Nobel Prize in Literature winner Bob Dylan said on Monday that unlike literature, his songs were meant to be sung and not read, and that they only needed to move people, not to make sense.

The Swedish Academy's decision to award last year's prize for literature to Dylan, who had "created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition", was seen by some mainstream writers of poetry and prose as a slap in the face.

In his Nobel lecture, recorded on June 4, the notoriously media-shy Dylan said: "Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read."

"If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it – what it all means," he said in the speech posted on the Academy's website.

Dylan, the first singer-songwriter to win the prize, was silent about the award for weeks after it was announced, and he did not attend the prize ceremony and banquet.

Nobel laureates need to give a lecture within six months of the annual December 10 award ceremony in order to receive the eight-million-kronor (900,000 US dollars) prize. The lecture does not necessarily need to be delivered in Stockholm.

A cameraman films books by US songwriter Bob Dylan who was announced the laureate of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, in October, 2016./VCG Photo

In his lecture, Dylan tells how Buddy Holly and a record by influential US folk singer Leadbelly transported him as a teenager into an unknown world, and he discusses three of his favorite books: Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey.

"The speech is extraordinary and, as one might expect, eloquent. Now that the lecture has been delivered, the Dylan adventure is coming to a close," Swedish Academy secretary Sara Danius said in a statement.

(Source: Xinhua)