Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

4 O viedo | C ampoamor T heatre | 15 th O ctober 1988 Those who consider the craft of writing as a garden path where flowers spring up spontaneously often tempt the good fortune we have at being able to work without having anyone standing over us giving orders. And that is indeed true. If we do not write, nothing serious happens, nobody tells us off and no-one will fire us. Although it is also true that it is not a spectacular business, but rather a slow investment, which could well bear as a motto the maxim from Ecclesiastes: “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” The writer’s task is a solitary adventure that entails all the hesitations, uncertainties and surprises inherent in any venture undertaken with enthusiasm. But in a world in which people increasingly flee from being alone, the writer is disconcerting, like someone swimming against the current, and arms emerging from all over wish to annex him to a particular group and enslave him to their standards and rules. Against this danger, the dissident has no other choice than to continue resisting in his stronghold, starting from nothing, invoking that youthful faith I spoke of. No one has stated this in more exciting a way than St Teresa of Avila, whose writing exemplifies the path taken starting out from nothing and whose exploration calls into question and puts at stake life itself. Undertaking this task, which she faced as if it were a battle, requires, in her own words: “… a great and very resolute determination to persevere until reaching the end, come what may, happen what may, whatever the work involved, whatever criticism arises, (…) even if I die along the way, (…) or if the whole world collapses.” Carmen Martín Gaite — Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 1988 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature on 15/10/1988.