Sunday, December 12, 2004

Writing and the reading thereof

The 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek. If her acceptance lecture is an example of her prose, I have no doubts that the Nobel Committee's collective mind is still floating way out in the ether. Which is a distinctive possibility when you consider their choice for the Nobel Peace Prize was the poster girl for Arbor Day. What the heck? Peace for the trees and the Ents. It's all good, man. Read some of this, and pass it to the right....
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 my lips. 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 help anyone, 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.
(From Elfriede Jelinek's Nobel acceptance lecture.)

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home