Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

2 O viedo | C ampoamor T heatre | 24 th O ctober 2008 The writing of fiction is an art of time: through it, events unfold, changes are set in motion; in other words, fiction tells stories; and through stories, we know both ourselves and others. A country without stories would be a country without a mirror: it would cast no reflection, and it would lead at best a ghostly, shadowy existence. “Who am I?” its citizens would ask, and there would be no answer. Such a country would also be without a heart, for fiction writing is an art of the emotions. In an age of specializations, art alone can show us the whole human being, in its many variations. Everything in our societies is influenced, not only by the ground beneath us, but by the imaginative world we build and dwell within. Even our most seemingly solid institutions are sustained by our ideas about them, our faith in their existence. Banks melt away when we lose our faith in them, as we have seen so recently. So it is with nations. It is part of art’s function to imagine the real, and thus call it into being. My own country’s fiction contains many wonders: kitchens with bears in them, Native Indian snipers come from the remote forests to fight in the First World War, an icy cannibal monster with feet of flame; but also many women and men who are less outwardly remarkable, living their lives and dealing with their particular times and their often snowy spaces as character, circumstance, and fate drive them on. Today we find ourselves in a worldwide crisis; financial, but also environmental. Many people are frightened of the future; a future that will almost certainly bring food shortages, a dwindling supply carbon-based energy, and more poverty and social turmoil. In such conditions, it helps us to remember our common humanity, a humanity marked at its best by inventiveness and courage, by nimble thinking and generosity, and by the capacity for joy even when danger threatens. A society rich in the arts is also rich in such qualities. Economists can set no price on them, for they cannot be quantified. Yet without them we will do very poorly indeed. We need to re-imagine ourselves; not only ourselves, but our relationship to the planet that sustains us. Margaret Atwood — Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2008 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature on 24/10/2008.