Perhaps the most important lesson one should grasp from the choice of the US singer Bob Dylan (75) as the recipient of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature is that one simply cannot predict the winner. All conjecturing ahead of the announcement has proven futile. Never once have the predictions been correct. Every year come October our newspapers fill with lists of the most likely candidates, only for all to receive the shock that the winner is someone whose name never appeared in those lists at all. Evidently, those who publish lists of this sort, in which certain names appear year after year, do not understand the rules of the selection process. To begin with, nominations can only be submitted by certain agencies identified by the Nobel Committee. Not just any agency has the right to nominate whoever they may think deserves the prize. An agency needs to have received an invitation letter containing an enclosed form that should be filled out with the name of the nominee and the reasons for nominating him/her. After years of persistent efforts, I succeeded in getting the Egyptian Writers' Union included among the official nominating agencies for the Nobel Prize in Literature. This ensured that every year there would be an Egyptian nominee submitted to the Swedish academy in charge of making the selection, after which it submits its decision to the Nobel Committee for approval. A second fact we need to bear in mind is that nominations are totally secret. The names of nominees and those who nominated them cannot be revealed until after 50 years. Should some nominating agency disclose the person it nominated, that agency will be stricken off the list of agencies that have the right to nominate Nobel Prize candidates. This is why I was surprised when a colleague of mine — a well known writer and journalist — told me that he had contacted the person who had nominated our great novelist Naguib Mahfouz for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and that that person had agreed to give that colleague the scoop on the Mahfouz selection. In short, predicting a Nobel Prize laureate is next to impossible. The lists of Arab candidates that some people like to recite at this time of year (beginning with the poet Adonis) are more in the nature of wishful thinking. It is hardly likely that they reflect any solid information on the candidates' prospects. The names are reiterated year after year as the date of the Nobel Committee announcement approaches, but none win. By no means does this imply that these individuals do not deserve the prize. It merely means that we do not understand the procedures that are followed and that make it impossible to know the winner in advance. The only time that we can speak with any confidence on the candidates is 50 years after the prize was awarded. Therefore, today we can say for certain, based on the official records of the Nobel Committee, that the first Arab to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature was Taha Hussein, in 1949. Not many are familiar with the story behind this and it is worth telling. The “Dean of Arab Literature”, as he was dubbed, was nominated a year after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war during which Israel illegally seized territory that had not been accorded to it under the UN Partition Resolution of 1947. This is the resolution on which Israel bases its international legitimacy, even though it breached its terms. The Zionist propaganda apparatus was working overtime to promote the recently established state and to bury all mention of the Arabs and the Arab rights that were violated in 1948. Certainly, no mention of these rights appeared in the international media at the time, let alone an attempt to defend them. As has since come to light in the Nobel archives, Taha Hussein held the lead over all other candidates. It even seemed certain that his name would prevail over his main rival, the famous American writer William Faulkner. But here enters a point in the Nobel rules that has been a source of great mystery to some. It states that the prize cannot be awarded to persons who do not comply with its conditions. Accordingly, what happened was stranger than fiction. Faulkner was officially announced the winner who would receive the prize the following year because the other candidates that year did not meet the conditions. While in Stockholm, I tried to probe into the matter during a conversation with Stury Alin, the former permanent secretary of the Nobel Committee, but he was unable to offer a clear answer. It appears that the 1949 selection process for the Nobel in literature will remain a unique and unsolvable mystery since the Nobel award was first established in 1901. Coming to this year's award winner, we find again that all who publicised predictions were in for a great disappointment. But instead of acknowledging that they were at fault, they lashed out at the Nobel Prize and charged the Nobel Committee of succumbing to US pressures. Otherwise how could it have been frivolous enough to award the prize for literature to a singer? The fact is, however, that Bob Dylan was not selected for his music but for the poetry that expressed the hopes and aspirations of an entire generation. His lyrics were the living embodiment of the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s and 1970s. There were also the banner for the civil rights movement in the US during the past three decades. Dylan, born into a Jewish family and originally named Robert Allen Zimmerman, is the poet of the American anti-establishment movement even though he denies this. In addition to his prolific lyrical output, he has published an anthology of poetry, a novel called Tarantella, and his memoirs. As the Nobel Committee rightfully observed, Dylan's lyrics truly “created new poetic expressions” and these expressions have had a powerful and widespread impact throughout his 50-year long career as a musician and songwriter during which he has sold 100 million records. However, the main reason that some objected to the selection of Dylan has to do with the sharp line that some have drawn between “literature” and the performing arts (such as acting and singing). Literature, they say, refers only to what is published in book form. Yet, in fact, our own Arabic heritage does not recognise such an arbitrary distinction. Jahiliya poetry was not printed; it was recited in the public marketplace. The value of the poetry of Ahmed Rami is not diminished by the fact that it has been sung more often that it appeared in print form in anthologies. Perhaps it would be more useful for us to translate Bob Dylan's songs and study their poetic imagery, instead of attacking the Nobel Committee's selection of him because it did not coincide with the names we recite year-in, year-out. After all, we will continue to encounter this phenomenon in the years to come.
