In 1964 Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature but declined it. The New York Review of Books published his explanation of why he refused to accept the award: www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1964/dec/17/sartre-on-the-nobel-prize/. He claimed that he had rejected the prize because a writer must stay independent of the institutions which award such prizes.
His reputation has waned, but his intellectual struggle is still pertinent, says Stuart Jeffries Sartre said that he might have accepted the Nobel if it had been offered to him during France’s imperial war in Algeria, which he vehemently opposed, because then the award would have helped in the struggle, rather than making Sartre into a brand, an institution, a depoliticised commodity. But it does! Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy, with the notable exception of Iris Murdoch and Arthur Danto, has for the most part been sniffy about Sartre’s philosophical credentials. Finally, Sartre stressed that the Nobel Prize doesn't treat writers of all ideologies and nations equally, since it prefers Western models. This attitude is of course entirely my own and contains no criticism of those who have already been awarded the prize. Throughout his life, Sartre agonised about the purpose of literature. Check) and in which scarcely anyone has the couilles, as they say in France, to politely tell judges where they can put their prize, how lovely to recall what happened on 22 October 1964, when Jean-Paul Sartre turned down the Nobel prize for literature.
However the Nobel committee does not acknowledge refusals, and includes Pasternak and Sartre in its list of Nobel laureates. A writer who adopts political, social or literary positions must act only within the means that are his own – that is, the written word.”. I will comment on some parts.
Still, the decision to award a Nobel Prize cannot be revoked, so that Sartre is still considered the 1964 recipient, despite his categorical refusal to accept it. Sartre explained the reason behind his decision in the French newspaper Le Figaro. Jean-Paul Sartre, French novelist, playwright, and exponent of Existentialism—a philosophy acclaiming the freedom of the individual human being. Finally, Sartre stressed that the Nobel Prize doesn’t treat writers of all ideologies and nations equally, since it prefers Western models. “I was not aware at the time that the Nobel prize is awarded without consulting the opinion of the recipient,” he said. In 1964 Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature but declined it. Indeed, Sartre proved a man of principles, since he had previously rejected membership in the French Legion of Honor, and also said he would have rejected the Lenin Prize had it been offered to him. It would just have been nice if they’d checked with Sartre first. Poetry, wrote Auden, makes nothing happen, Hari Kunzru to decline the 2003 John Llewellyn Rhys prize, 15th Frenchman to win the Nobel for literature, Monty Python’s least funny philosophy sketch.
In 1947’s What is Literature?, he jettisoned a sacred notion of literature as capable of replacing outmoded religious beliefs in favour of the view that it should have a committed social function. He was offered it anyway. ( Log Out / The Swedish Academy, then, was hardly wrong to give the 1964 literature prize to the now-neglected philosopher writer: he was as great a writer and thinker as its members then recognised. So, after at first insisting that “the writer must refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution,” Sartre suddenly says that he would have “gratefully accepted” the award (and thereby allowed himself to be transformed into an institution) when he defended a certain political stance toward the war in Algeria. The writer must therefore refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution, even if this occurs under the most honorable circumstances, as in the present case. Firstly, he expressed regret that his act had caused a public scandal. In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he wrote declining it, stating that "It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize laureate. In 1964 the philosopher, writer, and social commentator Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. All the honors he may receive expose his readers to a pressure I do not consider desirable. My sympathies for the Venezuelan revolutionists commit only myself, while if Jean-Paul Sartre the Nobel laureate champions the Venezuelan resistance, he also commits the entire Nobel Prize as an institution. His lifelong commitments to socialism, anti-fascism and anti-imperialism still resonate. And Sartre provided no reason to support it. Regrets? My sympathies for the Venezuelan revolutionists commit only myself, while if Jean-Paul Sartre the Nobel laureate champions the Venezuelan resistance, he also commits the entire Nobel Prize as an institution. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, but he declined it. That is not a surprise: for Sartre, such refusal to accept what it is to be human was overwhelmingly, paradoxically, what humans do. Sartre’s later reputation probably hasn’t benefited from being championed by Paris’s philosophical lightweight, Bernard-Henri Lévy, who subtitled his biography of his hero The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century (Really? His reputation has waned, but his intellectual struggle is still pertinent, Wed 22 Oct 2014 09.27 EDT Though he was lionised by student radicals in Paris in May 1968, his reputation as a philosopher was on the wane even then. Indeed, Derrida would spend a great deal of effort deriding Sartrean existentialism as a misconstrual of Heidegger. Finally, Sartre stressed that the Nobel Prize doesn't treat writers of all ideologies and nations equally, since it prefers Western models. Backdrop of sponsor’s logo? Nobel Media AB 2020.
The claim makes no sense whatsoever. This attitude is based on my conception of the writer’s enterprise. In his short story Intimacy, we confront a character who, like all of us on occasion, is afraid of the burden of freedom and does everything possible to make others take her decisions for her. He didn’t damn the Nobel in quite the bracing terms that led Hari Kunzru to decline the 2003 John Llewellyn Rhys prize, sponsored by the Mail on Sunday (“As the child of an immigrant, I am only too aware of the poisonous effect of the Mail’s editorial line”), but gently pointed out its Eurocentric shortcomings. He deserves better. Contemporary History (20th century onwards), 1936: Francisco Franco Takes Power in Spain, 1946: Nazi War Criminals Sentenced at Nuremberg, 1949: Communist State Established in China, 2000: Sinking of the Huge Russian Nuclear Submarine K-141 Kursk, Early Modern History (16th to 18th century). Sartre had a few – at least about the money. Available for everyone, funded by readers. The existential plight of humanity, our absurd lot, our moral and political responsibilities that Sartre so brilliantly identified have not gone away; rather, we have chosen the easy path of ignoring them. Fri. 6 Nov 2020. Jean-Paul Sartre declined the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1964 was awarded to Jean-Paul Sartre "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age." NobelPrize.org. The Swedish Academy had selected Sartre for having “exerted a far-reaching influence on our age”. Sartre read in Figaro Littéraire that he was in the frame for the award, so he wrote to the Swedish Academy saying he didn’t want the honour.
But the story is odder than that.
When we watch his play Huis Clos, we might well think of how disastrous our relations with other people are, since we now require them, more than anything else, to confirm our self-images, while they, no less vexingly, chiefly need us to confirm theirs. He didn’t want the Nobel Prize to transform him and associate him with The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Sartre’s argument is riddled with contradiction and nonsense. Learn more about Sartre’s life, works, and philosophy in this article. “I have always declined official honours,” he explained at the time. Change ). Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form." ( Log Out / Check. He didn't want the Nobel Prize to transform him and associate him with The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. When we read his distinctions between being-in-itself (être-en-soi), being-for-itself (être-pour-soi) and being-for-others (être-pour-autrui), we are encouraged to think about the tragicomic nature of what it is to be human – a longing for full control over one’s destiny and for absolute identity, and at the same time, a realisation of the futility of that wish. Sartre cannot have his criticism and eat it too. But it does! © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
This was written in 1964 when the leader of the Eastern bloc was Leonid Brezhnev, “the best man” whom Sartre wanted to win. ( Log Out / If I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre it is not the same thing as if I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prizewinner. This caused a public incident, because it was the first time in history that someone had rejected the prize by his own free will (the prize also includes a substantial amount of money). “But I now understand that when the Swedish Academy has made a decision, it cannot subsequently revoke it.”. When we read his claim that humans can, through imagination and action, change our destiny, we feel something of the burden of responsibility of choice that makes us moral beings. Fifty years ago, Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel prize for literature. Sartre has become more risible than lisible: unremittingly depicted as laughable philosopher toad – ugly, randy, incomprehensible, forever excitably over-caffeinated at Les Deux Magots with Simone de Beauvoir, encircled with pipe smoke and mired in philosophical jargon, not so much a man as a stock pantomime figure. All the honors he may receive expose his readers to a pressure I do not consider desirable.” Obviously, if Sartre thinks that accepting honors is undesirable for a writer, then it follows logically that he is criticizing those writers who do accept honors. How then should we approach Sartre’s writings in 2014? ( Log Out / Check. But why would receiving the Nobel Prize be all right in the case of Algeria but not in connection with Venezuela?
Plus, one might say 50 years on, ça change. The only battle possible today on the cultural front is the battle for the peaceful coexistence of the two cultures, that of the East and that of the West… My sympathies undeniably go to socialism and to what is called the Eastern bloc… I nonetheless hope, of course, that “the best man wins.” That is, socialism. Nevertheless he was awarded the prize. To cite this section MLA style: The Nobel Prize in Literature 1964. The writer who accepts an honor of this kind involves as well as himself the association or institution which has honored him. His brand of existentialism had been eclipsed by structuralists (such as Lévi-Strauss and Althusser) and post-structuralists (such as Derrida and Deleuze). However, the last pages of his enduringly brilliant memoir Words, published the same year as the Nobel refusal, despair over that function: “For a long time I looked on my pen as a sword; now I know how powerless we are.” Poetry, wrote Auden, makes nothing happen; politically committed literature, Sartre was saying, was no better.
On this day the Nobel Institute declared French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre to be the winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature. Truly, it’s difficult not to respect his compunctions. All rights reserved. Is this still the case? Fifty years ago, Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel prize for literature. ); still less by his appearance in Monty Python’s least funny philosophy sketch, “Mrs Premise and Mrs Conclusion visit Jean-Paul Sartre at his Paris home”.