6 October 2011 Literary Nobel Prize for Tranströmer
This year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature went to Tomas Gösta Tranströmer - a Swedish poet, writer and translator born on the 15th of April 1931 in Stockholm. Media reports reminded us that Tranströmer was Wisława Szymborska's main rival for the Nobel Prize in 1996. Nobel Committee recognised Tranströmer's work for its concise, clear images that give us fresh access to reality."
Tomas Tranströmer is a psychologist by training. In 1990, he suffered a brain stroke an since then, he has dedicated himself to writing poetry. Although partially paralysed, he continued to live an active life. His poetry addresses problems of the lost man and his problems in the modern world. In 1990, Tranströmer was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize for For the Living and the Dead (Swedish: Add och för levande). In 1999, he visited Krakow.
The volume published in Poland under the title Podsłuchany horyzont. Wybór wierszy is a collection of 30 poems by Tranströmer translated by Michał Sprusiński. In the 1990s, two collections of his poems were published in Poland: Moja przedmowa do ciszy (Mitt förord till tystnad) and Gondola żałobna (The Sorrow Gondola), a book of poetic prose Muzeum motyli, and a volume of collected poems Późnojesienny labirynt.
The Nobel Prize winner has visited Poland on the occasion of Krakow's Meetings of Poets from East and West and the Zbigniew Herbert Poetry Festival held in Warsaw and Gdańsk.
