The Polish writer said Saturday that people have lost the ability to perceive the world as a living whole, which can be overcome by literature if people open up to compassion and tenderness towards the described reality.
Tokarczuk said: "When I write, I have to feel everything within myself.” She added: “This is how tenderness serves me, it personalizes everything it refers to. (....) Tenderness is the most humble form of love, it is spontaneous and selfless, it does not lead to crime or jealousy."
She said that tenderness is "a mode of perceiving the world as alive, living, connected, cooperating and interdependent," adding that literature is built on tenderness towards every other being than us.
The Nobel Prize winner referred to the global community as oblivious to the magnitude of the problems it is currently faced with: "The world is dying and we don't even notice.” She added: “We become followers of simple forces -- physical, social, economic -- that move us as if we were zombies.”
Tokarczuk said: "The climate and political crisis in which we are trying to find our feet today, and which we wish to counter by saving the world, did not come out of nowhere. Greed, disrespect for nature, selfishness, lack of imagination, endless competition and lack of responsibility have reduced the world to the status of an object that can be cut into pieces, used and destroyed."
"That is why I believe that I must tell the story as if the world were a living unity, constantly becoming one before our very eyes, and we both a small and powerful part of it," Tokarczuk concluded, to a storm of applause.
Her speech was followed by a lecture delivered by the Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 2019, Austrian writer and playwright Peter Handke.
Tokarczuk was on October 10 named the winner of the world’s most prestigious literary award, along with a cheque for almost USD 1 million.
She will collect her award at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.
(aba)
Source: PAP