In the History of the Nobel Prize so far, only two personalities have declined to accept the Nobel prize. If not anything else, they definitely were bold acts that hardly any meek-hearted people can replicate. Many might call those publicity stunts though, depending on their perspectives. And to my opinion, another personality had gone close to declining the prize. The first of them was the French philosopher, literary and political activist Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964 when he was awarded the prize for literature. Incidentally, the 22nd of October (yesterday) marked the 50th year of his refusal to accept the prize. On that day in 1964 he wrote: My reasons for refusing the prize concern neither the Swedish Academy nor the Nobel Prize in itself, as I explained in my letter to the Academy. In it, I alluded to two kinds of reasons: personal and objective. The personal reasons are these: my refusal is not an impulsive gesture, I have always declined official honors. In 1945, after the war, when I was offered the Legion of Honor, I refused it, although I was sympathetic to the government. Similarly, I have never sought to enter the Collège de France, as several of my friends suggested. This attitude is based on my conception of the writer’s enterprise. A writer who adopts political, social, or literary positions must act only with the means that are his own – that is, the written word. All the honors he may receive expose his readers to a pressure I do not consider desirable. If I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre it is not the same thing as if I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prizewinner. The writer who accepts an honor of this kind involves as well as himself the association or institution which has honored him. My sympathies for the Venezuelan revolutionists commit only myself, while if Jean-Paul Sartre the Nobel laureate champions the Venezuelan resistance, he also commits the entire Nobel Prize as an institution. The writer must therefore refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution, even if this occurs under the most honorable circumstances, as in the present case. This attitude is of course entirely my own, and contains no criticism of those who have already been awarded the prize. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for several of the laureates whom I have the honor to know. My objective reasons are as follows: The only battle possible today on the cultural front is the battle for the peaceful coexistence of the two cultures, that of the East and that of the West. I do not mean that they must embrace each other – I know that the confrontation of these two cultures must necessarily take the form of a conflict – but this confrontation must occur between men and between cultures, without the intervention of institutions. (Quoted from his press release on the day, translated) Later to the BBC, he had said, Because I was politically involved, the bourgeois establishment wanted to cover up my “past errors.” Now, there’s an admission! And so they gave me the Nobel Prize. They “pardoned” me and said I deserved it. It was monstrous! Call it a publicity stunt or whatever, I must say, not all can dare to go for such a stunt. Mind that getting the prize is a publicity too, and on many cases that is done beyond proportion and even ends up with mistaken identities. The other to decline was the much less known Le Duc Tho (Phan Dinh Khai), the Vietnamese revolutionary and politician, who was awarded the peace prize with the much well known Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State then, in 1973! The timing of the prize and the combination that were supposed to share the prize is definitely very interesting, and displays the character of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that needs no elaboration for those who know History a bit (and those who dont know, need not know). [I even smell little parallels with the current Nobel Peace prize, though not that overt. Another somewhat more direct one comes to mind with the 1994 Peace Prize. But they are not the issues of discussion of the current post.] And of course, the one who was close to declining it by presenting himself in a casual way at the award giving ceremony was Richard P Feynman, the physicist, in 1965 for Physics of course. He had said, I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish academy just decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize – I’ve already gotten the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding a thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it – those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don’t believe in honors.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 08:10:12 +0000
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