American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan has received his Nobel diploma and his gold Nobel medal in Stockholm.
The Swedish Academy met on Saturday with Dylan in a private ceremony in order to present him with the trappings of his Nobel Prize for Literature, Sara Danius, secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Sunday in a blog post.
“Spirits were high. Champagne was had. Quite a bit of time was spent looking closely at the gold medal,” Danius wrote.
The small and intimate ceremony without media present was requested by Dylan, who shuns the spotlight.
Danius and several other members of the Swedish Academy attended one of Dylan’s two sold-out concerts on Saturday night at the Waterfront concert house in Stockholm.
Dylan must deliver a Nobel lecture by June, or forfeit the $927,740 prize, though he will still be considered the laureate. Danius said in a blog post last week that he will likely send a taped version of his lecture to the Academy at a later date.
After the announcement in October that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Dylan 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.
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.
