ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

By ROGER MARTIN

DU CARD

JL HE PRESENCE of SO many illustrious persons assembled under the

patronage of His Highness, the Crown Prince, heightens the emotions
that I feel at finding myself here and hearing the words of praise that
have just been addressed to me. I feel rather like an owl, suddenly roused
from its nest and exposed to the daylight, whose eyes, used to the dark,
are blinded by dazzling brightness.
I am proud of the exceptional mark of esteem the Swedish Academy
has bestowed on me, but I cannot conceal my surprise from you. Ever
since I felt your favor lie upon and almost overwhelm me, I have asked
myself how to interpret it.
My first thought was of my country. I am happy that in making a
French author its choice for this year, the distinguished Swedish
Academy has thought fit to glorify our French literature in particular.
On the other hand, I know some great poets among my compatriots,
noble and powerful minds, whom your votes might have chosen with
much better reason. Why then am I today in this place of honor?
The demon of vanity, never completely silenced, at first whispered
to me some flattering presumptions. I even went so far as to ask myself
whether by granting this distinction to the "man without dogma" that I
profess to be, the Academy did not wish to emphasize that in this century, when everyone "believes" and "asserts," it is perhaps useful that
there should be some who "hesitate," "put in doubt," and "question"
independent minds that escape the fascination of partisan ideologies and
whose constant care is to develop their individual consciences in order
to maintain a spirit of "inquiry" as objective, liberal, and fair-minded
as is humanly possible.
I should also like to think that this sudden honor acknowledges certain principles dear to me. "Principles" is a big word to be used by a
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ROGER

MARTIN

DU

CARD

man who says that he is always ready to revise his opinions. I must,
however, admit that in the practice of my art I have imposed upon myself certain guidelines to which I have tried to be faithful.
I was still very young when I encountered, in a novel by the English
writer Thomas Hardy, this reflection on one of his characters: "The true
value of life seemed to him to be not so much its beauty, as its tragic
quality." It spoke to an intuition deep within me, closely allied to my
literary vocation. Ever since that time I have thought that the prime
purpose of the novel is to give voice to the tragic element in life. Today
I would add: the tragic element in the life of an individual, the tragedy
of a "destiny in the course of being fulfilled."
At this point I cannot refrain from referring to the immortal example
of Tolstoy, whose books have had a determining influence on my
development. The born novehst recognizes himself by his passion to
penetrate ever more deeply into the knowledge of man and to lay bare
in each of his characters that individual element of life which makes each
being unique. It seems to me that any chance of survival which a
noveUst's work may have rests solely on the quantity and the quality of
the individual lives that he has been able to create in his books. But that
is not all. The novelist must also have a sense of life in general; his work
must reveal a personal vision of the universe. Here again Tolstoy is the
great master. Each of his creatures is more or less secretly haunted by a
metaphysical obsession, and each of the human experiences that he has
recorded implies, beyond an inquiry into man, an anxious question about
the meaning of life. I admit that I take pleasure in the thought that, in
crowning my work as a novelist, the members of the Swedish Academy
wished to pay indirect homage to my devotion to that unapproachable
model and to my efforts to profit from the instruction of his genius.
I should like to conclude with a more somber hypothesis, although I
am embarrassed to disturb this festive mood by arousing those painful
thoughts that haunt all of us. However, perhaps the Swedish Academy
did not hesitate to express a special purpose by drawing the attention of
the inteUectual world to the author of L'Ete 1914 {Summer 1914).
That is the title of my last book. It is not for me to judge its value. But
at least I know what I set out to do: in the course of these three volumes
I tried to revivify the anguished atmosphere of Europe on the eve of the
mobiUzations of 1914. I tried to show the weakness of the governments
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ACCEPTANCE

SPEECH

of that day, their hesitations, indiscretions, and unavowed desires; I

tried above all to give an impression of the stupefaction of the peaceful
masses before the approach of that cataclysm whose victims they were
going to be, that cataclysm which was to leave nine million men dead
and ten miUion men crippled.
When I see that one of the highest literary juries in the world supports
these books with the prestige of its incontestable authority, I ask myself
whether the reason may not be that these books through their wide circulation have appeared to defend certain values that are again being
threatened and to fight against the evil contagion of the forces of war.
For I am a son of the West, where the noise of arms does not let our
minds rest. Since we have come together today on the tenth of December,
the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel (that man of action, "no
mere shadow," who in the last years of his life seems indeed to have put
his supreme hope in the brotherhood of nations), permit me to confess
how good it would be to think that my workthe work that has just
been honored in his namemight serve not only the cause of letters,
but even the cause of peace. In these months of anxiety in which we are
living, when blood is already being shed in two extreme parts of the
globe, when practically everywhere in an atmosphere polluted by misery
and fanaticism passions are seething around pointed guns, when too
many signs are again heralding the return of that languid defeatism, that
general consent which alone makes wars possible: at this exceptionally
grave moment through which humanity is passing, I wish, without vanity,
but with a gnawing disquietude in my heart, that my books about
Summer 1914 may be read and discussed, and that they may remind
allthe old who have forgotten as well as the young who either do not
know or do not careof the sad lesson of the past.

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