Jean Améry-Prize for European Essayistic till Adam Zagajewski

Foto: Astrid Nydahl

Igår delades det ut, Jean Améry-Prize for European Essayistic, och jag hade inte hört talas om det ifall inte vännen Anders i Finland tipsat mig. Juryn består av Robert Menasse, Claudio Magris, László Földényi, Gila Lustiger, Michael Krüger and Christina Weiss (f.d. tysk kulturminister). 

Tidigare mottagare av priset är: 1982 Lothar Baier 1985 Barbara Sichtermann 1988 Mathias Greffrath 1991 Reinhard Merkel 2000 Franz Schuh 2002 Doron Rabinovici 2004 Michael Jeismann 2007 Drago Jančar 2009 Imre Kertész 2012 Dubravka Ugrešić.

I år gick priset till Adam Zagajewski. Här kan man läsa en av hans essäer, och här en annan. Den andra essän har titeln The closing of an open society och börjar så här:

Eastern European intellectuals, writers and artists certainly contributed to some degree to the collapse of the totalitarian Soviet system. Their ideas circulated in the public space, their courage was a model for many. In general, intellectuals, fickle, often using abstruse language, can easily become the laughing stock of their societies, but the likes of Vaclav Havel or Leszek Kolakowski were certainly not ridiculous. Of course, it was not ideas alone that undid totalitarian oppression, but they were an important ingredient in a vast array of means and modes of action. 

It's a sad paradox that now, while they, intellectuals and writers, face a united Europe, the European Union driven by free market economies and democratic principles – although at this moment undergoing a serious crisis –, the Europe they saw in their dreams, projects and aspirations, and for the members of whose parliament they could freely vote in recent years, they are probably more helpless than before, in the old times. Apparently it was in some respects easier to fight against the Central Committee than against big numb Numbers, the dark sides of capitalism and sombre nationalistic strivings.

Och här kan man ta del av alla de essäer som finns med i sammanhanget (Eurozine). Jag skulle utan tvekan säga att det som där kan läsas är något av det bästa som vårt plågade, förvirrade och vilsna Europa kan erbjuda. En man som Adam Zagajewski har under hela öststatsperioden med murar, förtryck och sträng censur varit en förebild. Hans essäistik och poesi har hävt sig högt över den dagspolitiska världen. Jag tycker att man bör ta fasta på hans tes om att det var lättare att kämpa mot betongsocialismens centralkommittéer, än det är mot vår tids makthavare som finns dolda och ofta anonyma bakom kapitalismens glänsande fasader. 

***

Hela prismotiveringen kan man läsa här, men jag vill citera dess inledande stycken:

Adam Zagajewski is to receive the 2016 Jean Améry Prize for European essay writing. To coincide with the award ceremony, Eurozine publishes essays by authors nominated for the prize, including by a representative selection of Eurozine partner journals. The publication of this essay collection has been made possible through a partnership with Jean-Améry's publisher, the German publishing house Klett-Cotta, and the Allianz Cultural Foundation.

It is particularly fitting that, 50 years after the publication of Jean Amery's Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne (1966), the jury highlights Adam Zagajewski's essay A defence of ardour. Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne, translated into English as At the Mind's Limits, is the book in which Jean Améry gives an account of his life as an intellectual who was captured while participating in the Belgian resistance against National Socialism, tortured and sent to Auschwitz.^[1] In the preface to the second edition, Améry writes about why "enlightenment" continues to inform his intellectual practice, and remains for him a "key word" that "embraces more than just logical deduction and empirical verification".

***

Annat om Zagajewski i bloggen finns det här, liksom här och här.