Rocker laureate ends Nobel chapter finally

Stockholm: After months of uncertainty and controversy, Bob Dylan finally accepted the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature at a jovial, champagne-laced  ceremony on Saturday, the Swedish Academy announced.

The Academy, which awards the coveted prize, ended prolonged speculation as to whether the 75-year-old troubadour would use a concert stopover in Stockholm to accept the gold medal and diploma awarded to him back in October.

They were handed to Dylan at a “private ceremony in Stockholm” attended by 12 academy members, Sara Danius, the academy’s permanent secretary, said in a blog post. “Spirits were high. Champagne was had,” Danius confided.

“Quite a bit of time was spent looking closely at the gold medal, in particular the beautifully crafted back, an image of a young man sitting under a laurel tree who listens to the Muse,” she added.

“Taken from Virgil’s Aeneid, the inscription reads: ‘Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes,’ loosely translated as ‘And they who bettered life on earth by their newly found mastery’.” The first songwriter to receive the award, Dylan joins a celebrated group of laureates including Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Doris Lessing.   

Final acceptance

• The first songwriter to receive the prestigious award, Bob Dylan joins a celebrated group of laureates including Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel
• Garcia Marquez and Doris Lessing
• The meeting took place at a secret location ahead of Dylan’s first concert in Stockholm, the first stop on a long-planned European tour for his latest album of cover songs, Triplicate
• Several Academy members were present at the concert as Dylan, performed Love Sick and Full Moon and Empty Arms