The choice of Handke: Is it possible to distinguish between work and person?

- They voted on the literature up there in Stockholm. And I am literature, pure literature, said author Peter Handke when it became clear that he was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in literature.

Tomas Forser is a literary scientist and has researched different ways of looking at and evaluating literature. He is skeptical of Handke's claim.

Why do you think he says so: "I am pure literature"?

- To formulate a statement of what counts. In a way, it is nice for someone who dares to have such a challenging attitude to the art and the position, place and necessity of literature. At the same time it is a little ridiculous, he is a man like others, with quite a few strings on his lyre, says Tomas Forser.

The Handke debate has partly been about whether it was right to give him the Nobel Prize. Some believe that he should never have received the award, while others support the decision. One of them is Aftonbladet's former culture manager Åsa Linderborg.

- What the Swedish Academy says with the award is that even a controversial writer can create high quality literature. It is a literary view that I myself have. I mean that an author or artist can express just about anything, and then it is up to the reader to judge whether it is good or bad, she says.

The role of art in relation to the outside world has been debated ever since ancient times. Plato believed that art would reflect the good ideas of the state, while Aristotle saw it as aesthetic. Under classicism, art would be useful and nurturing, which the Romans criticized. To them, the art was somewhat extravagant, accessible only to artistic geniuses.

The same contradiction can be seen in the 20th century when the 1930s neo-critics objectively tried to evaluate the literature. They felt that the art was too politicized and would instead be valued without political considerations. On the contrary, the 70's reception theorists argued that the reader himself creates the meaning of the text. What is considered good literature is a social construct.

The view of art and its function has thus been shocked and soaked through history. But the question remains: What role should art have? There are shared sentences here.

- I think the task of literature is to investigate and question. This does not mean that the reader must think the same as the author. The whole debate about Peter Handke shows a fairly low confidence in the reader's ability to think independently and critically, says Åsa Linderborg.

Instead, Tomas Forser argues that literature cannot be distinguished from politics. As humans, we have a responsibility for what we do - even Handke.

- His signature is in the works he writes and in the statements he makes. We are little more than letters and we have a responsibility besides literary production. There are questions that cannot be reduced to literature's subject choices and themes, says Tomas Forser.