On Wed, 14 Oct 1998 23:00:29 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
writes:
>[For those of you who missed this eruption from what Saul Bellow
>called the
>moronic inferno, for all the wrong reasons - this is from today's Wall
>Street Journal editorial page - Doug]
>
Since I have never read any of Saramago's works I cannot comment on them. Nevertheless, the author of this article in the WSJ makes a number of comments concerning literature, politics, and religion that are worth rebutting in their own right.
>WALL STREET JOURNAL - October 14, 1998
>
>Another Nobel Laureate's
>Stalinist Past
>
>By STEPHEN SCHWARTZ
>
>Well, they did it again. A year after they awarded the Nobel Prize for
>Literature to Dario Fo, a repulsive anticlerical buffoon from Italy,
>the
>Swedish Academy has continued its run of leftist nostalgia, handing
>the
>honor to José Saramago, a Portuguese novelist and unrepentant member
>of
>that country's Communist Party.
>
>As with last year's recognition of Mr. Fo, Mr. Saramago's Nobel drew
>protests from the Vatican, where the daily L'Osservatore Romano
>criticized
>the award as "ideologically oriented," and protested that Mr. Saramago
>"remains an inveterate Communist." While the Portuguese Bishops'
>Conference
>defended their countryman, the Vatican was not alone in its dissent.
>Polish
>poet Czeslaw Milosz, a real hero of intellectual integrity and 1980
>Nobel
>laureate in literature, told the Portuguese daily O Publico: "I am not
>a
>supporter of the writings of José Saramago. It is a fashionable kind
>of
>writing, filled with humor--but low humor. I do not support this
>work."
>
>Believing Catholics are understandably appalled at the Portuguese
>author's
>corrosive attacks on Christianity, as exemplified by his "Gospel
>According
>to Jesus Christ," published in the U.S. by Harcourt Brace in 1994. Mr.
>Saramago's Christ has a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene, in a
>scene
>reminiscent of Martin Scorsese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ."
>What
>is up with the Swedish Academy? Are they, as representatives of an
>officially Protestant nation, fanatical pope baiters?
>
First of all the description of Sweden as "an officially Protestant nation" is no longer accurate since Sweden is in the process of disestablishing the Lutheran church. Secondly, Schwartz argues against giving Saramago the Nobel Prize on the grounds that his work is offensive to religious believers. Presumably, under this criterion if Voltaire were alive today Mr. Schwartz would oppose giving him the Nobel too. Apparently, Schwartz want to impose a standard of religious correctness on prospective winners of the Nobel Prize. No author regardless of the merits of his/her work should be eligible for the prize if his/hers work is offensive to the tender religious or political sensibilities of narrow minded people like Mr. Schwartz. Mr. Schwartz makes a great deal over the Swedish Academy giving a Nobel to a communist author ignoring the fact that the Academy has in the past given the Prize to fascist authors as well. The name of Knut Hamsun for instance comes to mind.
>Mr. Saramago, even more than Mr. Fo, has pursued a political career
>that
>should have excited some concern among the Swedes. Mr. Fo was a
>fascist in
>his youth, then became a communist, and remains an extreme radical
>leftist.
>But his antisocial pursuits are mainly intellectual.
How is pursuing an interest in politics an antisocial activity or is it simply that Mr. Scwartz would like the Swedish Academy to impose a standard of "political corectness" on prospective nominees for the Nobel Prize.
>
>Mr. Saramago, on the other hand, as a militant member of the
>Portuguese
>Communist Party, brings with him a history of really sinister behavior
>in
>the interest of a Stalinist agenda. This novelist has behind him an
>unapologetic involvement in a serious attempt to destroy the freedom
>of the
>press in his native country.
>
>Few today seem to recall that in late 1975 Portugal was poised to
>leave
>NATO and become a new Soviet satellite. The situation in Lisbon at
>that
>time was so dire that it was compared with Czechoslovakia in 1948.
>
>On Nov. 25, 1975, the Portuguese Communist Party, under its hard-line
>boss,
>Alvaro Cunhal, attempted a coup in Lisbon, using leftist Portuguese
>army
>paratroops as its cat's-paw. The adventure failed, but the party had
>laid
>the foundation for the coup by a wide-ranging campaign against freedom
>of
>the press, a months-long effort that closely resembled the assaults on
>press freedom that accompanied Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba.
>
>Mr. Saramago, who was then assistant editor of the Lisbon paper Diario
>de
>Noticias, played a major role in this provocative strategy. The future
>Nobel laureate was a strident promoter of "true socialism" against
>"bourgeois democracy," overseeing the saneamento or "purges" of
>so-called
>fascist elements from the Portuguese media.
It is quite possibe that Mr. Saramago's actions as assistant editor
were wrongheaded, foolish or even unfair. Nevertheless, it would
seem that as an assistant editor of a newspaper it was his perogative
to set the editorial policies of his paper and to judge what kinds of
reporting he considered to be acceptable. I very much doubt that
senior editors of The Wall Street Journal would show much tolerance
for a reporter who used his position to advance political positions in
the paper that were offensive to the paper's publishers or owners.
I suspect that such a reporter would be demoted or even canned.
>
>As chaos deepened in Portugal, Mr. Saramago's colleagues began
>protesting
>that they were being forced to report according to the Communist Party
>line
>and that their articles were subjected to a censorial "fine-toothed
>comb"
>by Mr. Saramago. Verbal complaints continued, followed by the
>"Manifesto of
>the 24," in which a group of journalists working under Mr. Saramago
>denounced the internal climate at his newspaper. Twenty-two of them
>were
>fired.
>
>Mr. Saramago, questioned about this incident in 1991, commented: "The
>newspaper had a certain line and could not be turned into a kind of
>free
>tribune where everybody could say whatever they pleased." With the
>failure
>of the Communist coup, Mr. Saramago was forced to leave journalism.
>
>He never left his communist ideology. Last Wednesday, hours before he
>received his Nobel, Mr. Saramago spoke at a seminar during the
>Frankfurt
>Book Fair, on the topic "Being a Communist Author Today." Clearly a
>double
>standard reigns in Stockholm and elsewhere. Nobody would sponsor a
>seminar
>on "Being a Fascist Author Today," least of all at the Frankfurt Book
>Fair.
>
>The Swedish Academy is using the Nobels in literature for the same end
>to
>which their Norwegian colleagues have committed themselves by awarding
>the
>Peace Prize to such unregenerate leftists as the International
>Campaign to
>Ban Landmines (1997), Timorese guerrilla supporters Ximenes Belo and
>Ramos
>Horta (1996) and Joseph Rotblat of the Pugwash Conferences (1995). The
>message is clear: The snobs of the Scandinavian academies, secure in
>their
>wealth and power, remain doggedly faithful to their leftist fantasies.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Mr. Schwartz is author of "From West to East: California and the
>Making of
>the American Mind" (Free Press, 1998).
>
What is obvious in Mr. Schwartz's article is that while he makes a
great show of denouncing Stalinism he in fact would like the Swedish
Academy to in effect adopt a Stalinist approach to literature in which
only people who meet his standards of political and religious
correctness would be eligible for the Prize. I can think of nothing
that would degrade the Prize faster than if the Swedish Academy
were to adopt Schwartz's proposals.
Jim Farmelant
___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]