The first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature was Swede Selma Lagerlöf. Plus, a star-inspired poem and a thank you.
The date is November 20th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Today’s episode is brought to you by the generous, the warm-hearted, the green-thumbed Candy P. or Oregon.
Today is the birthday of Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish writer.
Lagerlöf was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, receiving the award in 1909 at the age of 51 “in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings.”
Lagerlöf was quiet and contemplative as a child, busying herself with books in between private tutoring sessions with her siblings and listening enraptured by her grandmother’s telling of fairy and folk tales. She finished reading her first novel at age seven and by age ten had read the Bible cover to cover.
She received an education to become a teacher and for a few years in the 1880s, she gladly regaled her students with stories during all possible lessons. She worked on her first novel in her spare time.
Her first novel, Gösta Berling’s Saga, slowly became a hit and it’s eventually status as a bestseller allowed her to quit teaching to write full time.
Her next works were largely inspired by her travels to Israel, the East, and Italy. She was commissioned to write a children’s book with an emphasis on teaching geography. The final product was The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, the Swedish title I will not be attempting to pronounce. It became so popular as to be translated into 30 languages. The tale revolves around main character Nils who gets shrunk down to three or four inches and then flies around on the backs of geese trying to make his way home so he can be returned to his proper size.
In addition to publishing prolifically over a 50-year career, Lagerlöf was deeply involved in the women’s suffrage movement in Sweden. In addition to being the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, she was also the first woman to be a member of the Swedish Academy and the first woman to be featured on Swedish currency.
During WWII, Lagerlöf donated her gold Nobel Prize to neighboring Finland who was in the midst of fending off encroaching Soviet Forces. Reportedly, the Finnish government was so moved Lagerlöf’s donation, that they returned the prize after raising the equivalent monies themselves.
The Copernican System
Thomas Chatterton
The Sun revolving on his axis turns,
And with creative fire intensely burns;
Impell’d by forcive air, our Earth supreme,
Rolls with the planets round the solar gleam.
First Mercury completes his transient year,
Glowing, refulgent, with reflected glare;
Bright Venus occupies a wider way,
The early harbinger of night and day;
More distant still our globe terraqueous turns,
Nor chills intense, nor fiercely heated burns;
Around her rolls the lunar orb of light,
Trailing her silver glories through the night:On the Earth’s orbit see the various signs,
Mark where the Sun our year completing shines;
First the bright Ram his languid ray improves;
Next glaring watry thro’ the Bull he moves;
The am’rous Twins admit his genial ray;
Now burning thro’ the Crab he takes his way;
The Lion flaming bears the solar power;
The Virgin faints beneath the sultry show’r,
Now the just Balance weighs his equal force,
The slimy Serpent swelters in his course;
The sabled Archer clouds his languid face;
The Goat, with tempests, urges on his race;
Now in the Wat’rer his faint beams appear,
And the cold Fishes end the circling year.
Beyond our globe the sanguine Mars displays
A strong reflection of primoeval rays;
Next belted Jupiter far distant gleams,
Scarcely enlighten’d with the solar beams,
With four unfix’d receptacles of light,
He tours majestic thro’ the spacious height:
But farther yet the tardy Saturn lags,
And five attendant Luminaries drags,
Investing with a double ring his pace,
He circles thro’ immensity of space.
These are thy wondrous works, first source of Good!
Now more admir’d in being understood.