THE NOBEL PRIZE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 714, 14 December 1933, Page 4

THE NOBEL PRIZE

Mr. Ivan Bunin, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, is probably thus brought to the attention of most people in the Eng-lish-speaking world for the first time. It is not uncommon for the average newspaper reader. to find that the Nobel Prize for physics has gone to some one whose name is new to him. Natural scientists work in obscurity, so far as the followers of Page One are concerned, whereas the makers of literature, however highbrow, are usually known by name at least to the great public. But this year, it is likely that more people have heard of Profe'ssor Dirac, of Cambridge, one of the winners of the physics prize, than of Mr. Bunin. For Professor Dirac made the news columns by doing something that was popularly known as "smashing the atom," but Mr. Bunin, by writing novels and short stories without regard to their saies value has attained to the obscurity of the research scholar. .Furthermore, Bunin 'is but slightly known even to those who walk unhesitantly in the more scheduled literary paths. Most English readers know him, pra-

bably, merely as the author of "The Gentleman from San Francisco," a short story of extraordinary satir^cal power, which alone is enough to establish him as a writer of exceptional ability,- though perhaps hardly to qualify for the Nobel Prize-. Has the committee of award taken into consideration need as well as conspicuous talent? It may be possible to name other writers who seem to have made a more conspicuous contribution to letters ; but Mr. Bunin, as a Russian aristocrat exiled since the Revolution, is said to have sufferedi hardship because his market in Russia, where he was best known has been cut off by the political situation. If the award serves no other purpose, it will doubtless as'sist Mr. Bunin by eausing a demand for his works.