RAHA
WORLD INDEPENDENT WRITERS' HOME
|
Sontag attacks U.S. in accepting book honor RAHA/13/October/2003 FRANKFURT Lauded as a writer unafraid to speak her mind and an "intellectual ambassador" between the United States and Europe, the American writer Susan Sontag received one of the German-speaking world's most prestigious literary prizes Sunday. In her speech accepting the German Bookseller Association's Peace Prize, worth E15,000, or $17,700, the 70-year-old Sontag chastised the U.S. ambassador to Germany for his refusal to attend the ceremony and praised the role of books in the democratic world. "Especially now, in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom," Sontag said. While Sontag dismisses the suggestion that her recent criticism of President George W. Bush - which met with sympathy in Germany as it staunchly opposed the war in Iraq - was the motive behind her receiving this year's award, her criticism of Daniel Coates, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, was met with resounding applause. She said his absence "shows he is more interested in affirming the ideological stance and the rancorous reactiveness of the Bush administration than he is by fulfilling a normal diplomatic duty." She went on to lament a trans-Atlantic divide shaped by "latent antagonism" and America's view that it alone could save civilization. "They see themselves as defending civilization. The barbarians are outside the gates," Sontag said. Only the United States, "with God on its side," could act. "Americans have got used to seeing the world in terms of enemies. Terrorist is a more flexible word than communist." Sontag, whose works have been translated into more than 30 languages, also recalled her love affair with European, especially German, literature that began when she was 10. The statement on the prize says, "Through her work, never losing site of the European legacy, she has become one of the leading intellectual ambassadors between the two continents." Sontag is popular in Germany, where she has lived periodically. Sontag also spent three years in Sarajevo during the Serb siege of the Bosnian city in the early 1990's and has campaigned on behalf of jailed and persecuted authors. The German writer Ivan Nagel praised Sontag in a speech for letting her emotions and her conscience guide her work and challenging her readers to do the same. "She urges us to base our verdict not on the foundations of legal paragraphs nor in their name, but on the basis of each individual's common sense and human feelings," Nagel said. "Sontag's verdicts, from Vietnam to Iraq, have always been sober and clear, and frequently also prophetic." Last year's prize went to the Nigerian-born writer Chinua Achebe. Past winners also include Octavio Paz and Hermann Hesse, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates, and Vaclav Havel, the former Czech president and anticommunist dissident. Source: (AP, Agence France-Presse) |
|
Support us to make a secure Independent Writers' Refuge
|
Copyright © All Rights Reserved for RAHA world independent writers' home |