In creating a new approach to things and a new way of seeing the world, Tomas Transtromer has founded a poetic art based essentially upon images, bringing together the self and that which is other, the interior and the exterior, time and space, the visible and the invisible.  Tranströmer erases boundaries and opens up a unique horizon in order that we may more successfully overcome the contradictions of existence, understand ourselves better and, in so doing, arrive at a better understanding of everything else.

Claudio Magris will present the prize.