The first word came from Olga Tokarczuk, the Nobel laureate, who had been in the shadow of Peter Handke and the discussions about his Yugoslavia statements since the double proclamation of the literary awards in October. On Friday afternoon, Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee, kindly opened the press conference for the laureates in the Stock Exchange in downtown Stockholm for the Polish author.
Tokarczuk said she was pleased to be the 15th woman to receive the award 110 years after Selma Lagerlöf. She was convinced, "that I do not get the prize because I'm a woman, but because I write good books," said the winner of the year 2018. She firmly believes that there will be more winners in the future.
Anders Wiklund / EPA-EFE / REX
Olga Tokarczuk answers the questions of the press
When researching her book "Die Jakobsbücher" she realized that women were not given enough attention in historiography, Tokarczuk said. This applies, for example, to the women who were active in the solidarity movement in Poland. "That does not happen because they did not participate or were not active, but because that was not documented, and this non-documentation continues today," said the award winner.
Dedicate her award to the fight against authoritarian developments. "My spontaneous reaction has been to dedicate this prize to the political movement in Poland," she said. "We are a divided society," she said of her homeland.
"A kind of calligraphy of shit"
After a short break Peter Handke entered the hall, Olsson congratulated him on his 77th birthday. However, the Austrian author did not present himself in celebration mood - the questions were also not pleased. Repeatedly Handke was referred to his comments on the war in former Yugoslavia, which sparked heated protests against the Swedish Academy of Handke's decision to award the prize.
Whether he had changed his mind on the subject in the meantime, Handke was asked. His answer was familiar to connoisseurs of Handke interviews: "I hate opinions, I like literature, not opinions." On the more concrete demand of a representative of the US online magazine "Intercept", whether he now acknowledges that it had come to genocide among the Bosnian Muslims, gave Handke a sharp yet evasive answer.
The Nobel laureate pulled out a letter he had received - with the address "Dear Peter", although he did not know the sender. Handke read out some of the apparently numerous journalistic questions posed in the letter. One was: "If you were to die tomorrow, the obituaries in the second paragraph would mention the Yugoslav controversy, do you think your remarks will ever be forgotten and you will simply be perceived as an author?" The questions were, according to Handke's statement, a cultural reporter for the New York Times.
Handke said he has received numerous grateful letters from readers since the announcement of the Nobel Prizes, but also an anonymous letter on toilet paper "with a kind of calligraphy of shit." And I tell you: I draw toilet paper, anonymous letters with toilet paper inside, your empty one Questions. "
Protests against Handke in Stockholm are planned for the Nobel Prize award on Tuesday. Asked about a possible reconciliation gesture, Handke said he had asked a friend in Bosnia what he should do. This friend told him that he did not believe that dialogue was possible at the moment.
He had already tried in the award of the Ibsen Prize in Oslo 2014, to speak with protesters. "There were a lot of 'fascist, fascist' shouts, I was stopped, I wanted to talk to these ladies and gentlemen, but they did not want to." If anyone has some advice on how to handle the current protests, he likes to accept it.
Englund: Handke to celebrate "would be crude hypocrisy"
The double awarding of the Nobel Prize for literature in 2018 and 2019 was necessary after the forgiving Swedish Academy was overturned by abuse allegations against the husband of an academician in great unrest. The decision in favor of Handke has not helped to relax the committees: two external members of the Nobel Prize committee had said their departure early this week, Gun-Britt Sundström, with reference to the Handke election.
On Friday, Academy member Peter Englund announced that he would stay away from the Nobel Prize celebrations: "To celebrate Peter Handke's Nobel Prize would be gross hypocrisy on my part, that's all I have to say," said Englund to the Swedish newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" in an email with.