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Dylan tells Nobel committee he will not go to Sweden for ceremonyBob Dylan has told the Nobel prize committee he will not be attending the ceremony in Sweden to pick up his accolade. Dylan was named winner of this year s Nobel prize for literature in October for his vast body of lyrics and poetry but has since been reluctant to publicly acknowledge the honour. The 75-year-old s silence led him to be labelled œarrogant by one member of the Nobel academy, and a brief message on his website that he was the œthe winner of the Nobel prize for literature 2016 was taken down the next day.It took two weeks for the singer and songwriter, who has a notoriously troubled relationship to his own fame, to accept a call from the permanent secretary of the academy, Sara Danius. He told them he had been left œspeechless by the honour and later said in an interview he would œabsolutely attend an award ceremony œif it s at all possible .However, in a personal letter to the academy, Dylan has told them œhe wishes he could receive the prize personally, but other commitments make it unfortunately impossible. He underlined that he feels œincredibly honoured by the Nobel prize, they added.The Swedish Academy said it œrespects Bob Dylan s decision but stressed it is œunusual for a Nobel laureate not to come to Stockholm to accept the award in person. [Sara Danius, of the Academny] compared Dylan s work to that of ancient Greek writers Homer and Sappho. Asked about the comparison, Dylan said: œI suppose so, in some way. Some [of my] songs “- 'Blind Willie,' 'The Ballad of Hollis Brown,' 'Joey,' 'A Hard Rain,' 'Hurricane,' and some others “- definitely are Homeric in value. Not sure what, if anything, to make of this. It seems not altogether out of character, as the article points out. I hope he's doing OK, at 75.