Finding
One’s own voice is fundamentally important to all human beings. But it is not
something that simply happens on its own. It is only when a child is addressed
by its name that it begins to comprehend itself as an I and to discover its own identity by means of this self-designation.
And, as we grow older, it is only to the extent that we find our language that
we get a chance to become the self-knowing author of our own life story.
Language is what allows people
to understand their own origins and to lead their own lives. It is only when people
meet through words, only when they can express themselves in person, that
mutual understanding begins to take place. And this, in turn, is one of the
most important preconditions for peace.
Still, it take more than just
exchanging words to find our voices and to lead distinctive lives. It is the
stories and poems, the tales and legends, the myths and the texts of revelation
that open up to us a language that is more than just a means of expressing our
immediate needs and desires. These stories contain a treasure that allows us to
discover the fullness of what it means to be human, a fullness that make us
aware of differences and commonalities, that familiarises us with our own
contingent origins and empowers us - with the help of our own voice - to secure
our own way of life.
The language of writers and
poets achieves this more than anything else. Their language breaks the spell of
that which directly serves the purposes of our everyday lives. It gives the
present a past and opens the present up to a possible future. It sets our
imaginations free and makes criticism, possible. It allows us to see that
fullness of life in which we can perceive and comprehend our own lives.
It can com as no surprise, then,
that we find so many poets and writers among the recipients of the Peace Prize
of the German Book Trade. It is not first and foremost the high literary
quality of their work that leads them to be honoured - that excellence, of
course, is recognized by the Deutscher
Buchpreis（German Book Prize）,which will be handed out this year for the eighth time. The motive behind
awarding the Peace Prize is much more about the power emanating from a writer’s
work to bring about peace - although the artistic excellence and liberating
power of a written work are, of course, closely linked.
Needless to say, the liberating power
made possibly by language is not limited to the language of the poet. Space for
peace is also created whenever the “right” word is found - and this word is
always one that leads out into the open,
a word that does not at all intimidate, restrict, denounce or destroy, but
rather encourages its own, allows others to be recognised and makes it possible
to understand oneself and others. And wherever such words are present, the
German Publishers and Booksellers Association sees plenty of reason to bolster
them by awarding the Peace Prize.
From the very beginning, the
German Publishers and Booksellers Association has considered the goal of
enabling easier access to the medium of language one of the foremost callings
associated with the very good it trades in - namely, the written and printed
word. This holds true whether it involves large publishing houses and
small-town bookshops, or small publishing houses and big-city bookstores.
Unlike any other activity of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association,
the awarding of the Peace Prize makes it clear that this calling must remain a goal that unites all of its members. Indeed,
today, the splintering of written-word media is in danger of causing a
splintering of markets whose comfortable virtuality would ultimately oblige us
to pay the heavy cost of squandering the concrete culture of mediation that
arises in immediate conversation with the individual reader. The cost of this
development would entail not only the loss of the German Publishers and
Booksellers Association’s “soul”, but also the loss of an important channel of
communication for the culture of language.
The extent to which the word of
the poet can help a still-muted counterpart find his or her own voice is
particularly evident when social or political circumstances deny these people a
voice or reduce them to silence. This is when the word becomes a work of
liberation in the literal sense because, with their newfound voice, people gain
the freedom to be themselves in a very elementary way.
Today, we honour a poet who has
accomplished this in a manner that has been both effective and harmful to his
own freedom. Today, we award the 2012 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade to
Liao Yiwu.
Liao Yiwu’s well-earned fame
arose as a result of his interviews with “people from the bottom rung of
society”. In these texts, Liao Yiwu succeeds in breaking the silence of his
interviewees - a silence that is the result of fate, misery and oppression. He
allows individuals who would have otherwise remained to be heard.
The man who approached and
interviewed these people had himself already been forced to find his own voice
in the most painful of ways. Without direct access to education, he had started
writing poems. One of these was Massacre,
which was written in one night in 1989. As if able to see the future, Liao Yiwu
described the violent repression of demonstrators in Beijing Tiananmen Square the night before the massacre actually
happened. The poem spread like wildfire and was followed by four years of
prison for its author. Of these years, he would later say: “All that I have are
these four years of prison. It is the equivalent of a completed bachelor’s
degree. ”
His years in prison took
everything from him, including his family, friends and career. What was left
was a flute. And, after serving out his sentence, he earned his living on the
street with this flute. In 2009, he received a passport for the first time, but
he was still not allowed to accept an invitation to attend the Frankfurt Book
Fair. He was forced to rewrite his memoirs of his prison years twice because
the first two versions were confiscated. Only after threats of further
imprisonment if he went ahead and printed a third version did he flee into
exile and succeed in publishing the book. Fur
ein Lied und hundert Lieder( For a song and a Hundred Songs) appeared in Germany
For the German Publishers and
Booksellers Association, It is a special pleasure to be able to honour Liao
Yiwu as a “writer of the people” in the trust sense of the word. He is someone
who has unflinchingly and eloquently given voice to those among his people who
suffer repression and oppression. It makes our joy even greater that he is able
to be with us today and to receive the Peace Prize in person as part of his
academic residency in Germany China China
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