NOBEL PRIZES IN LITERATURE

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6808, 11 January 1929, Page 3

NOBEL PRIZES IN LITERATURE

TO FRANCE AND NORWAY. The Swedish Academy has awarded tho Nobel Prize for Literature for the year 1927 to Henri Bergson, member of the French Academy. Tho Nobel Prize for Literature for 1928 has been awarded to Sigrid Undset, the Norwegian woman writer. Henri Bergson, who was born in 1559, is one of the most famous of modern philosophers He had been; recommended by the Institute of France for the Nobel Prize this year. Ho has achieved fame as a lecturer and philosopher rather than as a literary man, although for many years he was a professor of the history of literature in Paris. Ho is of Irish extraction, but early in life became a naturalised Frenchman, and his lectures were at one time all the rage in London, Paris and the principal American cities. He was Gifford lecturer in the University of Edinburgh in 1912. It was in 1907 that Bergson published his great work, “Creative Revolution.” He did not seek to deny evolution, but pleaded for the rcintroduction of mystery into the philosophy of life. Ia London, society flocked to hear him expound his romantic philosophy, which did not exclude individual immortality. Among other notable works of his are “Laughter,” “Matter and Memory,” and “Data of Consciousness,” For some years past has has been in delicate health, and

in 1925 he was obliged to resign his presidency of the Commission of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations.

Sigrid Undset was born in 1882 of a Danish mother and a Norwegian father. Her father was an archaeologist, and she spent many hour 3 of her childhood and youth in his library absorbing the old sagas and other tomantic literature. The Nobel Prize is of the value of about £OSOO.