American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan will finally accept his Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm, according to an announcement made by the Swedish Academy, after prior commitments had prevented a similar meeting beforehand. While the arranged meeting will cover some of the requirements to receive the Prize Money involved, Dylan is also required to provide a lecture, and he is expected to accomplish this in a non-traditional way.
Dylan already will be in Stockholm for two shows
The singer had been awarded the prize in October, but he had failed to travel to accept the award or to deliver the lecture needed to receive the monetary prize, which is the equivalent of $900,000.
The Swedish Academy, however, has said that it would meet with Dylan in private within the Swedish capital. The meeting will be held behind closed doors without media, and, conveniently, Dylan will be performing two concerts in the area at the time of the meeting.
The meeting was notably confirmed by Professor Sara Danius, who serves as the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, who wrote that the decision to arrange a meeting was "good news." According to the statement, Dylan will receive both a diploma and a medal.
There is still the issue of the lecture
For the lecture requirement, Dylan is not expected to lecture in person, and is expected to send a taped version instead. If he does not release a lecture by June, he would have to forfeit the prize money.
Dylan would not be the first to send a taped lecture in lieu of doing it live. A previous taped submission came from Alice Munro in 2013.
Dylan is notably the first songwriter to win the award. He is also the first American to win the award since novelist Toni Morrison in 1993. According to an award citation, he won the award for having developed "new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." For his part, Dylan was grateful after learning he received the award, saying that it had left him “speechless” and he thought it to be impossible. However, he had not been able to travel to Stockholm beforehand due to prior commitments.
