In a 2013 weblog publish, the nice Ursulos angeles Okay. Le Guin quotes a London Instances Literary Supplement column by means of a “J.C.,” who satirically professionalposes the “Jean-Paul Sartre Prize for Prize Refusal.” “Writers everywhere Europe and America are fliping down awards within the hope of being nominated for a Sartre,” writes J.C., “The Sartre Prize itself has never been refused.” Sartre earned the honor of his personal prize for prize refusal by means of fliping down the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, an act Le Guin calls “characteristic of the gnarly and counter-suggestible Existentialist.” As you’ll see within the brief clip above, Sartre fully believed the committee used the award to whitewash his Communist political perspectives and activism.
However the refusal was once now not a theatrical or “impulsive gesture,” Sartre wrote in a statement to the Swedish press, which was once later published in Le Monde. It was once consistent together with his lengthystanding principles. “I’ve at all times declined official honors,” he stated, and referred to his rejection of the Legion of Honor in 1945 for similar reasons. Elaborating, he cited first the “in keeping withsonal” reason for his refusal
This attitude is in keeping with my conception of the author’s inputprise. A author who adopts political, social, or literary positions will have to act handiest with the method which are his personal—this is, the written phrase. The entire honors he would possibly obtain divulge his learners to a prespositive I don’t consider desirin a position. If I signal myself Jean-Paul Sartre it isn’t the similar factor as though I signal myself Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner.
The author will have to therefore refuse to let himself be transshaped into an institution, despite the fact that this happens below essentially the most honorin a position circumstances, as within the provide case.
There was once another reason as smartly, an “objective” one, Sartre wrote. In serving the reason for socialism, he was hoping to result in “the peaceful coexistence of the 2 cultures, that of the East and the West.” (He refers now not handiest to Asia as “the East,” but in addition to “the Eastern bloc.”)
Therefore, he felt he will have to stay independent of institutions on both sides: “I must thus be slightly as not able to simply accept, for examinationple, the Lenin Prize, if someone needed to offer it to me.”
As a flattering New York Instances article now noted on the time, this was once now not the primary time a author had refused the Nobel. In 1926, George Bernard Shaw grew to become down the prize money, offended by means of the extravagant money award, which he felt was once unnecessary since he already had “sufficient money for my wishes.” Shaw later relented, donating the money for English translos angelestions of Swedish literature. Boris Pasternak additionally refused the award, in 1958, however this was once below excessive duress. “If he’d attempted to move settle for it,” Le Guin writes, “the Soviet Government would have steeredly, enthusiastically arrested him and despatched him to eternal silence in a gulag in Siberia.”
Those qualifications make Sartre the one writer to ever outproper and voluntarily reject each the Nobel Prize in Literature and its sizin a position money award. Whilst his statement to the Swedish press is stuffed with well mannered explanations and gracious demurrals, his filmed statement above, excerpted from the 1976 documentumalestary Sartre by means of Himself, minces no phrases.
As a result of I used to be politically concerned the bourgeois establishment needed to cover up my “previous mistakes.” Now there’s an admission! They usually gave me the Nobel Prize. They “pardoned” me and stated I deserved it. It was once monstrous!
Sartre was once in reality pardoned by means of De Gaulle 4 years after his Nobel rejection for his participation within the 1968 uprisings. “You don’t arrest Voltaire,” the French President supposedly stated. The author and philosopher, Le Guin issues out, “was once, after all, already an ‘institution’” on the time of the Nobel award. Nonethemuch less, she says, the gesture had actual implying. Literary awards, writes Le Guin—who herself refused a Nebulos angeles Award in 1976 (she’s gained several extra since)—can “honor a author,” during which case they have got “genuine value.” But prizes also are awarded “as a marketing ploy by means of corpocharge capitalism, and a fewoccasions as a political gimmick by means of the awarders [….] And the extra prestigious and valued the prize the extra comprofessionalmised it’s.” Sartre, after all, felt the similar—the higher the honor, the extra likely his paintings can be coopted and sanitized.
Consistent withhaps proving his level, a brief, nasty 1965 Harvard Crimson letter had many, much less flattering issues than Le Guin to mention about Sartre’s motivations, nameing him “an unsightly toad” and a “deficient loser” envious of his former pal Camus, who gained in 1957. The letter author calls Sartre’s rejection of the prize “an act of pretension” and a “moderately ineffectual and stupid gesture.” And but it did have an impact. It sort of feels transparent a minimum of to me that the Harvard Crimson author may just now not stand the truth that, presented the “maximum coveted award” the West can bestow, and a heaping sum of money but even so, “Sartre’s giant line was once, ‘Je refuse.’”
Related Content:
Albert Camus Wins the Nobel Prize & Sends a Letter of Gratitude to His Elemalestary College Instructor (1957)
Jean-Paul Sartre & Albert Camus: Their Palsend and the Bitter Feud That Finished It
Pay attention Albert Camus Deliver His Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (1957)
Josh Jones is a author and musician based totally in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
