as Geijer has remarked, Homer is the master because he perceives grandeur in simplicity as, for example, when he compares the warriors to flies that swarm around a pail of milk, or when Patroklos, who all in tears asks Achilles to let him fight against the enemies, is compared to a little girl who weeping clings to the dress of her mother and wants to be taken in her arms. A Swedish critic has noticed in Sienkiewicz some similes that have the clarity of Homeric images. Thus the retreat of an army is compared to a retreating wave that leaves mussels and shells on the beach, or the beginning of gunfire is compared to the barking of a village dog who is soon joined in chorus by all the other dogs. The examples could be multiplied. The attack on the front and rear of an army surrounded and subject to fire from both sides is compared to a field that is reaped by two groups of mowers who begin their work at opposite sides of the field with the purpose of meeting in the middle. In Krzyzacy the Samogites rising from furrows attack the German knights like a swarm of wasps whose nest has been damaged by a careless wanderer. In Pan Wolodyjowski we also find admirable images; in order to judge them we should remember that, as often in Homer, the two terms of the comparison converge only in one point, while the rest remains vague. Wolodyjowski with his unique sword kills human lives around him as rapidly as a choir boy after the mass snuffs the candles on the altar one after the other with his long extinguisher.

In this case I mistakenly believed her acceptance speech was an extended metaphor for the hunger for literature in Africa. Clever in a way because it utilized the word hunger for a region where food shortages often lead to starvation.

And her speech certainly did contain these elements; she speaks movingly and engagingly about Africa, which is, of course, close to her heart.

But the reports I read did not mention her remarks on writing and writers and on the current state of the publishing industry.

On writing:

Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a processor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, “Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?” Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas – inspiration.

And on publishing:

We are in London, one of the big cities. There is a new writer. We, cynically enquire, How are her boobs? Is she good-looking? If this is a man, Charismatic? Handsome? We joke but it is not a joke.
This new find is acclaimed, possibly given a lot of money. The buzzing of paparazzi begins in their poor ears. They are feted, lauded, whisked about the world. Us old ones, who have seen it all, are sorry for this neophyte, who has no idea of what is really happening.
He, she is flattered, pleased.
But ask in a year’s time what he or she is thinking: I’ve heard them: “This is the worst thing that could have happened to me.

These are extracts from her speech. The whole text is available on the Nobel Site in English, Swedish, French and German.