There has been much hand-wringing by cultural pundits in Europe concerning Peter Handke and his ideosyncratic ideas about the Serbs and Slobodan Milosevic. But the actions by Duesseldorf City council surrounding the Heine Prize have reached a new level of absurdity. The Literary Saloon has a good run-down on the circus for English readers:
Among the peculiarities of the Heine prize is not only that Handke is (was ?) only due to get it in December (a not unusual delay for a German prize — they like to give lots of advance warning), but the fact that, because it is a city-sponsored prize, the Düsseldorf city council have to ratify the selection — and guess what: they’re planning not to do it. Ratification is meant to be a pro forma thing, but they see it as a grand opportunity. (Apparently the plan is specifically to withhold the prize-money.)
This is, of course, insane on so many levels it just blows our minds.
Leaving aside for a moment that the jury is meant to be independent (i.e. not subject to the whims of outsiders, such as the city council), the large jury (scroll down to the bottom of the official announcement) actually included members of the city government — including both the mayor and the head-mayor (‘Oberbürgermeister’) ! And while there have been rumblings that some jury members felt forced into giving Handke the prize, one of those supposedly insisting on Handke was Oberbürgermeister Joachim Erwin …..
More importantly, of course: what are the city council members thinking ? If they actually go through with this, they might as well write off the prize right there, for now and ever. It is inconceivable to us that any author could, in good conscience, ever accept this prize in future years knowing that it was subject to such shenanigans (though the € 50,000 might well tempt some desperate second-raters).
Writers need to be judged on the aesthetic merits of their oeuvre – period. There are plenty of mediocre writers with politically correct views. Handke certainly deserves the Heine Prize – and many other prizes as well. More on this at erphschwester and Sign and Sight.
The entire sad affair reminds me of the infamous controversy in American literature when the notorious Mussolini-admirer and anti-Semite Ezra Pound was awarded the prestigious Bollingen Prize for his Cantos.
