Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood (author of, among other books, The Handmaid's Tale) has been awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 2017.
You can read her acceptance speech, given on 15th Oct. 2017 at Paulskirche, Frankfurt, in full at the site of the "Friedenspreis". If you would like to get a little excerpt, look here:
The citizens of every country must ask themselves the same question: what sort of world do they want to live in? Being of a Plutonian and sinister cast of mind, I would reduce that sentence to: Do they want to live? Because, drawing back from our human picture – drawing back so that the borders between countries disappear, and the earth becomes a blue marble in space, with much more water on it than land – it is evident that our fate as a species will be determined by whether or not we kill the oceans. If the oceans die, so will we – at least 60 percent of our oxygen comes from marine algaes.
But I will try not to depress you too much. There is hope, there is hope: brilliant minds are already at work on such problems. But meanwhile, what is an artist to do? Why make art at all, in such disturbing times? What is art, anyway? Why should we be bothered with it? What is it for? Learning, teaching, expressing ourselves, describing reality, entertaining us, enacting truth, celebrating, or even denouncing and cursing? There’s no general answer. Human beings have engaged in the arts – music, visual imagery, dramatic performances – including rituals – and language arts, including tale telling – ever since they have been recognizably human. Children respond to language and music before they themselves can speak: those capabilities seem to be built in. The art we make is specific to the culture that makes it – to its location, to its driving energy system, to its climate and food sources, and to the beliefs connected with all of these. But we have never not made art.
Below, you can watch a seven-minute TV report on the new film version of The Handmaid's Tale produced by Hulu in 2017, including interview passages with author Margaret Atwood and the Hulu version's protagonist, Elizabeth Moss.
You can read her acceptance speech, given on 15th Oct. 2017 at Paulskirche, Frankfurt, in full at the site of the "Friedenspreis". If you would like to get a little excerpt, look here:
The citizens of every country must ask themselves the same question: what sort of world do they want to live in? Being of a Plutonian and sinister cast of mind, I would reduce that sentence to: Do they want to live? Because, drawing back from our human picture – drawing back so that the borders between countries disappear, and the earth becomes a blue marble in space, with much more water on it than land – it is evident that our fate as a species will be determined by whether or not we kill the oceans. If the oceans die, so will we – at least 60 percent of our oxygen comes from marine algaes.
But I will try not to depress you too much. There is hope, there is hope: brilliant minds are already at work on such problems. But meanwhile, what is an artist to do? Why make art at all, in such disturbing times? What is art, anyway? Why should we be bothered with it? What is it for? Learning, teaching, expressing ourselves, describing reality, entertaining us, enacting truth, celebrating, or even denouncing and cursing? There’s no general answer. Human beings have engaged in the arts – music, visual imagery, dramatic performances – including rituals – and language arts, including tale telling – ever since they have been recognizably human. Children respond to language and music before they themselves can speak: those capabilities seem to be built in. The art we make is specific to the culture that makes it – to its location, to its driving energy system, to its climate and food sources, and to the beliefs connected with all of these. But we have never not made art.
Below, you can watch a seven-minute TV report on the new film version of The Handmaid's Tale produced by Hulu in 2017, including interview passages with author Margaret Atwood and the Hulu version's protagonist, Elizabeth Moss.
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