Two literature Nobel Prize awardees, Dario Fo in 1997 and Bob Dylan in 2016, have stunned the world of letters simply because, at least at first sight, neither was a man of letters. Dylan got the Nobel last week while Fo was laid to rest with merry and song after he passed away last Thursday at age 90.
Though Fo was considered a playwright in his own right, his literary vein was that of a long forgotten (but no less wonderful) theater style once known as commedia dell’arte. By nature this was a market place type of spectacle with a scant literary background, except for the plays penned by Carlo Goldoni and Niccolo Machiavelli, author of the political masterpiece “The Prince” (worthy of a Nobel by itself) who wrote the delicious comedy “The Mandrake.”
Dario Fo had this style of Grand Guignol Theater, but in the eyes of modern great novelists, his literature was not literary. If we go by the design that all those who write are writers — what varies is the subject and style — then Fo was a writer, yet an undeserving one.
Bob Dylan presents a different but in a way similar case to Fo. He was not a literary writer. In the eyes of many of those who are as shocked now as they were when Fo got the Nobel nearly 20 years ago, because Dylan is just not, just as Fo wasn’t, a writer.
But Fo was considered a playwright in his own right, and Dylan a poet, not just a lyricist as many of his detractors would like to have him considered.
Yet Dario Fo, more than a literary person, was a lively monologue deliverer who could talk ceaselessly very much in the style of the improvised monologues that were so common in commedia dell’arte. But it was through these politically satirical monologues that the loosely composed play, performed before throngs of people attending an Italian market place in the Middle Ages, would be given a final structure.
And since it was “commedia,” the full objective of the performers was to entertain and mainly, make laugh.
In fact, upon reviving the spirit of the old commedia dell’arte, Dario Fo always evoked the spirit of this type of theatrical performance:
“Satire,” Fo used to say “is the most efficient weapon before the powerful. Those in power can’t stand humor because laughter liberates a man from his fears. Let’s laugh.”
Fo also was a lively actor who could entertain an audience for hours and of course, those who still love the commedia dell’arte theater style loved sitting through his performances and antics.
A final observance on Fo could be that he’s probably the only Nobel literature laureate who won the award talking sheer — but always fun and funny — nonsense.
Dylan, though a contemporary, is a different story. Let’s admit that more than a lyricist he is a poet, but giving him the Nobel for writing evasive poetry lines like “the answer is blowing in the wind,” is strange. When a man is confronted by his very being in a universe he or she does not understand, he or she demands an answer from a poet, not a line of doubt.
Don’t get me wrong, Bob Dylan is my age (nearly 75) and in my time I lived and thrived with his music. But getting the Nobel? As John Lennon put it once, “but I’m not the only one.”
How many great troubadours are there in this day and age of master lyricists, magnificent poets and stupendously performing musicians who forge music and poetry into a literary genre?
I could fill up the rest of the space for this article with just a few of their names but I won’t do that because in the end, Dario Fo and Bob Dylan — for very different reasons — are great men of words and at this point it is useless to discuss, as many are doing, whether they deserved it or not.
They have been awarded and that should be the end of the story, regardless of the hundreds of disgruntled and deserving novelists who think their own literature is worthy and who will continue to pummel the Nobel Price awarding committee in Oslo for choosing a blabber mouth comedian and a singing lyricist for the awards.
As for me, I always loved Fo and Dylan.
