JM Coetzee's surprise speech
2003-12-12 10:46
Theresa Biberauer
Stockholm - Everyone thought he would speak for only 20 seconds. Everyone thought as usual he won't say anything personal.
But...he spoke for the full two minutes he was allowed and he spoke about his mother.
Earlier, at the ceremony where the Nobel prize for literature was handed to JM Coetzee, people were already moved when the respected Swedish writer Per Wästberg said: "Dear John Coetzee, your work is limited in pages, but limitless in extent."
Wästberg called Coetzee a "one-man truth and reconciliation commission" because he so often during the past 30 years in his writing career, gave people a voice who don't normally have the opportunity to be heard by the reading public.
"You may have left South Africa, but the country has hardly left you, "Wästberg said. Coetzee now lives in Australia.
Coetzee walked to the front of the room and to the surprise of many, chatted to King Karl Gustaf XVI of Sweden for a couple of seconds before turning back to the audience and acknowledged the applause of the 1 600 people invited to the ceremony.
This was not the final surprise meted out by the ascetic Coetzee. Following the ceremony, the guests went to the annual Nobel banquet, where Coetzee made a short speech.
After a week in Sweden during which journalists and the public started to understand Coetzee was a man who hardly spoke, either about himself or his loved ones, no one thought he would refer to the people closest to him.
"How proud your mother would have been," he quoted his friend, Dorothy Driver, at the beginning of his speech.
And a few sentences later: "For whom do we do things that could result in a Nobel prize if it wasn't for our mothers?"
Coetzee's mother would have been 99 this year if she had still been alive.
Many guests, including journalists, were moved when he ended his speech with these words: "To my parents, how sorry I am that they couldn't be here."
- Die Burger