Hej!
Känner du till
Haruki Murakami ?
Han är en japansk författare som höll ett underbart tal, " Alltid på äggets - sida " när han fick
Jerusalempriset 2009.
photo: http://www.jiji.com/jc/v4?id=201305murakamiharuki_int0001
Jag håller med honom;
"
Jag godkänner inte något krig och jag stöder inte någon nation. "
I talets sista del känns det lite som
Matrix... för mig.
Njaha! (･∀･｡)
Här under kan du läsa hela hans tal. ( Engelska )
Always on the side of the egg
By
Haruki Murakami
Feb. 17, 2009
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.
Källa
Haaretz.com
Always on the side of the egg (Engelska )
Extra länk
村上春樹エルサレム受賞スピーチ ( Japanska )
村上春樹、エルサレム賞受賞スピーチ試訳 ( Japanska )
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