Nobel Lectures

7/31/2019 Nobel Lectures

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Pablo Neruda: Towards the Splendid City

My speech is going to be a long journey, a trip that I have taken through regions that are distant

and antipodean, but not for that reason any less similar to the landscape and the solitude in

Scandinavia. I refer to the way in which my country stretches down to the extreme South. So

remote are we Chileans that our boundaries almost touch the South Pole, recalling the geographyof Sweden, whose head reaches the snowy northern region of this planet.

Down there on those vast expanses in my native country, where I was taken by events which

have already fallen into oblivion, one has to cross, and I was compelled to cross, the Andes to

find the frontier of my country with Argentina. Great forests make these inaccessible areas like a

tunnel through which our journey was secret and forbidden, with only the faintest signs to show

us the way. There were no tracks and no paths, and I and my four companions, riding on

horseback, pressed forward on our tortuous way, avoiding the obstacles set by huge trees,

impassable rivers, immense cliffs and desolate expanses of snow, blindly seeking the quarter in

which my own liberty lay. Those who were with me knew how to make their way forward

between the dense leaves of the forest, but to feel safer they marked their route by slashing withtheir machetes here and there in the bark of the great trees, leaving tracks which they would

follow back when they had left me alone with my destiny.

Each of us made his way forward filled with this limitless solitude, with the green and white

silence of trees and huge trailing plants and layers of soil laid down over centuries, among half-

fallen tree trunks which suddenly appeared as fresh obstacles to bar our progress. We were in a

dazzling and secret world of nature which at the same time was a growing menace of cold, snow

and persecution. Everything became one: the solitude, the danger, the silence, and the urgency of

my mission.

Sometimes we followed a very faint trail, perhaps left by smugglers or ordinary criminals inflight, and we did not know whether many of them had perished, surprised by the icy hands of

winter, by the fearful snowstorms which suddenly rage in the Andes and engulf the traveller,

burying him under a whiteness seven storeys high.

On either side of the trail I could observe in the wild desolation something which betrayed

human activity. There were piled up branches which had lasted out many winters, offerings made

by hundreds who had journeyed there, crude burial mounds in memory of the fallen, so that the

passer should think of those who had not been able to struggle on but had remained there under

the snow for ever. My comrades, too, hacked off with their machetes branches which brushed

our heads and bent down over us from the colossal trees, from oaks whose last leaves were

scattering before the winter storms. And I too left a tribute at every mound, a visiting card of wood, a branch from the forest to deck one or other of the graves of these unknown travellers.

We had to cross a river. Up on the Andean summits there run small streams which cast

themselves down with dizzy and insane force, forming waterfalls that stir up earth and stones

with the violence they bring with them from the heights. But this time we found calm water, a

wide mirrorlike expanse which could be forded. The horses splashed in, lost their foothold and

began to swim towards the other bank. Soon my horse was almost completely covered by the



lay a number of men grouped like sacks. In the silence we could distinguish the notes of a guitar

and words in a song which was born of the embers and the darkness, and which carried with it

the first human voice we had encountered during our journey. It was a song of love and distance,

a cry of love and longing for the distant spring, from the towns we were coming away from, for

life in its limitless extent. These men did not know who we were, they knew nothing about our

flight, they had never heard either my name or my poetry; or perhaps they did, perhaps theyknew us? What actually happened was that at this fire we sang and we ate, and then in the

darkness we went into some primitive rooms. Through them flowed a warm stream, volcanic

water in which we bathed, warmth which welled out from the mountain chain and received us in

its bosom.

Happily we splashed about, dug ourselves out, as it were, liberated ourselves from the weight of

the long journey on horseback. We felt refreshed, reborn, baptised, when in the dawn we started

on the journey of a few miles which was to eclipse me from my native land. We rode away on

our horses singing, filled with a new air, with a force that cast us out on to the world's broad

highway which awaited me. This I remember well, that when we sought to give the mountain

dwellers a few coins in gratitude for their songs, for the food, for the warm water, for giving uslodging and beds, I would rather say for the unexpected heavenly refuge that had met us on our

journey, our offering was rejected out of hand. They had been at our service, nothing more. In

this taciturn "nothing" there were hidden things that were understood, perhaps a recognition,

perhaps the same kind of dreams.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I did not learn from books any recipe for writing a poem, and I, in my turn, will avoid giving any

advice on mode or style which might give the new poets even a drop of supposed insight. When I

am recounting in this speech something about past events, when reliving on this occasion a

never-forgotten occurrence, in this place which is so different from what that was, it is because in

the course of my life I have always found somewhere the necessary support, the formula which

had been waiting for me not in order to be petrified in my words but in order to explain me to

myself.

During this long journey I found the necessary components for the making of the poem. There I

received contributions from the earth and from the soul. And I believe that poetry is an action,

ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and

action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret manifestations of

nature. And no less strongly I think that all this is sustained - man and his shadow, man and his

conduct, man and his poetry - by an ever-wider sense of community, by an effort which will for

ever bring together the reality and the dreams in us because it is precisely in this way that poetry

unites and mingles them. And therefore I say that I do not know, after so many years, whether

the lessons I learned when I crossed a daunting river, when I danced around the skull of an ox,

when I bathed my body in the cleansing water from the topmost heights - I do not know whether



these lessons welled forth from me in order to be imparted to many others or whether it was all a

message which was sent to me by others as a demand or an accusation. I do not know whether I

experienced this or created it, I do not know whether it was truth or poetry, something passing or

permanent, the poems I experienced in this hour, the experiences which I later put into verse.

From all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other people.There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we

are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach

forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song -

but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the

awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.

The truth is that even if some or many consider me to be a sectarian, barred from taking a place

at the common table of friendship and responsibility, I do not wish to defend myself, for I

believe that neither accusation nor defence is among the tasks of the poet. When all is said, there

is no individual poet who administers poetry, and if a poet sets himself up to accuse his fellows

or if some other poet wastes his life in defending himself against reasonable or unreasonablecharges, it is my conviction that only vanity can so mislead us. I consider the enemies of poetry

to be found not among those who practise poetry or guard it but in mere lack of agreement in the

poet. For this reason no poet has any considerable enemy other than his own incapacity to make

himself understood by the most forgotten and exploited of his contemporaries, and this applies to

all epochs and in all countries.

The poet is not a "little god". No, he is not a "little god". He is not picked out by a mystical

destiny in preference to those who follow other crafts and professions. I have often maintained

that the best poet is he who prepares our daily bread: the nearest baker who does not imagine

himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough,

consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colours and handing us our daily bread as a duty of

fellowship. And, if the poet succeeds in achieving this simple consciousness, this too will be

transformed into an element in an immense activity, in a simple or complicated structure which

constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions which surround

mankind, the handing over of mankind's products: bread, truth, wine, dreams. If the poet joins

this never-completed struggle to extend to the hands of each and all his part of his undertaking,

his effort and his tenderness to the daily work of all people, then the poet must take part, the poet

will take part, in the sweat, in the bread, in the wine, in the whole dream of humanity. Only in

this indispensable way of being ordinary people shall we give back to poetry the mighty breadth

which has been pared away from it little by little in every epoch, just as we ourselves have been

whittled down in every epoch.

The mistakes which led me to a relative truth and the truths which repeatedly led me back to the

mistakes did not allow me - and I never made any claims to it - to find my way to lead, to learn

what is called the creative process, to reach the heights of literature that are so difficult of access.

But one thing I realized - that it is we ourselves who call forth the spirits through our own myth-

making. From the matter we use, or wish to use, there arise later on obstacles to our own

development and the future development. We are led infallibly to reality and realism, that is to

say to become indirectly conscious of everything that surrounds us and of the ways of change,



and then we see, when it seems to be late, that we have erected such an exaggerated barrier that

we are killing what is alive instead of helping life to develop and blossom. We force upon

ourselves a realism which later proves to be more burdensome than the bricks of the building,

without having erected the building which we had regarded as an indispensable part of our task.

And, in the contrary case, if we succeed in creating the fetish of the incomprehensible (or the

fetish of that which is comprehensible only to a few), the fetish of the exclusive and the secret, if we exclude reality and its realistic degenerations, then we find ourselves suddenly surrounded by

an impossible country, a quagmire of leaves, of mud, of cloud, where our feet sink in and we are

stifled by the impossibility of communicating.

As far as we in particular are concerned, we writers within the tremendously far-flung American

region, we listen unceasingly to the call to fill this mighty void with beings of flesh and blood.

We are conscious of our duty as fulfillers - at the same time we are faced with the unavoidable

task of critical communication within a world which is empty and is not less full of injustices,

punishments and sufferings because it is empty - and we feel also the responsibility for

reawakening the old dreams which sleep in statues of stone in the ruined ancient monuments, in

the wide-stretching silence in planetary plains, in dense primeval forests, in rivers which roar likethunder. We must fill with words the most distant places in a dumb continent and we are

intoxicated by this task of making fables and giving names. This is perhaps what is decisive in

my own humble case, and if so my exaggerations or my abundance or my rhetoric would not be

anything other than the simplest of events within the daily work of an American. Each and every

one of my verses has chosen to take its place as a tangible object, each and every one of my

poems has claimed to be a useful working instrument, each and every one of my songs has

endeavoured to serve as a sign in space for a meeting between paths which cross one another, or

as a piece of stone or wood on which someone, some others, those who follow after, will be able

to carve the new signs.

By extending to these extreme consequences the poet's duty, in truth or in error, I determined

that my posture within the community and before life should be that of in a humble way taking

sides. I decided this when I saw so many honourable misfortunes, lone victories, splendid

defeats. In the midst of the arena of America's struggles I saw that my human task was none

other than to join the extensive forces of the organized masses of the people, to join with life and

soul with suffering and hope, because it is only from this great popular stream that the necessary

changes can arise for the authors and for the nations. And even if my attitude gave and still gives

rise to bitter or friendly objections, the truth is that I can find no other way for an author in our

far-flung and cruel countries, if we want the darkness to blossom, if we are concerned that the

millions of people who have learnt neither to read us nor to read at all, who still cannot write or

write to us, are to feel at home in the area of dignity without which it is impossible for them to be

complete human beings.

We have inherited this damaged life of peoples dragging behind them the burden of the

condemnation of centuries, the most paradisaical of peoples, the purest, those who with stones

and metals made marvellous towers, jewels of dazzling brilliance - peoples who were suddenly

despoiled and silenced in the fearful epochs of colonialism which still linger on.

Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. But there is no such thing as a lone struggle, no



such thing as a lone hope. In every human being are combined the most distant epochs, passivity,

mistakes, sufferings, the pressing urgencies of our own time, the pace of history. But what would

have become of me if, for example, I had contributed in some way to the maintenance of the

feudal past of the great American continent? How should I then have been able to raise my brow,

illuminated by the honour which Sweden has conferred on me, if I had not been able to feel some

pride in having taken part, even to a small extent, in the change which has now come over mycountry? It is necessary to look at the map of America, to place oneself before its splendid

multiplicity, before the cosmic generosity of the wide places which surround us, in order to

understand why many writers refuse to share the dishonour and plundering of the past, of all that

which dark gods have taken away from the American peoples.

I chose the difficult way of divided responsibility and, rather than to repeat the worship of the

individual as the sun and centre of the system, I have preferred to offer my services in all

modesty to an honourable army which may from time to time commit mistakes but which moves

forward unceasingly and struggles every day against the anachronism of the refractory and the

impatience of the opinionated. For I believe that my duties as a poet involve friendship not only

with the rose and with symmetry, with exalted love and endless longing, but also withunrelenting human occupations which I have incorporated into my poetry.

It is today exactly one hundred years since an unhappy and brilliant poet, the most awesome of

all despairing souls, wrote down this prophecy: "A l'aurore, armés d'une ardente patience, nous

entrerons aux splendides Villes." "In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the

splendid Cities."

I believe in this prophecy of Rimbaud, the Visionary. I come from a dark region, from a land

separated from all others by the steep contours of its geography. I was the most forlorn of poets

and my poetry was provincial, oppressed and rainy. But always I had put my trust in man. I

never lost hope. It is perhaps because of this that I have reached as far as I now have with my

poetry and also with my banner.

Lastly, I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that the whole future

has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: only with a burning patience can we conquer the

splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind.

In this way the song will not have been sung in vain.



Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Solitude of Latin America

Antonio Pigafetta, a Florentine navigator who went with Magellan on the first voyage around the

world, wrote, upon his passage through our southern lands of America, a strictly accurate

account that nonetheless resembles a venture into fantasy. In it he recorded that he had seen hogs

with navels on their haunches, clawless birds whose hens laid eggs on the backs of their mates,and others still, resembling tongueless pelicans, with beaks like spoons. He wrote of having seen

a misbegotten creature with the head and ears of a mule, a camel's body, the legs of a deer and

the whinny of a horse. He described how the first native encountered in Patagonia was

confronted with a mirror, whereupon that impassioned giant lost his senses to the terror of his

own image.

This short and fascinating book, which even then contained the seeds of our present-day novels,

is by no means the most staggering account of our reality in that age. The Chronicles of the

Indies left us countless others. Eldorado, our so avidly sought and illusory land, appeared on

numerous maps for many a long year, shifting its place and form to suit the fantasy of

cartographers. In his search for the fountain of eternal youth, the mythical Alvar Núñez Cabezade Vaca explored the north of Mexico for eight years, in a deluded expedition whose members

devoured each other and only five of whom returned, of the six hundred who had undertaken it.

One of the many unfathomed mysteries of that age is that of the eleven thousand mules, each

loaded with one hundred pounds of gold, that left Cuzco one day to pay the ransom of Atahualpa

and never reached their destination. Subsequently, in colonial times, hens were sold in Cartagena

de Indias, that had been raised on alluvial land and whose gizzards contained tiny lumps of gold.

One founder's lust for gold beset us until recently. As late as the last century, a German mission

appointed to study the construction of an interoceanic railroad across the Isthmus of Panama

concluded that the project was feasible on one condition: that the rails not be made of iron, which

was scarce in the region, but of gold.

Our independence from Spanish domination did not put us beyond the reach of madness. General

Antonio López de Santana, three times dictator of Mexico, held a magnificent funeral for the

right leg he had lost in the so-called Pastry War. General Gabriel García Moreno ruled Ecuador

for sixteen years as an absolute monarch; at his wake, the corpse was seated on the presidential

chair, decked out in full-dress uniform and a protective layer of medals. General Maximiliano

Hernández Martínez, the theosophical despot of El Salvador who had thirty thousand peasants

slaughtered in a savage massacre, invented a pendulum to detect poison in his food, and had

streetlamps draped in red paper to defeat an epidemic of scarlet fever. The statue to General

Francisco Moraz´n erected in the main square of Tegucigalpa is actually one of Marshal Ney,

purchased at a Paris warehouse of second-hand sculptures.

Eleven years ago, the Chilean Pablo Neruda, one of the outstanding poets of our time,

enlightened this audience with his word. Since then, the Europeans of good will - and sometimes

those of bad, as well - have been struck, with ever greater force, by the unearthly tidings of Latin

America, that boundless realm of haunted men and historic women, whose unending obstinacy

blurs into legend. We have not had a moment's rest. A promethean president, entrenched in his

burning palace, died fighting an entire army, alone; and two suspicious airplane accidents, yet to

be explained, cut short the life of another great-hearted president and that of a democratic soldier

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who had revived the dignity of his people. There have been five wars and seventeen military

coups; there emerged a diabolic dictator who is carrying out, in God's name, the first Latin

American ethnocide of our time. In the meantime, twenty million Latin American children died

before the age of one - more than have been born in Europe since 1970. Those missing because

of repression number nearly one hundred and twenty thousand, which is as if no one could

account for all the inhabitants of Uppsala. Numerous women arrested while pregnant have givenbirth in Argentine prisons, yet nobody knows the whereabouts and identity of their children who

were furtively adopted or sent to an orphanage by order of the military authorities. Because they

tried to change this state of things, nearly two hundred thousand men and women have died

throughout the continent, and over one hundred thousand have lost their lives in three small and

ill-fated countries of Central America: Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. If this had

happened in the United States, the corresponding figure would be that of one million six hundred

thousand violent deaths in four years.

One million people have fled Chile, a country with a tradition of hospitality - that is, ten per cent

of its population. Uruguay, a tiny nation of two and a half million inhabitants which considered

itself the continent's most civilized country, has lost to exile one out of every five citizens. Since1979, the civil war in El Salvador has produced almost one refugee every twenty minutes. The

country that could be formed of all the exiles and forced emigrants of Latin America would have

a population larger than that of Norway.

I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved

the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within

us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of

insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is

but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors

and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of

imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives

believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.

And if these difficulties, whose essence we share, hinder us, it is understandable that the rational

talents on this side of the world, exalted in the contemplation of their own cultures, should have

found themselves without valid means to interpret us. It is only natural that they insist on

measuring us with the yardstick that they use for themselves, forgetting that the ravages of life

are not the same for all, and that the quest of our own identity is just as arduous and bloody for

us as it was for them. The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only

to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary. Venerable Europe would

perhaps be more perceptive if it tried to see us in its own past. If only it recalled that London

took three hundred years to build its first city wall, and three hundred years more to acquire a

bishop; that Rome labored in a gloom of uncertainty for twenty centuries, until an Etruscan King

anchored it in history; and that the peaceful Swiss of today, who feast us with their mild cheeses

and apathetic watches, bloodied Europe as soldiers of fortune, as late as the Sixteenth Century.

Even at the height of the Renaissance, twelve thousand lansquenets in the pay of the imperial

armies sacked and devastated Rome and put eight thousand of its inhabitants to the sword.

I do not mean to embody the illusions of Tonio Kröger, whose dreams of uniting a chaste north

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to a passionate south were exalted here, fifty-three years ago, by Thomas Mann. But I do believe

that those clear-sighted Europeans who struggle, here as well, for a more just and humane

homeland, could help us far better if they reconsidered their way of seeing us. Solidarity with our

dreams will not make us feel less alone, as long as it is not translated into concrete acts of

legitimate support for all the peoples that assume the illusion of having a life of their own in the

distribution of the world.

Latin America neither wants, nor has any reason, to be a pawn without a will of its own; nor is it

merely wishful thinking that its quest for independence and originality should become a Western

aspiration. However, the navigational advances that have narrowed such distances between our

Americas and Europe seem, conversely, to have accentuated our cultural remoteness. Why is the

originality so readily granted us in literature so mistrustfully denied us in our difficult attempts at

social change? Why think that the social justice sought by progressive Europeans for their own

countries cannot also be a goal for Latin America, with different methods for dissimilar

conditions? No: the immeasurable violence and pain of our history are the result of age-old

inequities and untold bitterness, and not a conspiracy plotted three thousand leagues from our

home. But many European leaders and thinkers have thought so, with the childishness of old-timers who have forgotten the fruitful excess of their youth as if it were impossible to find

another destiny than to live at the mercy of the two great masters of the world. This, my friends,

is the very scale of our solitude.

In spite of this, to oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life. Neither floods

nor plagues, famines nor cataclysms, nor even the eternal wars of century upon century, have

been able to subdue the persistent advantage of life over death. An advantage that grows and

quickens: every year, there are seventy-four million more births than deaths, a sufficient number

of new lives to multiply, each year, the population of New York sevenfold. Most of these births

occur in the countries of least resources - including, of course, those of Latin America.

Conversely, the most prosperous countries have succeeded in accumulating powers of

destruction such as to annihilate, a hundred times over, not only all the human beings that have

existed to this day, but also the totality of all living beings that have ever drawn breath on this

planet of misfortune.

On a day like today, my master William Faulkner said, "I decline to accept the end of man". I

would fall unworthy of standing in this place that was his, if I were not fully aware that the

colossal tragedy he refused to recognize thirty-two years ago is now, for the first time since the

beginning of humanity, nothing more than a simple scientific possibility. Faced with this

awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the

inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to

engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one

will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be

possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and

forever, a second opportunity on earth.











Wislawa Szymborska: The Poet and the World

They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me,

anyway. But I have a feeling that the sentences to come - the third, the sixth, the tenth, and so on,

up to the final line - will be just as hard, since I'm supposed to talk about poetry. I've said very

little on the subject, next to nothing, in fact. And whenever I have said anything, I've always hadthe sneaking suspicion that I'm not very good at it. This is why my lecture will be rather short.

All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.

Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves.

They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in

our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively

packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite

believe in them yourself ... When filling in questionnaires or chatting with strangers, that is,

when they can't avoid revealing their profession, poets prefer to use the general term "writer" or

replace "poet" with the name of whatever job they do in addition to writing. Bureaucrats and bus

passengers respond with a touch of incredulity and alarm when they find out that they're dealingwith a poet. I suppose philosophers may meet with a similar reaction. Still, they're in a better

position, since as often as not they can embellish their calling with some kind of scholarly title.

Professor of philosophy - now that sounds much more respectable.

But there are no professors of poetry. This would mean, after all, that poetry is an occupation

requiring specialized study, regular examinations, theoretical articles with bibliographies and

footnotes attached, and finally, ceremoniously conferred diplomas. And this would mean, in turn,

that it's not enough to cover pages with even the most exquisite poems in order to become a poet.

The crucial element is some slip of paper bearing an official stamp. Let us recall that the pride of

Russian poetry, the future Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky was once sentenced to internal exile

precisely on such grounds. They called him "a parasite," because he lacked official certificationgranting him the right to be a poet ...

Several years ago, I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Brodsky in person. And I noticed

that, of all the poets I've known, he was the only one who enjoyed calling himself a poet. He

pronounced the word without inhibitions.

Just the opposite - he spoke it with defiant freedom. It seems to me that this must have been

because he recalled the brutal humiliations he had experienced in his youth.

In more fortunate countries, where human dignity isn't assaulted so readily, poets yearn, of

course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselvesabove the common herd and the daily grind. And yet it wasn't so long ago, in this century's first

decades, that poets strove to shock us with their extravagant dress and eccentric behavior. But all

this was merely for the sake of public display. The moment always came when poets had to close

the doors behind them, strip off their mantles, fripperies, and other poetic paraphernalia, and

confront - silently, patiently awaiting their own selves - the still white sheet of paper. For this is

finally what really counts.







It's not accidental that film biographies of great scientists and artists are produced in droves. The

more ambitious directors seek to reproduce convincingly the creative process that led to

important scientific discoveries or the emergence of a masterpiece. And one can depict certain

kinds of scientific labor with some success. Laboratories, sundry instruments, elaborate

machinery brought to life: such scenes may hold the audience's interest for a while. And those

moments of uncertainty - will the experiment, conducted for the thousandth time with some tinymodification, finally yield the desired result? - can be quite dramatic. Films about painters can be

spectacular, as they go about recreating every stage of a famous painting's evolution, from the

first penciled line to the final brush-stroke. Music swells in films about composers: the first bars

of the melody that rings in the musician's ears finally emerge as a mature work in symphonic

form. Of course this is all quite naive and doesn't explain the strange mental state popularly

known as inspiration, but at least there's something to look at and listen to.

But poets are the worst. Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic. Someone sits at a table or lies on

a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down

seven lines only to cross out one of them fifteen minutes later, and then another hour passes,

during which nothing happens ... Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?

I've mentioned inspiration. Contemporary poets answer evasively when asked what it is, and if it

actually exists. It's not that they've never known the blessing of this inner impulse. It's just not

easy to explain something to someone else that you don't understand yourself.

When I'm asked about this on occasion, I hedge the question too. But my answer is this:

inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will

always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've

consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include

doctors, teachers, gardeners - and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes

one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it.Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from

every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."

There aren't many such people. Most of the earth's inhabitants work to get by. They work

because they have to. They didn't pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances

of their lives did the choosing for them. Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because

others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest

human miseries. And there's no sign that coming centuries will produce any changes for the

better as far as this goes.

And so, though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select

group of Fortune's darlings.

At this point, though, certain doubts may arise in my audience. All sorts of torturers, dictators,

fanatics, and demagogues struggling for power by way of a few loudly shouted slogans also

enjoy their jobs, and they too perform their duties with inventive fervor. Well, yes, but they

"know." They know, and whatever they know is enough for them once and for all. They don't

want to find out about anything else, since that might diminish their arguments' force. And any



knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the

temperature required for sustaining life. In the most extreme cases, cases well known from

ancient and modern history, it even poses a lethal threat to society.

This is why I value that little phrase "I don't know" so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty

wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses inwhich our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself "I don't know,"

the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones and at best he

would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie

Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself "I don't know", she probably would have wound up

teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families, and would

have ended her days performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job. But she kept on saying

"I don't know," and these words led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where restless,

questing spirits are occasionally rewarded with the Nobel Prize.

Poets, if they're genuine, must also keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to

answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate,starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's absolutely inadequate to

boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-

dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their

"oeuvre" ...

I sometimes dream of situations that can't possibly come true. I audaciously imagine, for

example, that I get a chance to chat with the Ecclesiastes, the author of that moving lament on

the vanity of all human endeavors. I would bow very deeply before him, because he is, after all,

one of the greatest poets, for me at least. That done, I would grab his hand. "'There's nothing new

under the sun': that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the

sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you.And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read

your poem. And that cypress that you're sitting under hasn't been growing since the dawn of

time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same.

And Ecclesiastes, I'd also like to ask you what new thing under the sun you're planning to work

on now? A further supplement to the thoughts you've already expressed? Or maybe you're

tempted to contradict some of them now? In your earlier work you mentioned joy - so what if it's

fleeting? So maybe your new-under-the-sun poem will be about joy? Have you taken notes yet,

do you have drafts? I doubt you'll say, 'I've written everything down, I've got nothing left to add.'

There's no poet in the world who can say this, least of all a great poet like yourself."

The world - whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or

embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even

plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses

pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already

dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to

which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is

by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world - it is astonishing.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1911/index.html








But "astonishing" is an epithet concealing a logical trap. We're astonished, after all, by things

that deviate from some well-known and universally acknowledged norm, from an obviousness

we've grown accustomed to. Now the point is, there is no such obvious world. Our astonishment

exists per se and isn't based on comparison with something else.

Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like"the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events" ... But in the language of

poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a

single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single

existence, not anyone's existence in this world.

It looks like poets will always have their work cut out for them.



Elfriede Jelinek: Sidelined

Is writing the gift of curling up, of curling up with reality? One would so love to curl up, of

course, but what happens to me then? What happens to those, who don’t really know reality at

all? It’s so very dishevelled. No comb, that could smooth it down. The writers run through it and

despairingly gather together their hair into a style, which promptly haunts them at night.Something’s wrong with the way one looks. The beautifully piled up hair can be chased out of its

home of dreams again, but can anyway no longer be tamed. Or hangs limp once more, a veil

before a face, no sooner than it could finally be subdued. Or stands involuntarily on end in horror

at what is constantly happening. It simply won’t be tidied up. It doesn’t want to. No matter how

often one runs the comb with the couple of broken off teeth through it - it just doesn’t.Something is even less right than before. The writing, that deals with what happens, runs through

one’s fingers like the time, and not only the time, during which it was written, during which life

stopped. No one has missed anything, if life stopped. Not the one living and not dead time, and

the one who is dead not at all. When one was still writing, time found its way into the work of

other writers. Since it is time, it can do everything at once: find its way into one’s own work and

simultaneously into the work of others, blow into the tousled hairstyles of others like a fresh,even if malign wind, which has risen suddenly and unexpectedly from the direction of reality.

Once something has risen, then perhaps it doesn’t lie down again so quickly. The angry wind

blows and sweeps everything with it. And it sweeps everything away, no matter where, but never

back to this reality, which is supposed to be represented. Everywhere, except there. Reality is

what gets under the hair, under the skirts and just that: sweeps them away and into something

else. How can the writer know reality, if it is that which gets into him and sweeps him away,

forever onto the sidelines. From there, on the one hand, he can see better, on the other he himself

cannot remain on the way of reality. There is no place for him there. His place is always outside.

Only what he says from the outside can be taken up inside, and that because he speaks

ambiguities. And then there are already two who fit, two whose faces are right, who warn, that

nothing is happening, two who construe it in different directions, reach out to the inadequategrounds, which have long ago broken off like the fangs of the comb. Either or. True or false. It

had to happen sooner or later, since the ground as building ground was quite inadequate. And

how could one build on a bottomless pit anyway? But the inadequacy that enters the writers’

field of vision, is still adequate enough for something, that they could also take or leave. They

could take or leave it, and they do leave it. They don’t kill it. They merely look at it with their

bleary eyes, but it does not become arbitrary because of this bleary gaze. The gaze is well aimed.

Whatever is struck by this gaze says, even as it sinks down, although it has hardly been looked

at, although it has not even been exposed to the sharp gaze of the public, whatever has been

struck never says, that it could also have been something else, before it fell victim to this one

description. It says exactly what had been better left unsaid (because it could have been better

said?), what always had to remain unclear and groundless. Too many have already sunk into it upto their stomachs. It’s quicksand, but it doesn’t quicken anything. It is groundless, but notwithout grounds. It is as you like, but it is not liked.

The sidelines are at the service of the life, that precisely does not take place there, otherwise we

would not all be in the thick of it, in the fullness, the fullness of human life, and it is at the

service of the observation of the life, which is always taking place somewhere else. Where one is

not. Why insult someone, because he cannot find his way back to the path of journeying, of life,



of life’s journey, if he has borne it - and this bearing is no bearing someone, but nor is it any kind

of bearing on - has simply fortuitously borne it, like the dust on a pair of shoes, which is

pitilessly hunted down by the housewife, if a little less pitilessly than the stranger is hunted down

by the locals. What kind of dust is it? Is it radioactive or active by itself, just like that, I’m only

asking, because it leaves this strange trail of light on the way? Is what is running alongside and

never meeting up with the writer again, the way, or is the writer the one who is runningalongside, onto the sidelines? He has not yet passed away, but he’s already passed the linenevertheless. From there he sees those who have parted from him, but from one another too, in

all their variety, in order to represent them in all their credulity, in order to get them on form,

because form is the most important thing, anyway he sees them better from there. But that, too, is

chalked up against him, so are those chalk marks and not particles of luminous matter, which

mark the way of writing? At any rate it’s a marking out, which simultaneously shows and

obscures and afterwards carefully covers up again the trail he himself laid. One was never there

at all. But nevertheless one knows what’s up. The words have come down from a screen, from

blood-smeared faces distorted with pain, from laughing, made-up faces, with lips pumped up

beforehand just for the make-up or from others, who gave the right answer to a question in a

quiz, or born mouthers, women, who have nothing for and nothing against, who stood up andtook off a jacket to point their freshly hardened breasts, which were once steeled and belonged to

men, at the camera. In addition any amount of throats, out of which singing comes like bad

breath, only louder. That is what could be seen on the way, if one were still on it. One goes out

of the way of the way. Perhaps one sees it from a distance, where one remains alone, and how

gladly, because one wants to see the way, but not walk it. Did this path make a noise just now?

Does it want to draw attention to itself with noises now and not just with lights, loud people, loud

lights? Is the way, which one cannot walk, afraid of not being walked at all, when so many sins

are being constantly committed after all, torture, outrages, theft, threatening behaviour, necessary

threat in the manufacture of significant world fates? It makes no difference to the way. It bears

everything, firmly, even if groundlessly. Without ground. On lost ground. My hair, as already

mentioned, is standing on end, and no setting lotion there, which could force it to firm up again.

No firmness in myself either. Not on me, not in me. When one’s on the sidelines, one always hasto be ready to jump a bit and then another bit to the side, into the empty space, which is right

next to the sidelines. And the sidelines have brought their sideline pitfall along with them, it’sready at any time, it gapes wide, to lure one even further out. Luring out is luring in. Please, I

don’t want to lose sight now of the way, which I’m not on. I would so like to describe it honestlyand above all truly and accurately. If I’m actually looking at it, it should also do something for

me. But this way spares me nothing. It leaves me nothing. What else is there left for me? I am

prevented from being on my way, I can hardly make my way at all. I am out, while not going

out. And there, too, I should certainly like to have protection against my own uncertainty, but

also against the uncertainty of the ground, on which I’m standing. It runs to make certain, not

only to protect me, my language right beside me, and checks, whether I am doing it properly,

describing reality properly wrongly, because it always has to be described wrongly, there’s no

other way, but so wrongly, that anyone who reads or hears it, notices the falseness immediately.

Those are lies! And this dog, language, which is supposed to protect me, that’s why I have him,

after all, is now snapping at my heels. My protector wants to bite me. My only protector against

being described, language, which, conversely, exists to describe something else, that I am not -

that is why I cover so much paper - my only protector is turning against me. Perhaps I only keep

him at all, so that he, while pretending to protect me, pounces on me. Because I sought



protection in writing, this being on my way, language, which in motion, in speaking, appeared to

be a safe shelter, turns against me. No wonder. I mistrusted it immediately, after all. What kind

of camouflage is that, which exists, not to make one invisible, but ever more distinct?

Sometimes language finds itself on the way by mistake, but it doesn’t go out of the way. It is no

arbitrary process, speaking with language, it is one that is involuntarily arbitrary, whether onelikes it or not. Language knows what it wants. Good for it, because I don’t know, no not at all.Talk, talking in general keeps on talking over there now, because there’s always talking, talking,

without beginning or end, but there’s no speaking. So there’s talking over there, wherever theothers are staying, because they don’t want to linger, they’re very occupied. Only them over

there. Not me. Only the language, which sometimes moves away from me, to the people, not the

other people, but moves away over to the real, genuine, on the well-signposted way (who can go

astray here?), following their every movement like a camera, so that it at least, the language,

finds out, how and what life is, because then it is precisely not that, and afterwards all of it must

be described, even in what it precisely is not. Let’s talk about the fact, that we are supposed to gofor a medical check-up once again. Yet all at once we suddenly speak, with due rigour, like

someone who has a choice, whether or not to speak. Whatever happens, only the language goesaway from me, I myself, I stay away. The language goes. I stay, but away. Not on the way. And

I’m speechless.

No, it’s still there. Has it perhaps been there all the time, did it weigh up, whom it could weigh

down? It has noticed me now and immediately snaps at me, this language. It dares to adopt this

tone of command to me, it raises its hand against me, it doesn’t like me. It would gladly like thenice people on the way, alongside whom it runs, like the dog it is, feigning obedience. In reality

it not only disobeys me, but everyone else, too. It is for no-one but itself. It cries out through the

night, because no-one has remembered to put up lights beside this way, which are supplied by

nothing but the sun and no longer need any current at all from the socket, or to find the path a

proper path name. But it has so many names, that it would be impossible to keep up with all thenaming, if one tried. I shout across, in my loneliness, stamping across these graves of the

departed, because since I am already running alongside, I cannot pay attention as well to what

I’m treading on, whom I’m treading down, I would only somehow like to get to the place wheremy language already is, and where it smirks mockingly across at me. Because it knows, that, if I

ever tried to live, it would soon trip me up, then rub salt in my wounds. Good. So I will scatter

salt on the way of the others, I throw it down, so that their ice melts, coarse salt, so that their

language loses its firm ground. And yet it has long been groundless. What bottomless cheek on

its part! If I do not have solid ground under my feet, then my language can’t either. Serve it

right! Why did it not stay with me, on the sidelines, why did it part from me? It wanted to see

more than me? On the highway over there, where there are more people, above all more likeable

ones, chatting nicely to each other? It wanted to know more than me? It has always known more

than me, it’s tr ue, but it has to know even more than that. It will end up killing itself by eating

into itself, my language. It will overindulge on reality. Serve it right! I spat it out, but it spits

nothing out, it’s good at keeping it down. My language calls over to me, over on the sidelines, it

likes best of all to call over to the sidelines, it doesn’t have to take such careful aim, but it

doesn’t have to, because it always hits the target, not by saying something or other, but byspeaking with the “austerity of letting be”, as Heidegger says about Trakl. It calls me, language

does, today anyone can do it, because everyone always carries their language around with them



in a small gadget, so that they can speak, why would they have learned it?, so it calls me where I

am caught in the trap and cry out and thrash about, but no, it’s not true, my language isn’t

calling, it’s gone, too, my language has gone from me, that’s why it has to call, it shouts in myear, no matter out of which gadget, a computer or a mobile phone, a phone booth, from where it

roars in my ear, that there’s no point in saying something out loud, it already does that anyway, I

should simply say what it tells me; because there would be even less point in for once speakingwhat was on one’s mind to a dear person, who has fallen down on the case and whom one can

trust, because he has fallen and won’t get up again so quickly, in order to pursue one and, yes, to

chat a little. There’s no point. The words of my language over there on the pleasant way (I knowit’s more pleasant than mine, which is actually no way at all, but I can’t see it clearly, but I know,

that I too would like to be there), the words of my language have, therefore, in parting from me,

immediately become a speaking out. No, no talking it out with someone. A speaking out. It

listens to itself speaking out, my language, it corrects itself, because speaking can still be

improved at any time; yes, it can always be improved, it is even entirely there to be improved

and then to make a new linguistic ruling, but then only to be able immediately to overturn the

rules again. That will then be the new way to salvation, of course I mean solution. A quick fix.

Please, dear language, don’t you for once want to listen first? So that you learn something, so that you at last learn the rules of speaking ... What are you shouting and grumbling about over

there? Are you doing it, language, so that I graciously take you in you again? I thought, you

didn’t want to come back to me at all! There was no sign, that you wanted to come back to me, it

would have been pointless anyway, I wouldn’t have understood the sign. You only becamelanguage to get away from me and to ensure that I got on? But nothing is ensured. And by you

not at all, as well as I know you. I don’t even recognise you again. You want to come back to me

of your own accord? I won’t take you in any more, what do you say to that? Away is away.

Away is no way. So if my loneliness, if my constant absence, my uninterrupted existence on the

sidelines came in person to fetch back language, so that it, well-looked-after by me, at last came

home, to a beautiful sound, which it could utter, then it would only happen, so that with this

sound, this penetrating, piercing howling of a siren, blown by the wind, it could drive me further,

ever further back from the sidelines. Because of the recoil of this language, which I myself

produced and which has run away from me (or did I produce it for that purpose? So that it

immediately runs away from me, because I have not managed to run away from myself in time?),

I am chased ever deeper into this space beyond the sidelines. My language is already wallowing

blissfully in its muddy pool, the little provisional grave on the way, and it looks up at the grave

in the air, it wallows on its back, a friendly creature, which would like to please human beings

like any respectable language, it wallows, opens its legs, presumably to let itself be stroked, why

else. It’s greedy for caresses, after all. That stops it from gazing after the dead, so that I must

gaze after them instead, and of course in the end it’s down to me. So I had no time to curb mylanguage, which now shamelessly rolls around under the hands of the caressers. There are simply

too many dead, whom I have to see to, that’s an Austrian technical term for: whom I have to look

after, whom I have to treat well, but then we’re famous for that, for always treating everyone

well. The world is looking to us, no need to worry. We don’t have to take care of that. Yet themore clearly this demand, to gaze at the dead, sounds in me, the less am I able to pay attention to

my words. I must gaze at the dead, while meanwhile the strollers are stroking the good old

language and chucking it under the chin, which doesn’t make the dead any more a live. No one is

to blame. Even I, dishevelled as I and my hair are, am not to blame for the dead staying dead. I

want the language over there to finally stop making itself the slave of strangers’ hands, no matter



how good it feels, I want it to begin by stopping making demands, but itself become a demand,

to finally face up to, not the caresses, but a demand to come back to me, because language

always has to face up, only doesn’t always know it and doesn’t listen to me. It has to face up,because the people who want to adopt it instead of a child, it’s so lovable, if one loves it, people

therefore never face up, they decide, they don’t answer calls, many of them even immediately

destroyed, tore up, burnt their call-up order to sociability, and the flag along with it. So the morepeople who take up the invitation of my language to scratch its stomach, to ruffle something, to

affectionately accept its friendliness, the further I stumble away, I have finally lost my language

to those who treat it better, I’m almost flying, where on earth was this way, that I need in order to

hurry down? How do I get where to do what? How do I get to the place, where I can unpack my

tools, but in reality can right away pack them up again? Over there something bright is gleaming

under the branches, is that the place, where my language first of all flatters the others, rocks them

into a sense of security, only in order for itself to be lovingly rocked in the end for once? Or does

it want to snap again? It always wants to do nothing but bite, only the others don’t know it yet,

but I know it very well, it was with me for a long time. Beforehand there’s first of all cuddles andwhispering sweet nothings to this seemingly tame creature, which everyone has at home anyway,

why should they bring a strange animal into the house? So why should this language be anydifferent from what they already know? And if it were different, then perhaps it might be

dangerous to take it in. Perhaps it won’t get on with the one they already have. The more friendly

strangers there are, who know how to live, but are nevertheless very far from knowing their life,

since they pursue their caressing intents, because they always have to pursue something, the

more my seeing no longer clearly sees the way through to the language any more. Miles and

more. Who else should be able to see through things, if not seeing? Speaking wants to take over

seeing as well? It wants to speak, before it has even seen? It wallows there, is groped by hands,

buffeted by winds, caressed by storms, insulted by listening, until it stops listening altogether.

Well, then: all listen here for once! Whoever doesn’t want to listen, must speak without being

listened to. Almost everyone is not listened to, although they speak. I am listened to, although

my language does not belong to me, although I can hardly see it any more. Much is said against

it. So it no longer has much to say for itself, that’s fine. It’s listened to, as it slowly repeats, whilesomewhere a red button is pressed, which sets off a terrible explosion. There’s nothing left to say

except: Our Father, which art. It cannot mean me, although after all I am father, that is: mother,

of my language. I am the father of my mother tongue. The mother tongue was there from the

beginning, it was in me, but no father was there, who might have belonged to it. My language

was often unbecoming, that was often made clear enough to me, but I didn’t want to take the

hint. My fault. The father left this nuclear family along with the mother tongue. Right he was. In

his place I would not have stayed either. My mother tongue has followed my father now, it’s

gone. It is, as already mentioned, over there. It listens to the people on the way. On the father’sway, who went too soon. Now the language knows something, that you don’t know, that he

didn’t know. But the more it knows, the less it says. Of course, it’s constantly saying something, but it’s saying nothing. And already the loneliness is taking its leave. It’s no longer needed. No

one sees, that I am still inside, in the loneliness. I am not heeded. Perhaps I am honoured, but I

am not heeded. How do I ensure that all these words of mine say something, that could say

something to us? I cannot do it by speaking. In fact I cannot even speak, because my language is

unfortunately not at home just now. Over there it says something else, which I didn’t ask it to

either, but it has already forgotten my command from the start. It doesn’t tell me, although it belongs to me, after all. My language doesn’t tell me anything, how should it then tell others



something? But nor is it saying nothing, you must admit that! It says all the more, the further

away from me it is, indeed, only then does it dare say something, that it wants to say itself, then

it dares to disobey me, to resist me. When one looks, one moves further away from the object,

the longer one looks at it. When one speaks, one catches hold of it again, but one cannot hold

onto it. It tears itself away and hurries after its own naming, the many words I have made and I

have lost. Words have been exchanged often enough, the exchange rate is incredibly bad, andthen it’s no more than: incredible. I say something, and then it’s already been forgotten from thestart. That’s what it strove for, it wanted to get away fr om me. The unspeakable is spoken every

day, but what I say, that isn’t to be allowed. That’s mean of what has been spoken. That isincredibly mean. The spoken doesn’t even want to belong to me. It wants to be done, so that one

can say: said and done. I would even be satisfied, if it denied belonging to me, my language, but

it should belong to me nevertheless. How can I ensure, that it is at least a little attached to me?

Nothing sticks to the others after all, so I offer myself to it. Come back! Come back, please! But

no. Over there on the path it’s listening to secrets, that I’m not supposed to know, my language,

and it passes them on, these secrets, to others who don’t want to hear them. I would want to, itwould be my right, indeed, it would go down well, if you like, but it doesn’t stand still, and speak

to me, it doesn’t do that either. It is in the empty space which is distinguished and differentiatesitself from me, in that there are very many there. Emptiness is the way. I am even on the

sidelines of emptiness. I have left the way. I have only said things after another. Much has been

said about me, but hardly any of it is true. I myself have only said what others have said, and I

say: that is now what is really said. As I said - simply incredible! It’s a long time since so much

has been said. One’s listening can’t keep up any more, although one must listen, in order to be

able to do something. In this respect, which in reality is a looking away, even a looking away

from myself, there’s nothing to be said about me, there’s nothing to be said, nothing more to be

said. I’m always only gazing after life, my language turns its back on me, so that it can presentits stomach to strangers to caress, shameless, to me it only shows its back, if anything at all. Too

often it doesn’t give me a sign and doesn’t say anything either. Sometimes I don’t even see itover there any more, and now I can’t even say “as has already been said”, because while I’ve

already said it often enough, I cannot say it any more, I’m lost f or words. Sometimes I see the

back or the soles of the feet, on which they can’t really walk, the words, but faster than I have

been able to for a long time and even now. What am I doing there? Is that why my dear language

has lain down some distance away from me? That way it will, of course, always be faster than

me, jump up and run away, when I go across to it from my place of work, to fetch it. I don’tknow, why I should fetch it. So that it doesn’t fetch me? Perhaps it, who ran away from me,

knows? Who doesn’t follow me? Who now follows the looking and speaking of others, andreally can’t mix up them with me. They are other, because they are the others. For no other

reason, except that they are the others. That’s good enough for my speaking. The main thing is, I

don’t do it: speaking. The others, always the others, so that it’s not me, who belongs to it, sweet

language. I would so much like to stroke it, like the others over there, if I could only catch hold

of it. But then it’s over there, so that I can’t catch hold of it.

When will it silently make off? When will something make off, so there’s silence? The more the

language over there makes off, the louder it can be heard. It’s on everyone’s lips, only not on mylips. My mind is clouded. I have not passed out, but my mind is clouded. I am worn out from

gazing after my language like a lighthouse by the sea, which is supposed to light someone home

and so has itself been lit up, and which as it revolves always reveals something else from the



darkness, but is there anyway, whether it is lit up or not, it’s a lighthouse, which doesn’t helpanyone, no matter how hard that man wishes it would, so as not to have to die in the water. The

harder I try to make it out, the more obstinately it doesn’t go out, language. I now put out this

language light mechanically, I switch to the pilot light, but the more I try to clap myself over it, a

snuffer on the end of a long pole, with which in my childhood the candles in the church were

extinguished, the more I try to snuff out this flame, the more air it seems to have. And all themore loudly it cries out, rolling around under thousands of hands, which do it good, which

unfortunately I have never done, I don’t know myself, what would do me good, so it’s crying out

now, so it can keep away from me. It shouts at the others, so that they too join in and cry out like

it, so that the noise grows louder. It shouts, that I shouldn’t come too close. No one should come

too close to anyone at all. And what has been said should also not come too close to what one

wants to say. One shouldn’t get too close to one’s own language, that is an insult, it is quite

capable of repeating something after itself, piercingly loud, so that no one hears, that what it

says, was earlier recited to it. It even makes me promises, so that I will stay away from it. It

promises me everything, if I just don’t come close to it. Millions are allowed to get close to it,except me! Yet it’s mine! What do you think of that? I just can’t tell you, what I think of that.

This language must have forgotten its beginnings, I’ve got no other explanation. With me itstarted small. No, how big it’s grown, I can’t tell you! Like this I don’t even recognise it. I knew

it, when it was just so high. When it was so quiet, when the language was still my child. Now it

has all at once become gigantic. That’s not my child any more. The child has not grown up, only

big, it doesn’t know that it has not yet outgrown me, but it’s wide awake nevertheless. It is sowide awake, that it drowns itself out with its crying, and anyone else who cries louder than it.

Then it spirals up to an incredible pitch. Believe me, you really don’t want to hear it! Also, please don’t believe that I’m proud of this child! At its beginning I wanted it to remain as quiet

as when it was still speechless. Even now, I don’t want it to sweep over something like a storm,causing others to roar even louder and to raise their arms and throw hard objects, which my

language can no longer even grasp and catch, it has, my fault, too, always been so unathletic. It

doesn’t catch. It can throw, but it can’t catch. I remain imprisoned in it, even when it’s away. I

am the prisoner of my language, which is my prison warder. Funny - it’s not even keeping an eyeon me! Because it is so certain of me? Because it is so certain, that I won’t run away, is that why

it believes, it can leave me? Here comes someone, who has already died, and he talks to me,

although that is not planned for him. He’s allowed to, many dead are speaking now in their

choked voices, now they dare to, because my own language is not keeping any eye on me.

Because it knows, it isn’t necessary. Even if it runs away from me, I won’t slip through its hands.

I am at hand for it, but it has slipped through my hands. But I remain. But what remains, the

writers do not make. What remains is gone. The flight of fancy was cut. Nothing and no one has

come. And if nevertheless, against all reason, something that has not come at all, a little would

like to remain, then what does remain, language, the most fleeting of all, has disappeared. It has

replied to a new situations vacant advert. What should remain, is always gone. It is at any rate

not there. So what is left to one.

Nobel Lectures

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