1959 Nobel Prize in Literature

The 1959 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Italian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (1901–1968) "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times" He is the fourth Italian recipient of the said prize.

Laureate
Salvatore Quasimodo was an Italian poet, critic and translator. He published his first poetry in Nuovo giornale letterario ("New Literary Journal"), which he created in 1917. His first collection of poems, Acque e terre ("Waters and Lands"), appeared in 1930, and beginning in 1938, he devoted himself entirely to writing. The two schools of poetry that are typically used to categorize his work are hermetic and post-hermetic. World War II caused a shift in the poet's style. Hermetic poetry rejected the use of words as a means of verbal coercion and believed that words have a subjective meaning that is determined more by their sound than by their actual meaning. Along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale, he was one of the foremost Italian poets of the 20th century.

Nominations
Salvatore Quasimodo was nominated for the Nobel prize in literature twice, in 1958 (by 3 different nominators), and in 1959.

In total, the Nobel committtee received 83 nominations for 56 authors, including nominations for Saint-John Perse (awarded in 1960), Ivo Andric (awarded in 1961), John Steinbeck (awarded in 1962), Jean-Paul Sartre (awarded in 1964), Karen Blixen, André Malraux, Romulo Gallegos, Carl Sandburg, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, John Cowper Powys, Alberto Moravia, Ignazio Silone, Ezra Pound, E. M. Forster, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Martin Buber, William Somerset Maugham, Thornton Wilder and Tarjei Vesaas. Twenty of the nominees were new recommendations, including Ernest Claes, Osbert Sitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell, Martin Heidegger, Juana de Ibarbourou, Heimito von Doderer, María Raquel Adler, Miguel Torga, Arnold Zweig, Étienne Gilson, Louis Aragon, Anna Seghers, Frank Raymond Leavis, Max Frisch and Julien Gracq. Most nominations, seven, were submitted for the Polish author Maria Dabrowska. There were women nominated namely: Elizabeth Goudge, Maria Dabrowska, Juana de Ibarbourou, Karen Blixen, Anna Seghers, Edith Sitwell, Gertrud von le Fort and María Raquel Adler.

The authors Maxwell Anderson, Emil František Burian, Raymond Chandler, G. D. H. Cole, Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Laurence Housman, Hans Henny Jahnn, Edwin Muir, Luis Palés Matos, Benjamin Péret, Marta Rădulescu, Alfred Schütz, Galaktion Tabidze, José Vasconcelos, Boris Vian, Arthur Henry Ward (known as Sax Rohmer) and Percy F. Westerman died in 1959 without having been nominated for the prize.

Prize decision
The Nobel committee was almost unanimous to propose that the Danish author Karen Blixen should be awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Literature. But committee member Eyvind Johnson (who himself fifteen years later accepted the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature) opposed a prize to Blixen arguing that Scandinavians were overrepresentated among the Nobel laureates in literature. Johnson instead proposed an Italian laureate, Salvatore Quasimodo being his main candidate, followed by Alberto Moravia and Ignazio Silone. Unconventionally, the members of the Swedish Academy did not follow the Nobel committees recommendation to award Blixen, but was convinced about Quasimodo's candidacy and surprisingly awarded him the prize.