Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

P rince of A sturias A wards 1981-2014. S peeches 5 I believe that the humanities have been somewhat neglected in our time; there is beginning to be a certain awareness of this fact and it is very grave that this is happening at the present time. The humanities are the sciences of what is human. They are not just the classical languages in which our roots lie. They are philosophy, history, literature, the grand interpretation of human reality, the precise organ of its imaginative representation, of the relations between people and most especially of the relation between man and woman. They are precisely these disciplines, which, together with the natural disciplines, compose what Dilthey called the intellectual globe. They are the other half of the intellectual globe. That is already happening, we are heading towards barbarism, the Spanish Minister claims in the humanities, but the simple child, pimp of Two Thousand, does not frequent science or patient history, but kills Martians and murders another child. That is why it is appropriate, and not just a flower show, that a noble Foundation, with its plural gaze, distinguishes among the maps the good, tall man, and the symbolic woman, and enthrones the eternal, dun grammar and the nylon epic of some statesman. We are surrounded, I’m not afraid to say so; robots, missiles and the old gods have armed their war against the old Europe. The United States, ever predators, invent for themselves every day a black enemy who has breakfasted poorly. Asturias is Europe, this theatre is Europe, douar of intellectuals, pashanate of wise men, emirate of elders who still notice books. We are surrounded, I’m not afraid to say so; and we have to create a militia, militiamen of Persia, let us be the men/ book of seasoned Bradbury, let us recite by heart the vengeance of Orestes, let us cite Ortega, the watchman of the West, let us learn grammar like Greek toddlers and let us die slowly conjugating the rose. Francisco Umbral — Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 1996 Julián Marías Aguilera — Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 1996 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature on 8/11/1996. Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities on 8/11/1996.