J. M. Coetzee

In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life. (It has always struck me as strange, by the way, that Alfred Nobel did not institute a philosophy prize, or for that matter that he instituted a physics prize but not a mathematics prize, to say nothing of a music prize - music is, after all, more universal than literature, which is bound to a particular language.) The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.

Is he happy? By most measurements, yes, he believes he is. However, he has not forgotten the last chorus of Oedipus: Call no man happy until he is dead.

They lost their humanity, in our eyes, because of a certain willed ignorance on their part.

I return one last time to the places of death all around us, the places of slaughter to which, in a huge communal effort, we close our hearts. Each day a fresh holocaust, yet, as far as I can see, our moral being is untouched.

You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.”

“I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground... And so are you. So are we all.

He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa.

لا أستطيع أن أعبر لك عن مدى إرهاقى.
ليس إرهاقاً يمكن علاجه بالنوم ليلة هادئة فى سرير حقيقى، الإرهاق الذى أقصده صار جزءاً منى.يشبه الصبغة التى تتسرب إلى كل ما أفعله، وكل ما أقوله، أشعر، بتعبير هوميروس، أننى مرخية الأوتار، لم تعد هناك قوة شد.
ارتخى وتر القوس الذى اعتاد أن يكون مشدوداً، صار مثل جديلة من القطن، وهذا ليس حال الجسد فقط. العقل أيضاً : مرتخ، مستعد لنوم هادئ.

His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.

Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.

There is no home left for universal souls, except perhaps in Antarctica or on the high seas

If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian.

It reminds me too much of Mao’s China. Recantation, self-criticism, public apology.

She is not sure, as she listens to her own voice, whether she believes any longer in what she is saying.

You will believe me when I say the life we lead grows less and less distinct from the life we lead on Cruso’s island. Sometimes I wake up not knowing where I am. The world is full of islands, said Cruso once. His words ring truer every day.

It is not, then, in the content or substance of folly that its difference from truth lies, but in where it comes from. It comes not from ‘the wise man’s mouth’ but from the mouth of the subject assumed not to know and speak the truth.