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Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970*
Just as that puzzled savage who has picked
up - a strange cast-up from the ocean? - something unearthed from
the sands? - or an obscure object fallen down from the sky? -
intricate in curves, it gleams first dully and then with a bright
thrust of light. Just as he turns it this way and that, turns it
over, trying to discover what to do with it, trying to discover
some mundane function within his own grasp, never dreaming of its
higher function.
So also we, holding Art in our hands, confidently consider
ourselves to be its masters; boldly we direct it, we renew,
reform and manifest it; we sell it for money, use it to please
those in power; turn to it at one moment for amusement - right
down to popular songs and night-clubs, and at another - grabbing
the nearest weapon, cork or cudgel - for the passing needs of
politics and for narrow-minded social ends. But art is not
defiled by our efforts, neither does it thereby depart from its
true nature, but on each occasion and in each application it
gives to us a part of its secret inner light.
But shall we ever grasp the whole of that light? Who will dare to
say that he has DEFINED Art, enumerated all its facets? Perhaps
once upon a time someone understood and told us, but we could not
remain satisfied with that for long; we listened, and neglected,
and threw it out there and then, hurrying as always to exchange
even the very best - if only for something new! And when we are
told again the old truth, we shall not even remember that we once
possessed it.
One artist sees himself as the creator of an independent
spiritual world; he hoists onto his shoulders the task of
creating this world, of peopling it and of bearing the
all-embracing responsibility for it; but he crumples beneath it,
for a mortal genius is not capable of bearing such a burden. Just
as man in general, having declared himself the centre of
existence, has not succeeded in creating a balanced spiritual
system. And if misfortune overtakes him, he casts the blame upon
the age-long disharmony of the world, upon the complexity of
today's ruptured soul, or upon the stupidity of the public.
Another artist, recognizing a higher power above, gladly works as
a humble apprentice beneath God's heaven; then, however, his
responsibility for everything that is written or drawn, for the
souls which perceive his work, is more exacting than ever. But,
in return, it is not he who has created this world, not he who
directs it, there is no doubt as to its foundations; the artist
has merely to be more keenly aware than others of the harmony of
the world, of the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution
to it, and to communicate this acutely to his fellow-men. And in
misfortune, and even at the depths of existence - in destitution,
in prison, in sickness - his sense of stable harmony never
deserts him.
But all the irrationality of art, its dazzling turns, its
unpredictable discoveries, its shattering influence on human
beings - they are too full of magic to be exhausted by this
artist's vision of the world, by his artistic conception or by
the work of his unworthy fingers.
Archaeologists have not discovered stages of human existence so
early that they were without art. Right back in the early morning
twilights of mankind we received it from Hands which we were too
slow to discern. And we were too slow to ask: FOR WHAT PURPOSE
have we been given this gift? What are we to do with it?
And they were mistaken, and will always be mistaken, who prophesy
that art will disintegrate, that it will outlive its forms and
die. It is we who shall die - art will remain. And shall we
comprehend, even on the day of our destruction, all its facets
and all its possibilities?
Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art
inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual
experience. Through art we are sometimes visited - dimly, briefly
- by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational
thinking.
Like that little looking-glass from the fairy-tales: look into it
and you will see - not yourself - but for one second, the
Inaccessible, whither no man can ride, no man fly. And only the
soul gives a groan ...
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic
remark: "Beauty will save the world". What sort of a statement is
that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that
be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save
anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it
saved?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of
beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the
convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable
and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible
to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a
headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system
on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what
distorted, will not immediately become obvious.
Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently
constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as
elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such
things are both trusted and mistrusted.
In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.
But a work of art bears within itself its own verification:
conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being
portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly
and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have
scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force -
they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in
ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is
not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of
our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these
three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too
blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut
down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic,
unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and
soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the
work of all three?
In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world",
was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all HE was
granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.
And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the
world today?
It is the small insight which, over the years, I have succeeded
in gaining into this matter that I shall attempt to lay before
you here today.
In order to mount this platform from which
the Nobel lecture is read, a platform offered to far from every
writer and only once in a lifetime, I have climbed not three or
four makeshift steps, but hundreds and even thousands of them;
unyielding, precipitous, frozen steps, leading out of the
darkness and cold where it was my fate to survive, while others -
perhaps with a greater gift and stronger than I - have perished.
Of them, I myself met but a few on the Archipelago of
GULAG1,
shattered into its fractionary multitude of islands; and beneath
the millstone of shadowing and mistrust I did not talk to them
all, of some I only heard, of others still I only guessed. Those
who fell into that abyss already bearing a literary name are at
least known, but how many were never recognized, never once
mentioned in public? And virtually no one managed to return. A
whole national literature remained there, cast into oblivion not
only without a grave, but without even underclothes, naked, with
a number tagged on to its toe. Russian literature did not cease
for a moment, but from the outside it appeared a wasteland! Where
a peaceful forest could have grown, there remained, after all the
felling, two or three trees overlooked by chance.
And as I stand here today, accompanied by the shadows of the
fallen, with bowed head allowing others who were worthy before to
pass ahead of me to this place, as I stand here, how am I to
divine and to express what THEY would have wished to say?
This obligation has long weighed upon us, and we have understood
it. In the words of Vladimir Solov'ev:
Even in chains we ourselves must complete
That circle which the gods have mapped out for us.
Frequently, in painful camp seethings, in a
column of prisoners, when chains of lanterns pierced the gloom of
the evening frosts, there would well up inside us the words that
we should like to cry out to the whole world, if the whole world
could hear one of us. Then it seemed so clear: what our
successful ambassador would say, and how the world would
immediately respond with its comment. Our horizon embraced quite
distinctly both physical things and spiritual movements, and it
saw no lop-sidedness in the indivisible world. These ideas did
not come from books, neither were they imported for the sake of
coherence. They were formed in conversations with people now
dead, in prison cells and by forest fires, they were tested
against THAT life, they grew out of THAT existence.
When at last the outer pressure grew a little weaker, my and our
horizon broadened and gradually, albeit through a minute chink,
we saw and knew "the whole world". And to our amazement the whole
world was not at all as we had expected, as we had hoped; that is
to say a world living "not by that", a world leading "not there",
a world which could exclaim at the sight of a muddy swamp, "what
a delightful little puddle!", at concrete neck stocks, "what an
exquisite necklace!"; but instead a world where some weep
inconsolate tears and others dance to a light-hearted
musical.
How could this happen? Why the yawning gap? Were we insensitive?
Was the world insensitive? Or is it due to language differences?
Why is it that people are not able to hear each other's every
distinct utterance? Words cease to sound and run away like water
- without taste, colour, smell. Without trace.
As I have come to understand this, so through the years has
changed and changed again the structure, content and tone of my
potential speech. The speech I give today.
And it has little in common with its original plan, conceived on
frosty camp evenings.
From time immemorial man has been made in
such a way that his vision of the world, so long as it has not
been instilled under hypnosis, his motivations and scale of
values, his actions and intentions are determined by his personal
and group experience of life. As the Russian saying goes, "Do not
believe your brother, believe your own crooked eye." And that is
the most sound basis for an understanding of the world around us
and of human conduct in it. And during the long epochs when our
world lay spread out in mystery and wilderness, before it became
encroached by common lines of communication, before it was
transformed into a single, convulsively pulsating lump - men,
relying on experience, ruled without mishap within their limited
areas, within their communities, within their societies, and
finally on their national territories. At that time it was
possible for individual human beings to perceive and accept a
general scale of values, to distinguish between what is
considered normal, what incredible; what is cruel and what lies
beyond the boundaries of wickedness; what is honesty, what
deceit. And although the scattered peoples led extremely
different lives and their social values were often strikingly at
odds, just as their systems of weights and measures did not
agree, still these discrepancies surprised only occasional
travellers, were reported in journals under the name of wonders,
and bore no danger to mankind which was not yet one.
But now during the past few decades, imperceptibly, suddenly,
mankind has become one - hopefully one and dangerously one - so
that the concussions and inflammations of one of its parts are
almost instantaneously passed on to others, sometimes lacking in
any kind of necessary immunity. Mankind has become one, but not
steadfastly one as communities or even nations used to be; not
united through years of mutual experience, neither through
possession of a single eye, affectionately called crooked, nor
yet through a common native language, but, surpassing all
barriers, through international broadcasting and print. An
avalanche of events descends upon us - in one minute half the
world hears of their splash. But the yardstick by which to
measure those events and to evaluate them in accordance with the
laws of unfamiliar parts of the world - this is not and cannot be
conveyed via soundwaves and in newspaper columns. For these
yardsticks were matured and assimilated over too many years of
too specific conditions in individual countries and societies;
they cannot be exchanged in mid-air. In the various parts of the
world men apply their own hard-earned values to events, and they
judge stubbornly, confidently, only according to their own scales
of values and never according to any others.
And if there are not many such different scales of values in the
world, there are at least several; one for evaluating events near
at hand, another for events far away; aging societies possess
one, young societies another; unsuccessful people one, successful
people another. The divergent scales of values scream in
discordance, they dazzle and daze us, and in order that it might
not be painful we steer clear of all other values, as though from
insanity, as though from illusion, and we confidently judge the
whole world according to our own home values. Which is why we
take for the greater, more painful and less bearable disaster not
that which is in fact greater, more painful and less bearable,
but that which lies closest to us. Everything which is further
away, which does not threaten this very day to invade our
threshold - with all its groans, its stifled cries, its destroyed
lives, even if it involves millions of victims - this we consider
on the whole to be perfectly bearable and of tolerable
proportions.
In one part of the world, not so long ago, under persecutions not
inferior to those of the ancient Romans', hundreds of thousands
of silent Christians gave up their lives for their belief in God.
In the other hemisphere a certain madman, (and no doubt he is not
alone), speeds across the ocean to DELIVER us from religion -
with a thrust of steel into the high priest! He has calculated
for each and every one of us according to his personal scale of
values!
That which from a distance, according to one scale of values,
appears as enviable and flourishing freedom, at close quarters,
and according to other values, is felt to be infuriating
constraint calling for buses to be overthrown. That which in one
part of the world might represent a dream of incredible
prosperity, in another has the exasperating effect of wild
exploitation demanding immediate strike. There are different
scales of values for natural catastrophes: a flood craving two
hundred thousand lives seems less significant than our local
accident. There are different scales of values for personal
insults: sometimes even an ironic smile or a dismissive gesture
is humiliating, while for others cruel beatings are forgiven as
an unfortunate joke. There are different scales of values for
punishment and wickedness: according to one, a month's arrest,
banishment to the country, or an isolation-cell where one is fed
on white rolls and milk, shatters the imagination and fills the
newspaper columns with rage. While according to another, prison
sentences of twenty-five years, isolation-cells where the walls
are covered with ice and the prisoners stripped to their
underclothes, lunatic asylums for the sane, and countless
unreasonable people who for some reason will keep running away,
shot on the frontiers - all this is common and accepted. While
the mind is especially at peace concerning that exotic part of
the world about which we know virtually nothing, from which we do
not even receive news of events, but only the trivial,
out-of-date guesses of a few correspondents.
Yet we cannot reproach human vision for this duality, for this
dumbfounded incomprehension of another man's distant grief, man
is just made that way. But for the whole of mankind, compressed
into a single lump, such mutual incomprehension presents the
threat of imminent and violent destruction. One world, one
mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales
of values: we shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm,
this disparity of vibrations.
A man with two hearts is not for this world, neither shall we be
able to live side by side on one Earth.
But who will co-ordinate these value
scales, and how? Who will create for mankind one system of
interpretation, valid for good and evil deeds, for the unbearable
and the bearable, as they are differentiated today? Who will make
clear to mankind what is really heavy and intolerable and what
only grazes the skin locally? Who will direct the anger to that
which is most terrible and not to that which is nearer? Who might
succeed in transferring such an understanding beyond the limits
of his own human experience? Who might succeed in impressing upon
a bigoted, stubborn human creature the distant joy and grief of
others, an understanding of dimensions and deceptions which he
himself has never experienced? Propaganda, constraint, scientific
proof - all are useless. But fortunately there does exist such a
means in our world! That means is art. That means is
literature.
They can perform a miracle: they can overcome man's detrimental
peculiarity of learning only from personal experience so that the
experience of other people passes him by in vain. From man to
man, as he completes his brief spell on Earth, art transfers the
whole weight of an unfamiliar, lifelong experience with all its
burdens, its colours, its sap of life; it recreates in the flesh
an unknown experience and allows us to possess it as our
own.
And even more, much more than that; both countries and whole
continents repeat each other's mistakes with time lapses which
can amount to centuries. Then, one would think, it would all be
so obvious! But no; that which some nations have already
experienced, considered and rejected, is suddenly discovered by
others to be the latest word. And here again, the only substitute
for an experience we ourselves have never lived through is art,
literature. They possess a wonderful ability: beyond distinctions
of language, custom, social structure, they can convey the life
experience of one whole nation to another. To an inexperienced
nation they can convey a harsh national trial lasting many
decades, at best sparing an entire nation from a superfluous, or
mistaken, or even disastrous course, thereby curtailing the
meanderings of human history.
It is this great and noble property of art that I urgently recall
to you today from the Nobel tribune.
And literature conveys irrefutable condensed experience in yet
another invaluable direction; namely, from generation to
generation. Thus it becomes the living memory of the nation. Thus
it preserves and kindles within itself the flame of her spent
history, in a form which is safe from deformation and slander. In
this way literature, together with language, protects the soul of
the nation.
(In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling
of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the
melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with
this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here
it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations
would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become
alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth
of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them
wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special
facet of divine intention.)
But woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the
intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation
against "freedom of print", it is the closing down of the heart
of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation
ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual
unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots
suddenly cease to understand one another. Silent generations grow
old and die without ever having talked about themselves, either
to each other or to their descendants. When writers such as
Achmatova and Zamjatin - interred alive throughout their lives -
are condemned to create in silence until they die, never hearing
the echo of their written words, then that is not only their
personal tragedy, but a sorrow to the whole nation, a danger to
the whole nation.
In some cases moreover - when as a result of such a silence the
whole of history ceases to be understood in its entirety - it is
a danger to the whole of mankind.
At various times and in various countries
there have arisen heated, angry and exquisite debates as to
whether art and the artist should be free to live for themselves,
or whether they should be for ever mindful of their duty towards
society and serve it albeit in an unprejudiced way. For me there
is no dilemma, but I shall refrain from raising once again the
train of arguments. One of the most brilliant addresses on this
subject was actually Albert
Camus' Nobel speech, and I would happily subscribe to his
conclusions. Indeed, Russian literature has for several decades
manifested an inclination not to become too lost in contemplation
of itself, not to flutter about too frivolously. I am not ashamed
to continue this tradition to the best of my ability. Russian
literature has long been familiar with the notions that a writer
can do much within his society, and that it is his duty to do
so.
Let us not violate the RIGHT of the artist to express exclusively
his own experiences and introspections, disregarding everything
that happens in the world beyond. Let us not DEMAND of the
artist, but - reproach, beg, urge and entice him - that we may be
allowed to do. After all, only in part does he himself develop
his talent; the greater part of it is blown into him at birth as
a finished product, and the gift of talent imposes responsibility
on his free will. Let us assume that the artist does not OWE
anybody anything: nevertheless, it is painful to see how, by
retiring into his self-made worlds or the spaces of his
subjective whims, he CAN surrender the real world into the hands
of men who are mercenary, if not worthless, if not insane.
Our Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding
centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its
horrors. Our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age
emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which
have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class
struggle, racial conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union
disputes. The primeval refusal to accept a compromise has been
turned into a theoretical principle and is considered the virtue
of orthodoxy. It demands millions of sacrifices in ceaseless
civil wars, it drums into our souls that there is no such thing
as unchanging, universal concepts of goodness and justice, that
they are all fluctuating and inconstant. Therefore the rule -
always do what's most profitable to your party. Any professional
group no sooner sees a convenient opportunity to BREAK OFF A
PIECE, even if it be unearned, even if it be superfluous, than it
breaks it off there and then and no matter if the whole of
society comes tumbling down. As seen from the outside, the
amplitude of the tossings of western society is approaching that
point beyond which the system becomes metastable and must fall.
Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by
centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding
across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been
demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it
is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant
justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen
conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.
Dostoevsky's DEVILS - apparently a provincial nightmare fantasy
of the last century - are crawling across the whole world in
front of our very eyes, infesting countries where they could not
have been dreamed of; and by means of the hijackings,
kidnappings, explosions and fires of recent years they are
announcing their determination to shake and destroy civilization!
And they may well succeed. The young, at an age when they have
not yet any experience other than sexual, when they do not yet
have years of personal suffering and personal understanding
behind them, are jubilantly repeating our depraved Russian
blunders of the Nineteenth Century, under the impression that
they are discovering something new. They acclaim the latest
wretched degradation on the part of the Chinese Red Guards as a
joyous example. In shallow lack of understanding of the age-old
essence of mankind, in the naive confidence of inexperienced
hearts they cry: let us drive away THOSE cruel, greedy
oppressors, governments, and the new ones (we!), having laid
aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far
from it! . . . But of those who have lived more and understand,
those who could oppose these young - many do not dare oppose,
they even suck up, anything not to appear "conservative". Another
Russian phenomenon of the Nineteenth Century which Dostoevsky
called SLAVERY TO PROGRESSIVE QUIRKS.
The spirit of Munich has by no means retreated into the past; it
was not merely a brief episode. I even venture to say that the
spirit of Munich prevails in the Twentieth Century. The timid
civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the
onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than
concessions and smiles. The spirit of Munich is a sickness of the
will of successful people, it is the daily condition of those who
have given themselves up to the thirst after prosperity at any
price, to material well-being as the chief goal of earthly
existence. Such people - and there are many in today's world -
elect passivity and retreat, just so as their accustomed life
might drag on a bit longer, just so as not to step over the
threshold of hardship today - and tomorrow, you'll see, it will
all be all right. (But it will never be all right! The price of
cowardice will only be evil; we shall reap courage and victory
only when we dare to make sacrifices.)
And on top of this we are threatened by destruction in the fact
that the physically compressed, strained world is not allowed to
blend spiritually; the molecules of knowledge and sympathy are
not allowed to jump over from one half to the other. This
presents a rampant danger: THE SUPPRESSION OF INFORMATION between
the parts of the planet. Contemporary science knows that
suppression of information leads to entropy and total
destruction. Suppression of information renders international
signatures and agreements illusory; within a muffled zone it
costs nothing to reinterpret any agreement, even simpler - to
forget it, as though it had never really existed. (Orwell
understood this supremely.) A muffled zone is, as it were,
populated not by inhabitants of the Earth, but by an
expeditionary corps from Mars; the people know nothing
intelligent about the rest of the Earth and are prepared to go
and trample it down in the holy conviction that they come as
"liberators".
A quarter of a century ago, in the great hopes of mankind, the
United Nations Organization was born. Alas, in an immoral world,
this too grew up to be immoral. It is not a United Nations
Organization but a United Governments Organization where all
governments stand equal; those which are freely elected, those
imposed forcibly, and those which have seized power with weapons.
Relying on the mercenary partiality of the majority UNO jealously
guards the freedom of some nations and neglects the freedom of
others. As a result of an obedient vote it declined to undertake
the investigation of private appeals - the groans, screams and
beseechings of humble individual PLAIN PEOPLE - not large enough
a catch for such a great organization. UNO made no effort to make
the Declaration of Human Rights, its best document in twenty-five
years, into an OBLIGATORY condition of membership confronting the
governments. Thus it betrayed those humble people into the will
of the governments which they had not chosen.
It would seem that the appearance of the contemporary world rests
solely in the hands of the scientists; all mankind's technical
steps are determined by them. It would seem that it is precisely
on the international goodwill of scientists, and not of
politicians, that the direction of the world should depend. All
the more so since the example of the few shows how much could be
achieved were they all to pull together. But no; scientists have
not manifested any clear attempt to become an important,
independently active force of mankind. They spend entire
congresses in renouncing the sufferings of others; better to stay
safely within the precincts of science. That same spirit of
Munich has spread above them its enfeebling wings.
What then is the place and role of the writer in this cruel,
dynamic, split world on the brink of its ten destructions? After
all we have nothing to do with letting off rockets, we do not
even push the lowliest of hand-carts, we are quite scorned by
those who respect only material power. Is it not natural for us
too to step back, to lose faith in the steadfastness of goodness,
in the indivisibility of truth, and to just impart to the world
our bitter, detached observations: how mankind has become
hopelessly corrupt, how men have degenerated, and how difficult
it is for the few beautiful and refined souls to live amongst
them?
But we have not even recourse to this flight. Anyone who has once
taken up the WORD can never again evade it; a writer is not the
detached judge of his compatriots and contemporaries, he is an
accomplice to all the evil committed in his native land or by his
countrymen. And if the tanks of his fatherland have flooded the
asphalt of a foreign capital with blood, then the brown spots
have slapped against the face of the writer forever. And if one
fatal night they suffocated his sleeping, trusting Friend, then
the palms of the writer bear the bruises from that rope. And if
his young fellow citizens breezily declare the superiority of
depravity over honest work, if they give themselves over to drugs
or seize hostages, then their stink mingles with the breath of
the writer.
Shall we have the temerity to declare that we are not responsible
for the sores of the present-day world?
However, I am cheered by a vital awareness
of WORLD LITERATURE as of a single huge heart, beating out the
cares and troubles of our world, albeit presented and perceived
differently in each of its corners.
Apart from age-old national literatures there existed, even in
past ages, the conception of world literature as an anthology
skirting the heights of the national literatures, and as the sum
total of mutual literary influences. But there occurred a lapse in
time: readers and writers became acquainted with writers of other
tongues only after a time lapse, sometimes lasting centuries, so
that mutual influences were also delayed and the anthology of
national literary heights was revealed only in the eyes of
descendants, not of contemporaries.
But today, between the writers of one country and the writers and
readers of another, there is a reciprocity if not instantaneous
then almost so. I experience this with myself. Those of my books
which, alas, have not been printed in my own country have soon
found a responsive, worldwide audience, despite hurried and often
bad translations. Such distinguished western writers as Heinrich
Böll have undertaken critical analysis of them. All these
last years, when my work and freedom have not come crashing down,
when contrary to the laws of gravity they have hung suspended as
though on air, as though on NOTHING - on the invisible dumb
tension of a sympathetic public membrane; then it was with
grateful warmth, and quite unexpectedly for myself, that I learnt
of the further support of the international brotherhood of
writers. On my fiftieth birthday I was astonished to receive
congratulations from well-known western writers. No pressure on
me came to pass by unnoticed. During my dangerous weeks of
exclusion from the Writers' Union the WALL OF DEFENCE advanced by
the world's prominent writers protected me from worse
persecutions; and Norwegian writers and artists hospitably
prepared a roof for me, in the event of my threatened exile being
put into effect. Finally even the advancement of my name for the
Nobel Prize was raised not in the country where I live and write,
but by Francois Mauriac and his colleagues. And later still
entire national writers' unions have expressed their support for
me.
Thus I have understood and felt that world literature is no
longer an abstract anthology, nor a generalization invented by
literary historians; it is rather a certain common body and a
common spirit, a living heartfelt unity reflecting the growing
unity of mankind. State frontiers still turn crimson, heated by
electric wire and bursts of machine fire; and various ministries
of internal affairs still think that literature too is an
"internal affair" falling under their jurisdiction; newspaper
headlines still display: "No right to interfere in our internal
affairs!" Whereas there are no INTERNAL AFFAIRS left on our
crowded Earth! And mankind's sole salvation lies in everyone
making everything his business; in the people of the East being
vitally concerned with what is thought in the West, the people of
the West vitally concerned with what goes on in the East. And
literature, as one of the most sensitive, responsive instruments
possessed by the human creature, has been one of the first to
adopt, to assimilate, to catch hold of this feeling of a growing
unity of mankind. And so I turn with confidence to the world
literature of today - to hundreds of friends whom I have never
met in the flesh and whom I may never see.
Friends! Let us try to help if we are worth anything at all! Who
from time immemorial has constituted the uniting, not the
dividing, strength in your countries, lacerated by discordant
parties, movements, castes and groups? There in its essence is
the position of writers: expressers of their native language -
the chief binding force of the nation, of the very earth its
people occupy, and at best of its national spirit.
I believe that world literature has it in its power to help
mankind, in these its troubled hours, to see itself as it really
is, notwithstanding the indoctrinations of prejudiced people and
parties. World literature has it in its power to convey condensed
experience from one land to another so that we might cease to be
split and dazzled, that the different scales of values might be
made to agree, and one nation learn correctly and concisely the
true history of another with such strength of recognition and
painful awareness as it had itself experienced the same, and thus
might it be spared from repeating the same cruel mistakes. And
perhaps under such conditions we artists will be able to
cultivate within ourselves a field of vision to embrace the WHOLE
WORLD: in the centre observing like any other human being that
which lies nearby, at the edges we shall begin to draw in that
which is happening in the rest of the world. And we shall
correlate, and we shall observe world proportions.
And who, if not writers, are to pass judgement - not only on
their unsuccessful governments, (in some states this is the
easiest way to earn one's bread, the occupation of any man who is
not lazy), but also on the people themselves, in their cowardly
humiliation or self-satisfied weakness? Who is to pass judgement
on the light-weight sprints of youth, and on the young pirates
brandishing their knives?
We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the
ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that
violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone:
it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies
the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds
its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in
violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD
must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth
violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it
become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction
of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without
descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It
does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat,
more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of
allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.
And the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake
in falsehood, not to support false actions! Let THAT enter the
world, let it even reign in the world - but not with my help. But
writers and artists can achieve more: they can CONQUER FALSEHOOD!
In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always
does win! Openly, irrefutably for everyone! Falsehood can hold
out against much in this world, but not against art.
And no sooner will falsehood be dispersed than the nakedness of
violence will be revealed in all its ugliness - and violence,
decrepit, will fall.
That is why, my friends, I believe that we are able to help the
world in its white-hot hour. Not by making the excuse of
possessing no weapons, and not by giving ourselves over to a
frivolous life - but by going to war!
Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady
and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh
national experience:
ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD.
And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the
principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base
both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole
world.
*Delivered only to the Swedish Academy and not actually given as a lecture.
1. The Central Administration of Corrective Labour Camps.
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980, Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1993
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1970