On Friday 11 October 2024, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
Hefty Congratulations to Han Kang & family, the world, the word made flesh, and the world of Korean Literature !
Han Kang !
It's inevitably an inspiration that unlike Man Friday, she writes in her mother-tongue Korean without having to justify such a natural choice of words like a literary anti-colonial ideologue, armed with a / the "colonial language" and at war with a polemic fever forever complaining about the dominance of English as a world Language - pardonnez-moi - English as the dominant world language, causing the laissez-passer French - the perfumed garden, the champagne, wine glasses & roses, the language descendants of the Great French Writers and among the living, the greatest language chauvinists to sigh under their breaths about the snail-like rate of expansion of the French Language Empire compared to that of the English Language Empire. And when we look at world languages by population, hopefully, not to be unmindful of the other Language Empires, some of them also rapidly expanding.
Pretty much an annual event, the announcement of the Prize was preceded by a ten-minute discussion on Swedish TV with some of the Swedish literary pundits hoping to be right, making their forecasts and sometimes prophecies about who they thought or prayed - deserved the prize this year.
"You should never count your chickens
Before you eggs get hatched...
Who will wear the crown?
Who will it be?
A slip of the lip
Has been known to sink a ship"
As always, the most dramatic moment ( like the US Supreme Court about to deliver a final verdict on if Trump was going to be on the ballot in Pennsylvania) at1300 hrs GMT the doors of the Swedish Academy were flung open - who will it be ? Ngugi? Chidi? - the hushed audience of expectant journalists from all corners of the world waiting with bated breath as the man of the moment Mats Malm the Permanent Secretary of Swedish Academy, brown suit, white shirt, throat strangled with a red tie, looking unctuous, the seriousness of the occasion, sounding a little sanctimonious ( like Nathan Söderblom) and with a voice dripping with honey, announced, first in Swedish, and then in Almighty English to the hushed silence: "The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024 is awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang, "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life".
My first reaction, slightly reinforced by awareness about Censorship in South Korea was I wonder how the Brethren and Sistren in North Korea will be feeling about this? Will they be reading Han Kang ?
Second reaction : Han Kang being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature will inevitably promote more curiosity about Korea , the Korean Woman, and of course apart from the literary tourism that returns books back to bookshelves, she has made and is making history, also making Korea more of an attraction, a tourist destination
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Institute Of Information Management Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Editorial Adviser at News Updates(https://updatesonnews.substack.com)
He is a recipient of International Award/Recognition For Excellence In Data And Information Management, with 253 mentions on Academia(academia.edu)as at July 22nd, 2024.
More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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