For the First Time a Singer Won a Literature Prize

• 10.15.2016, 14:09
•  No-politics

onbreaking.com

US singer Bob Dylan has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first songwriter to win the prestigious award.

The 75-year-old rock legend received the prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

For more than six decades he has remained a mythical force in music, his gravelly voice and poetic lyrics musing over war, heartbreak, betrayal, death and moral faithlessness in songs that brought beauty to life’s greatest tragedies, The Guardian wrote.

After the announcement, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, said it had "not been a difficult decision" and she hoped the academy would not be criticised for its choice.

"We hoped the news would be received with joy, but you never know," she said, comparing the songs of the American songwriter to the works of Homer and Sappho.

Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941 and began his musical career in Minnesota before heading for New York.

Much of his best-known work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal historian of America's troubles.

Blowin' in the Wind and The Times They are A-Changin' were among anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements, - BBC reported.

Bob Dylan is regarded as one of the most influential figures in contemporary popular culture, though his music has always proved divisive. Speaking last year, Dylan said: "Critics have been giving me a hard time since day one."

However, his own response to receiving the prize is unknown. He rarely gives interviews, and has a troubled relationship with the fame attached to his decades of popularity. 

''Armedia'' IAA talked with a fiction writer Vahe Ghukasian, who said that the connection between literature and song writing is not a new one and good music with good lyrics is equal to good literature text.

"For example, Vysotsky's and Okudzhava's songs were published in books and considered as poetry. In that respect, I think it is normal that the composer receives a literary prize," he said.

According to Vahe, Dilan's inheritance in music is so great that it should have been granted in any way.