P
rince
of
A
sturias
A
wards
1981-2014. S
peeches
5
Let us imagine literature as a utopia... a place where exalted, largely inaccessible standards reign.
From a certain reading of literature —from the literature that matters, that continues to matter,
over decades, generations, in a few instances, centuries— a number of standards can be deduced.
Here is my utopia. That is, here are the standards I infer from, or find supported by, the enterprise
of literature.
One. That the activities of literature (writing, reading, teaching) are an ideal vocation, a
privilege, rather than simply a career, a profession, subject to the usual ideas of “success” and
financial reward. Literature is, first of all, an essential form of nourishment to consciousness. It
plays a vital role in the creation of inwardness and the enlarging and deepening of our sympathies
and our sensitivities… to other human beings, and to language.
Two. That literature is an arena of individual achievement, of individual merit. This means
not awarding prizes and honors because of what the writer represents; for example, weak
or marginalized communities. This means not using of literature or literary prizes to support
extra-literary goals: for example, feminism. (I speak as a feminist). This means not apportioning
rewards to writers as a way of serially paying tribute to the diversity of national identities. (Thus,
if all the three best writers in the world are all, say, Hungarian, then, ideally, the Juries of literary
prizes should not worry that Hungarians are receiving too many prizes.)
Three. That literature is a fundamentally cosmopolitan enterprise. The great writers are part
of world literature. We should be reading across national and tribal boundaries: great literature
should transport us. Writers are citizens of a world community, in which we all read and learn
from one another. Considering each major literary achievement as, finally, part of world literature
is to make us more open to the foreign, to what is not “us”. The distinctive power of literature is
to inspire in us a feeling of strangeness. Of wonder. Of disorientation. Of being somewhere else.
Four. That the variety of kinds of literary excellence, within literatures in any given language
and across the spectrum of world literature, is a primary lesson in the reality and desirableness of
a world which remains irreducibly plural, diverse, varied. Such a pluralistic world today depends
upon the prevalence of secular values.
What are called standards can, of course, be phrased more vigorously (and perhaps more
controversially) as antipathies, as refusals. So, to rephrase what I have just said:
One. Contempt for mercenary values. Two. Aversion to making a principally instrumental use
of writers; for example, celebrating writers primarily as the representatives of communities felt to
be marginalized, in order to express solidarity with those communities. Three. Vigilance against
cultural philistinism masking as the application of democratic values in matters of literature.
Permanent suspicion of nationalist affirmations and tribal loyalties. Four. Eternal antagonism
toward the forces of repression, censorship.
These are indeed utopian values. They have not been realized. But literature, literature as a
whole, continues to embody them. Writers continue to be goaded by them. Readers, real readers,
continue to be nourished by them. And they are what every important literary prize also celebrates.
© Susan Sontag
—
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for Literature
on 24/10/2003.
Susan Sontag
—
Prince of Asturias Award
for Literature
2003
