Nobel Prize in literature to the bold and imaginative poetry of Anne Carson

BarcelonaThe Canadian writer Anne Carson (Toronto, 1950) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this Thursday. Author of books such as Decreation, Beauty of the Husband and Albertine—all published by Vaso Roto and translated into Catalan by Núria Busquet Molist—, the poet is one of the most prominent voices of her generation. Carson has been awarded "for having created bold and inventive literature, which has built new forms of contemporary literature from the classical tradition." The Nobel Committee called the writer to announce the recognition. "We spoke for only a few minutes. She was very surprised and happy. She told me she was in Iceland listening to the wind," said the secretary of the Swedish Academy, Ingrid Carlberg.

Most of her literary work has focused on a philological obsession with words and the poet's desire to create new meanings. With her doctoral project, Carson started from the work of Sappho to reinterpret it. That work became a book, titled If Not, Winter (Vaso Roto, 2019) and originally published in English in 2002. Through those fragments of Sappho, the poet delved into the study of archaic and classical Greek literature and translated other fundamental works such as Sophocles' Antigone, Aeschylus' Oresteia and Euripides' The Bacchae.

"Carson's poetry manages to bring us different voices that play with each other. Her way of working has resulted in works that move between classical and modern poetry and have inspired new forms of contemporary literature," emphasizes the president of the Nobel Committee, Anders Olsson. One of the writer's most prominent titles is The Glass Essay (1995), a long poem about grief and love that blurs narrative genres from the perspective of a woman who has been abandoned by her husband. Three years later came Autobiography of Red. A Novel in Verse, considered one of her best works. "With a great sensitivity for idiomatic turns and the experiences of the current era, Carson takes as a starting point fragments of poems by the 6th-century Greek poet Stesichorus about the winged, red monster Geryon," states Olsson.

The creator and their audience

In various interviews, Carson has explained that boredom has always been a stimulus for creation. "Grace comes and goes between the creator of a work of art and their audience, like between one who gives and one who receives a gift. Neither could exist without the other," she said in 2020, when she received the Princess of Asturias Award. Nox (published in Spanish by Vaso Roto, 2018) was the first poetry book by Carson written after the death of her brother. Through those verses, the writer delves into absence and grief, but also into the memories she shared with him. Throughout her career, the poet has not turned her back on other disciplines and has combined literary creation with collaborations with choreographers, visual artists, and stage directors. These experiences have directly influenced her creation, sometimes with theatrical touches and a strong visual power.

Anne Carson was unpublished in Catalan until 2023, when Vaso Roto published Decreation. Subsequently, Beauty of the Husband, Albertine, and Wrong Norma arrived, all four translated by Núria Busquet Molist, who has also been the translator of another Nobel Prize in Literature winner: the American poet Louise Glück. Soon, the publisher Veles i Vents will publish Carson's Sweet Eros, also translated by Busquet Molist. The book is, according to the publisher, "an exploration of the nature of love and desire based on ancient poetry" and "a display of sagacity".

Last year, Carson visited Barcelona to attend the 40th International Poetry Festival. On stage, the writer dedicated brief reflections imbued with lyricism to Homo sapiens, to river trout, to the exile of the poet Ovid, and to the sculptor Camille Claudel, who lived the last thirty years of her life in an asylum. She also spoke of a memory linked to her mother: "My mother forbade us from walking backwards. That is how the dead walk, she said. Where had she gotten that idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. After all, the dead do not walk backwards, but they do walk behind us," said the poet.

Carson is the second Canadian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Alice Munro. Last year, the prize distinguished the Hungarian writer László Krasnahorkai – author of novels such as Satantango – for his "passionate and visionary work, which amidst apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art". The award is endowed with 12 million Swedish kronor, after the Nobel Foundation increased the amount in 2026.

The Nobel Prize in Literature recognizes the writer who, in the words of the prize's creator, Alfred Nobel, has produced "the most outstanding work" and "in an ideal direction". In fact, throughout its history, the Nobel Prize in Literature has distinguished works for their prose, for expressing in words that which seemed impossible or, even, for the way in which authors have managed to transform the singularity of the human soul into universal ideas.