P
rince
of
A
sturias
A
wards
1981-2014. S
peeches
5
No one can escape from the fact that we are bystanders to the vertiginous death throes of all the
principles and convictions that have marked out, during millennia, the behavior of man, whose
profile as a person is steadily being effaced and replaced by the phantasm that strives to imitate
it on the hazy electronic screen. It is thus that these new means of alleged communication, put at
the disposal of a consumer society, becoming vaster and more desolate with every passing day,
conspire to annul the notion of the individual and the very existence of the person that already
matters next to nothing and is going to be dissolved into that amorphous mass that moves to the
impulse of a raw hedonism and a Cain-like angst that invades every region of the planet with
increasing frenzy. How utterly right, on that occasion, was he who sounded his voice in alarm in
this very same hall and in identical circumstances: “We’re walled in!” he said. Indeed we are, and it
is time that we became aware of it and looked for the remedy in the secret codes that have marked
our destiny for millennia. Where are they to be found? The answer is evident: they are in the ruins
of Tartessos; in the rugged vestiges of Rome over the entire length and width of the peninsula; in
the lesson left to us by the Omayyads, translators of Plato and Aristotle; in the luminous esoteric
vision of the Celts and Iberians; and, last but not least, in the wisdom of the Mayas, Toltecs, Incas,
and the other Pre-Colombian civilizations of America. In the aggregate of each and every one of
these fecund legacies, from one side of the ocean to the other is, I am certain, the resource for
surmounting the encirclement and checking the deadly overtures of globalization and the blind
surrender to mechanical means that make an attempt against being to the point of immolating it
into obscurity.
We, Spaniards and Ibero-Americans, are still the owners of a mythic conscience destined to
preserve our condition as individuals. This redeeming voice has revealing echoes in ceremonies
like the one that we are present at today, where Spain generously acknowledges the diverse fields of
human achievement, represented here by persons of varied origin and condition, on whose behalf
I have the honor of speaking. We conceive of this ceremony as a rite which enables us to drive away
the impending onslaught.
Álvaro Mutis
—
Prince of Asturias Award
for Literature
1997
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for Literature
on 24/10/1997.
