«Having no facility for
speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination
of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity
of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.
No writer who knows the great writers
who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with
humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone
here may make his own list according to his knowledge and
his conscience.
It would be impossible for me to ask
the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a
writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things
may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes,
and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they
are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that
he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.
Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.
Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness
but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public
stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates.
For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer
he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
For a true writer each book should
be a new beginning where he tries again for something that
is beyond attainment. He should always try for something
that has never been done or that others have tried and failed.
Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
How simple the writing of literature
would be if it were only necessary to write in another way
what has been well written. It is because we have had such
great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out
past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.
I have spoken too long for a writer.
A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.
Again I thank you.»
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Prior to the acceptance, H.S. Nyberg,
Member of the Swedish Academy, made the following comment:
«Another deep regret is that the winner of this year's
Nobel Prize in Literature, Mr. Ernest Hemingway, on account
of ill health has to be absent from our celebration. We
wish to express our admiration for the eagle eye with which
he has observed, and for the accuracy with which he has
interpreted the human existence of our turbulent times;
also for the admirable restraint with which he has described
their naked struggle. The human problems which he has treated
are relevant to all of us, living as we do in the confused
conditions of modern life; and few authors have exercised
such a wide influence on contemporary literature in all
countries. It is our sincere hope that he will soon recover
health and strength in pursuit of his life-work.»
From Nobel Lectures, Literature
1901-1967. 
