Tuesday, June 1, 2010

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

today, i don’t know what  to write. this world is a crazy place. painful to see. over and over again. this is a speech that haruki murakami gave when he visited israel a while back to receive the jerusalem prize of literature. worth reading, for those who have the patience.

I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.

So let me tell you the truth. A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.

The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.

Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.

Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.

This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.

It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.

Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.

He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.

My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.

That is all I have to say to you.

I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.

_MG_1261-pola

17 comments:

Jael said...

Vilken bra tal!

annika said...

Fantastiskt! Att lyckas fånga allt så fint. Det här med att vara människa. Tack för att du delade med dig av hans tal! Kram

Anonymous said...

fint av flera skäl att läsa ditt inlägg just idag // ma

fröken L said...

Försökt nå dig utan framgång, fint att höra dig här. Det är så att man vill gråta...

Pussar och kramar!

s said...

oj!
"fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System". det är så bra att jag nästan kunnat sagt det själv:-)
riktigt, riktigt bra.
förstår ännu lite bättre varför både du och jag tycker om hans böcker. tack för att jag fick läsa talet, hade inte hört talas om det.

Karin said...

Vilken fin text. Jag har fortfarande inte last Murakami, det har bara inte blivit av (har nastan inte last nat skonlitterart alls under utbildningen tyvarr). Kanske borjar jag nu.
Nar jag laste texten och med anledning av vad som hande med hjalpkonvojen pa vag till Gaza tankte jag pa ett citat fran Borderna Lejonhjarta: "vissa saker maste man gora aven om de ar farliga, annars ar man inte manniska utan en liten lort".

et lille oejeblik - a little moment said...

i didn't read the whole speech, will save that for later. but your quote and thoughts... i know exactly what you mean! it's so disheartening and sad.

et lille oejeblik - a little moment said...

i did. and i have linked to it from my post today. it's a beautiful speech. thank you so much for posting it.

Elisabeth said...

Jag ville bara säga fint. Och svara på din kommentar hos mig. Du är modig och jag är feg. Jag tänker att mitt vardagssammanhang är lättare att ringa in än ditt, och därför vågar jag inte ge på samma sätt som du. Jag hoppas du förstår hur jag menar (du får komplettera med mitt svar inne hos mig).

Var rädd om dig.

Elizabeth said...

I am new to your blog and thank you for this post. I hope you don't mind, but I will post it on my own blog tomorrow and provide a link to where I found it! Now, I'm off to read some more of your beautiful posts!

outi said...

word sister!

with peaceful greetings..

Jenny said...

Först tänkte jag att jag inte orkade läsa, jobbigt med engelska, men jag är oerhört glad att jag gjorde det och jag blev i likhet med några andra väldigt sugen på att läsa hans böcker, han verkar vara en mycket klok man, det behövs flera kloka människor här i världen.
Kärlek och ljus!
Hej Karin förresten, kram!

sarapirat said...

yaelian, visst är det!

annika, varsågod. det här är ju bara för bra för att behålla för sig själv. dela dela dela med oss! kram

mamma, du har kommenterat, va kul!

frkn l, konstigt det där att ni inte kommer fram. hektiskt på linjen kanske. gråta får man. och bör man ibland. kram

s, hade önskat jag sagt det själv! i love him! eller hans ord kanske?
kram

karin, LÄS, jag är helt galen i honom. har nog aldrig följt en författare så troget. förutom ulf lundell, för många år sedan, hahaha! det är ju nästan lite pinsamt att skriva här. kram

trinsch, you are so welcome, happy you are spreading his words further.
hug

elisabeth, längre svar hos dig som sagt! kram

elizabeth,thank you and welcome! nice you dropped a line. and nice you linked. the more that read it, the better...

outi, ♥ peaceful greetings back at you!

sarapirat said...

jenny, visst skickade jag en till dig? har du läst den? kram kramkram

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