American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan will accept his Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm.
The Swedish Academy will hand over the Nobel diploma and Nobel medal in a “small and intimate” setting with no media present, Sara Danius, secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Wednesday in a blog post.
Dylan is scheduled to give two concerts in Stockholm over the weekend, and the academy “will show up at one of the performances,” Danius wrote. She added that no Nobel lecture will be delivered.
“The Academy has reason to believe that a taped version will be sent at a later point,” she wrote, adding: “At this point no further details are known.”
If Dylan does not deliver a lecture by June, he will forfeit the $927,740 prize, though he will still be considered the laureate.
After the announcement in October that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Dylan, who is publicity-shy, told the Swedish Academy that he would be unable to travel to Stockholm for the December ceremony to receive his Nobel Prize, citing “pre-existing commitments.”
Dylan’s prize was announced on Oct. 13 “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” The academy said later that after five days of trying to contact Dylan to inform him of the award, it had given up. Dylan acknowledged the prize two weeks later.
On Tuesday, the Helmerich Center for American Research at the Gilcrease Museum announced that the Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa has officially opened to qualified researchers. The archive includes documents and other items that chronicle 60 years of the musician’s career.
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman and raised Jewish in Minnesota, Dylan wrote some of the most influential and well-known songs of the 1960s. His hits include “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Like a Rolling Stone” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”
Dylan, 75, was the first artist seen primarily as a songwriter to win the literature award, a fact that has stirred debate in literary circles.
