00:01Muy querido Günter Gras.
00:06Günter Gras, your sense of proportion has done mankind a genuine service.
00:13Your new book has the title Mein Jahrhundert, My Century.
00:18The fact that you are receiving the 20th century's last Nobel Literature Prize
00:23is confirmation of the reasonableness of such a title.
00:26In your cavalcade of the past hundred years,
00:30you give ample proof of your uncanny ability to impersonate the voices of the thoughtless.
00:36All those bewitched by the hopes of politics and technology,
00:40rendered stupid by the great perspectives.
00:43The core of thoughtlessness is enthusiasm.
00:46I read Mein Jahrhundert as a critique of enthusiasm
00:49and a celebration of its opposite, a good memory.
00:53Your style, with its repetitions and specifications and stratification of different voices,
01:00tells us that we shall not be in a hurry
01:03either when dealing with the past or when dealing with the future.
01:09You have shown that as long as literature remembers what people hasten to forget,
01:15it remains a power to be reckoned with.
01:24I would like to express the warm congratulations of the Swedish Academy
01:29as I now request you to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature
01:33from the hands of His Majesty the King.
01:43Thank you.
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