Can the Nobel Academy of Literature support a new scandal? Two new members of the committee, writers Kristoffer Leandoer and Gun-Britt Sundström, slammed the door on Monday, December 2, giving a new impetus to Nobel laureate Peter Handke. for the year 2019, which will receive its award on December 10th.
Gun-Britt Sundström invokes the problem in terms of "ideology". Although she says she is "happy" to have taken part in the nomination of the Polish poet Olga Tokarczuk, she is opposed to the coronation of the Austrian writer. "The choice of the 2019 laureate was not limited to rewarding a literary work but was also interpreted, both inside and outside the academy, as a position that places literature above the ' "she wrote to the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. "This ideology is not mine," she added.
Kristoffer Leandoer and Gun-Britt Sundström are therefore taking their liberty. Each was an external member of the Nobel Literature Committee of the Swedish Academy, appointed to accompany the recovery of the academy after its setbacks in 2017 and the scandals involving the French Jean-Claude Arnault. As a result of this affair, which has swept the way of awarding the prize for literature, the Swiss daily "Le Temps" won the title in late September: "Nobel Prize: Stockholm is no longer entitled to error".
Trouble reports with Serbian memory
Literature above politics: this is the difficult balancing act of Peter Handke, whose prolific work is published in France by the prestigious Maison Gallimard. He is the translator of Shakespeare, René Char and Patrick Modiano. He has given Wim Wenders several ideas for feature films, notably the film, which became a cinematographic reference, "The wings of desire". And at the same time, this Austrian writer is familiar with the former Yugoslavia and has a troubled relationship with the memory of the armed conflict of the 1990s, including the responsibilities of the Srebrenica massacre.
Critics among the most well-founded against the writer come from the site of American whistleblowers, "The Intercept". The journalist Peter Maass has published lengthy investigations that tend to show that Peter Handke can not ignore the atrocities perpetrated by Serbian forces. Peter Maass assures that the writer, in possession of a Yugoslav passport, lodged in 1998, during a visit to Bosnia, in the hotel "Vilina Vlas" in Visegrad, a place which served to the Serbian forces to lead acts of torture and rape during the war.
The pro-Serb position of Peter Handke has been a problem in the past. In the autumn of 1995, a few months after the Srebrenica massacre, the author went to Serbia and reported his impressions of a controversial book, "Winter Journey to the Danube, Save, Morava and Drina", who ignores the existence of mass graves in Srebrenica. Seven years later, he caused an uproar on the way to the funeral of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who died before hearing his verdict for war crimes in the international justice case. This gesture pushed the Comédie-Française to de-program the play "Voyage au Pays Sound or the Art of the Question", which was to be premiered at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 2007, staged by Bruno Bayen.
Do not "demonize" the writer
To understand the links that still bind Peter Handke to Serbia today, it is necessary to hear this statement of the writer to Radio Belgrade, after the announcement of the Nobel, and recounted by Courrier International: "Greet everyone in Serbia, I feel your joy because of my price. The France 24 correspondent in Belgrade, Laurent Rouy, reports that an "intellectual elite in Serbia interprets the Nobel Prize as a blank check addressed to Serbia, which it considers unjustly incriminated in the past. concerned that some personalities from the world of culture, known for their nationalism, their political positioning very right, "he nuance.
As proof: a letter signed by 115 artists and academics, and addressed to the Nobel Committee, December 3, to defend Peter Handke and his literary work. The group asks the Stockholm committee not to "demonize" the writer, and pleads that the term "genocide" should be reserved only for "Jews, Armenians and Serbs" (sic). The letter is signed by prominent figures who support Serbia's nationalism - including extreme right-wing activist Yves Bataille and director Emir Kusturica. Reply to this letter: The Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina also wrote to the Nobel Committee in Stockholm to express its "moral bitterness and dissatisfaction at the prestigious literary prize awarded to Peter Handke".
On December 10, the 76-year-old writer is expected by the Swedish King, for the graduation and check reserved by the Swedish Academy, who has praised his prolific work as that of "the heir to Goethe" . It will also be hosted by the group of "mothers of Srebrenica", very active internationally, to make the voices of the victims of the Serbian atrocities heard, and who made an appointment in front of the Nobel Prize winning building.