FROM PASTERNAK TO PAMUK, THE NOBEL AWARD FOR LITERATURE HAS HAD POLITICAL SUB-PLOTS
Eunice de Souza
Mumbai Mirror, India
Oct 25 2006
>From time to time we hear that the Nobel Prize for Literature has been
awarded for "political reasons." Governments which say this usually
mean that there was an ulterior motive for giving the prize to one
of their critics. Ordinary people who say this normally mean that,
other things being equal, a particular writer has been chosen at a
particular time to draw attention to a problem or a crisis in his
country of origin.
Pasternak, who won the prize in 1957, gained a great reputation in the
West, but was reviled in the Soviet Union. The diplomat K P S Menon,
who was posted in Soviet Russia at the time, describes the event and
the abuse which followed. Pasternak was described as "a pig which
fouls its own sty", and an official said it "would be an insult to
a pig to be compared with Pasternak." The Americans thought of the
prize as a "slap in the face for Communism, for Dr Zhivago, which
is a saga of the revolutionary period , is by no means an euology of
the revolution." Eventually, Pasternak declined the prize, because,
as he said, "of the meaning attached to it in the community in which
I live." In a moving letter Pasternak wrote to Khrushchev, he said,
"For me emigration is impossible. I am bound to Russia by my birth,
life and work. I cannot think of existence separately and outside
her. Whatever may be my mistakes and delusions, I could not have
imagined that I would find myself in the centre of such a political
campaign as is being carried on around my name in the West." In the
end, he was not forced into exile, but allowed to continue in peace.
But when he died, it was some days before newspapers mentioned the
fact. Members of the Writers’ Union did not attend the funeral,
but hundreds of students recited his verses at his grave.
Where Harold Pinter was concerned, it was generally thought that it
was because of his campaign against the war in Iraq and all the lies
that had justified it. In fact, Pinter has campaigned against a great
many things, the Nato bombing of Kosovo, the abuse of human rights in
Turkey and many others. He visited Turkey with Arthur Miller in 1985,
and the highlight of his trip is said to be the moment he was thrown
out of the US embassy in Ankara. His biographer Michael Billington
writes, "Pinter remains to his credit, a permanent public nuisance,
a questioner of accepted truths, both in life and art. In fact, the
two persistently inter-act." True, but the plays are full of silences,
and the political speeches passionately articulate. Pinter’s Nobel
Prize speech, Art, Truth and Politics says that politicians quite
naturally have no interest in the truth, but if we are to survive
with dignity, "defining the real truth of our lives and societies is
a crucial obligation."
And now, Orhan Pamuk. Unsurprisingly, given his criticism of the
Turkish government’s refusal to call the massacre of the Armenians
genocide, Armenian writers were extremely happy that he won the
prize. A spokesman said it was "both a literature prize and about
morality." In Turkey, however, he was thought to have "blatantly
belittled Turkishness." The case against him was dropped only because
of Turkey’s hopes of joining the EU. Again, Pamuk has been known
for years. Perhaps the Nobel committee chose this year because of
the worsening Islam-West conflict. "No other writer addresses that
relationship with such humanity and wit," a journalist said when the
prize was announced, while another said it was "a rare if conspicuous
convergence of political motivation with literary merit."