It
is the end of November. The Nobel Laureate for Literature has been chosen, and
traditionally, it is during the first 10 days of December that the chosen
writer delivers a lecture to the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Since the year
2000 the lectures have been video recorded and the laureate delivers the speech
in her/his first language. A translation of the text is available in English.
This year, perhaps owing to the delicate state of Ms Munro’s health, the Nobel Lecture in Literature will be
replaced by a pre-recorded video conversation with the Laureate: "Alice
Munro: In her own words". The event will be held on Saturday 7 December
2013, at 5:30 p.m. (CET), at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm (tickets
required). Alice Munro will not be attending. The lecture will be webcast live
at Nobelprize.org.
During his speech on the 10th
December 1929, Thomas Mann made the following comments:
“All writers belong to the class
of non-orators. The writer and the orator are not only different, but they
stand in opposition, for their work and the achievement of their effects
proceed in different ways. In particular the convinced writer is instinctively
repelled, from a literary standpoint, by the improvised and noncommittal
character of all talk, as well as by that principle of economy which leaves
many and indeed decisive gaps which must be filled by the effects of the
speaker's personality. [….]
After many years the Stockholm
international prize has once more been awarded to the German mind, and to
German prose in particular, and you may find it difficult to appreciate the
sensitivity with which such signs of world sympathy are received in my wounded
and often misunderstood country.
May I presume to interpret the meaning of
this sympathy more closely? German intellectual and artistic achievements
during the last fifteen years have not been made under conditions favourable to
body and soul. No work had the chance to grow and mature in comfortable
security, but art and intellect have had to exist in conditions intensely and
generally problematic, in conditions of misery, turmoil, and suffering, an
almost Eastern and Russian chaos of passions, in which the German mind has
preserved the Western and European principle of the dignity of form. For to the
European, form is a point of honour, is it not? I am not a Catholic, ladies and
gentlemen; my tradition is like that of all of you; I support the Protestant
immediateness to God. Nevertheless, I have a favourite saint. I will tell you
his name. It is Saint Sebastian, that youth at the stake, who, pierced by
swords and arrows from all sides, smiles amidst his agony. Grace in suffering:
that is the heroism symbolized by St. Sebastian. The image may be bold, but I
am tempted to claim this heroism for the German mind and for German art, and to
suppose that the international honour fallen to Germany's literary achievement
was given with this sublime heroism in mind. Through her poetry Germany has
exhibited grace in suffering. She has preserved her honour, politically by not
yielding to the anarchy of sorrow, yet keeping her unity; spiritually by
uniting the Eastern principle of suffering with the Western principle of form -
by creating beauty out of suffering.
”
Hitler had been elected Nazi
Party Chairman in 1921, eight years prior to this speech. and just under four
years later in March of 1933, ‘Der Führer’ was
in control. Thomas Mann had to leave Germany for Switzerland in 1933 and
subsequently emigrated to the United States in 1939. What price beauty from
suffering then?
Mann visited Germany after the War in 1949 at
the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, attending celebrations in
Frankfurt am Main and Weimar, as a statement that German culture extended
beyond the new political borders. I presume because all of German culture had left the country in 1933, and
only came back to visit for the odd anniversary. It has taken some time for it
to return, or am I being too harsh.
Comment from Orson Wells:
And here is something a bit more fun:
Comment from Orson Wells:
And here is something a bit more fun:
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