WEBVTT 00:00:03.719 --> 00:00:10.400 Sir, Madam, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, 00:00:10.400 --> 00:00:15.610 In receiving the distinction with which your free Academy has so generously honoured me, 00:00:15.610 --> 00:00:21.150 my gratitude has been profound, particularly when I consider the extent to which this recompense 00:00:21.150 --> 00:00:28.340 has surpassed my personal merits. Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants 00:00:28.350 --> 00:00:38.500 to be recognized. So do I. But I have not been able to learn of your decision without 00:00:38.500 --> 00:00:47.989 comparing its repercussions to what I really am. A man almost young, rich only in his doubts 00:00:47.990 --> 00:00:55.630 and with his work still in progress, accustomed to living in the solitude of work or in the 00:00:55.630 --> 00:01:03.810 retreats of friendship: how would he not feel a kind of panic at hearing the decree that 00:01:03.810 --> 00:01:08.840 transports him all of a sudden, alone and reduced to himself, to the centre of a glaring 00:01:08.840 --> 00:01:17.400 light? And with what feelings could he accept this honour at a time when other writers in 00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:24.600 Europe, among them the very greatest, are condemned to silence, and even at a time when 00:01:24.600 --> 00:01:29.590 the country of his birth is going through unending misery? 00:01:29.600 --> 00:01:37.100 I felt that shock and inner turmoil. In order to regain peace I have had, in short, to come 00:01:37.100 --> 00:01:44.360 to terms with a too generous fortune. And since I cannot live up to it by merely resting 00:01:44.360 --> 00:01:51.280 on my achievement, I have found nothing to support me but what has supported me through 00:01:51.280 --> 00:01:59.380 all my life, even in the most contrary circumstances: the idea that I have of my art and of the 00:01:59.380 --> 00:02:07.119 role of the writer. Let me only tell you, in a spirit of gratitude and friendship, as 00:02:07.120 --> 00:02:11.440 simply as I can, what this idea is. 00:02:11.440 --> 00:02:21.120 For myself, I cannot live without my art. But I have never placed it above everything. 00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:26.760 If, on the other hand, I need it, it is because it cannot be separated from my fellow men, 00:02:26.760 --> 00:02:35.760 and it allows me to live, such as I am, on one level with them. To me, art is not a solitary rejoicing. 00:02:35.760 --> 00:02:42.519 It is a means of stirring the greatest number of people by offering them a privileged picture of 00:02:42.520 --> 00:02:52.340 common joys and sufferings. It obliges the artist not to keep himself apart; it subjects him to the most 00:02:52.340 --> 00:03:00.900 humble and the most universal truth. And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because 00:03:00.900 --> 00:03:07.340 he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his 00:03:07.340 --> 00:03:17.780 difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the 00:03:17.780 --> 00:03:25.920 others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear 00:03:25.920 --> 00:03:33.980 himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand 00:03:33.980 --> 00:03:41.790 rather than to judge. And if they have to take sides in this world, they can perhaps 00:03:41.800 --> 00:03:45.280 side only with that society in which, according to Nietzsche's great words, not the judge 00:03:45.280 --> 00:03:51.180 but the creator will rule, whether he be a worker or an intellectual. 00:03:51.180 --> 00:04:00.260 By the same token, the writer's role is not free from difficult duties. By definition 00:04:00.260 --> 00:04:06.640 he cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history; he is at the service 00:04:06.640 --> 00:04:13.299 of those who suffer it. Otherwise, he will be alone and deprived of his art. 00:04:13.300 --> 00:04:20.399 Not all the armies of tyranny with their millions of men will free him from his isolation, even 00:04:20.399 --> 00:04:27.859 and particularly if he falls into step with them. But the silence of an unknown prisoner, 00:04:27.860 --> 00:04:33.600 abandoned to humiliations at the other end of the world, is enough to draw the writer 00:04:33.600 --> 00:04:39.880 out of his exile, at least whenever, in the midst of the privileges of freedom, he manages 00:04:39.880 --> 00:04:48.460 not to forget that silence, and to transmit it in order to make it resound by the means of art. 00:04:48.460 --> 00:04:58.320 None of us is great enough for such a task. But in all circumstances of life, in obscurity 00:04:58.320 --> 00:05:06.780 or temporary fame, cast in the irons of tyranny or for a time free to express himself, 00:05:06.780 --> 00:05:14.859 the writer can win the heart of a living community that will justify him, on the one condition 00:05:14.860 --> 00:05:19.660 that he will accept to the limit of his abilities the two tasks that constitute the greatness 00:05:19.660 --> 00:05:27.520 of his craft: the service of truth and the service of liberty. Because his task is to 00:05:27.520 --> 00:05:33.719 unite the greatest possible number of people, his art must not compromise with lies and 00:05:33.720 --> 00:05:42.620 servitude which, wherever they rule, breed solitude. Whatever our personal weaknesses may be, 00:05:42.620 --> 00:05:49.280 the nobility of our craft will always be rooted in two commitments, difficult to 00:05:49.320 --> 00:05:57.640 maintain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance to oppression. 00:05:57.640 --> 00:06:04.860 For more than twenty years of an insane history, hopelessly lost like all the men of my generation 00:06:04.860 --> 00:06:11.340 in the convulsions of time, I have been supported by one thing: by the hidden feeling that to 00:06:11.340 --> 00:06:18.900 write today was an honour because this activity was a commitment - and a commitment not only 00:06:18.900 --> 00:06:27.539 to write. Specifically, in view of my powers and my state of being, it was a commitment 00:06:27.540 --> 00:06:31.740 to bear, together with all those who were living through the same history, the misery 00:06:31.740 --> 00:06:39.660 and the hope we shared. These men, who were born at the beginning of the First World War, 00:06:39.660 --> 00:06:48.800 who were twenty when Hitler came to power and the first revolutionary trials were beginning, 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:55.100 who were then confronted as a completion of their education with the Spanish Civil War, 00:06:55.100 --> 00:07:02.400 the Second World War, the world of concentration camps, a Europe of torture and prisons - 00:07:02.400 --> 00:07:11.140 these men must today rear their sons and create their works in a world threatened by nuclear destruction. 00:07:11.140 --> 00:07:17.919 Nobody, I think, can ask them to be optimists. And I even think 00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:26.900 that we should understand - without ceasing to fight it - the error of those who in an excess of despair 00:07:26.900 --> 00:07:32.880 have asserted their right to dishonour and have rushed into the nihilism of the era. 00:07:32.880 --> 00:07:40.200 But the fact remains that most of us, in my country and in Europe, have refused this nihilism 00:07:40.200 --> 00:07:46.600 and have engaged upon a quest for legitimacy. They have had to forge for themselves an art 00:07:46.600 --> 00:07:53.900 of living in times of catastrophe in order to be born a second time and to fight openly 00:07:53.900 --> 00:07:58.780 against the instinct of death at work in our history. 00:07:58.780 --> 00:08:06.539 Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will 00:08:06.540 --> 00:08:13.280 not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world 00:08:13.280 --> 00:08:21.990 from destroying itself. Heir to a corrupt history, in which are mingled fallen revolutions, 00:08:21.100 --> 00:08:30.100 technology gone mad, dead gods, and worn-out ideologies, where mediocre powers can today destroy 00:08:30.100 --> 00:08:35.980 all yet no longer know how to convince, where intelligence has debased itself to become 00:08:35.980 --> 00:08:42.840 the servant of hatred and oppression, this generation has had, both within and without, 00:08:42.840 --> 00:08:48.980 re-establish, starting from its own negations, a little of that which constitutes the dignity 00:08:48.980 --> 00:08:54.380 of life and death. In a world threatened by disintegration, in which our grand inquisitors 00:08:54.380 --> 00:08:58.960 run the risk of establishing forever the kingdom of death, it knows that it should, in an insane 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:10.620 race against the clock, restore among the nations a peace that is not servitude, reconcile anew labour and 00:09:10.620 --> 00:09:17.180 culture, and remake with all men the Ark of the Covenant. It is not certain that this 00:09:17.180 --> 00:09:21.900 generation will ever be able to accomplish this immense task, but already it is rising 00:09:21.900 --> 00:09:30.360 everywhere in the world to the double challenge of truth and liberty and, if necessary, 00:09:30.360 --> 00:09:39.000 knows how to die for it without hate. Wherever it is found, it deserves to be saluted and encouraged, 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:46.160 particularly where it is sacrificing itself. In any event, certain of your complete approval, 00:09:46.160 --> 00:09:51.380 it is to this generation that I should like to pass on the honour that you have just given me. 00:09:51.380 --> 00:09:56.500 At the same time, after having outlined the nobility of the writer's craft, I should have 00:09:56.500 --> 00:10:02.720 put him in his proper place. He has no other claims but those which he shares with his 00:10:02.720 --> 00:10:10.620 comrades in arms: vulnerable but obstinate, unjust but impassioned for justice, doing 00:10:10.620 --> 00:10:16.500 his work without shame or pride in view of everybody, not ceasing to be divided between 00:10:16.500 --> 00:10:23.180 sorrow and beauty, and devoted finally to drawing from his double existence the creations 00:10:23.180 --> 00:10:29.439 that he obstinately tries to erect in the destructive movement of history. Who, 00:10:29.440 --> 00:10:37.820 after all this, can expect from him complete solutions and high morals? Truth is mysterious, elusive, 00:10:37.820 --> 00:10:43.640 always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. 00:10:43.640 --> 00:10:50.580 We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our 00:10:50.580 --> 00:10:57.920 failings on so long a road. What writer would from now on in good conscience dare set himself up 00:10:57.920 --> 00:11:03.959 as a preacher of virtue? For myself, I must state once more that I am not of this kind. 00:11:03.960 --> 00:11:08.260 I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom 00:11:08.260 --> 00:11:15.200 in which I grew up. But although this nostalgia explains many of my errors and my faults, 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:21.000 it has doubtless helped me toward a better understanding of my craft. It is helping me still 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:29.520 to support unquestioningly all those silent men who sustain the life made for them in the world 00:11:29.520 --> 00:11:34.860 only through memory of the return of brief and free happiness. 00:11:34.860 --> 00:11:43.920 Thus reduced to what I really am, to my limits and debts as well as to my difficult creed, 00:11:43.920 --> 00:11:51.260 I feel freer, in concluding, to comment upon the extent and the generosity of the honour 00:11:51.260 --> 00:11:59.140 you have just bestowed upon me, freer also to tell you that I would receive it as an 00:11:59.140 --> 00:12:07.600 homage rendered to all those who, sharing in the same fight, have not received any privilege, 00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:14.360 but have on the contrary known misery and persecution. It remains for me to thank you 00:12:14.360 --> 00:12:20.700 from the bottom of my heart and to make before you publicly, as a personal sign of my gratitude, 00:12:20.700 --> 00:12:31.620 the same and ancient promise of faithfulness which every true artist repeats to himself in silence every day.