The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993

by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, reads the speech she delivered in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Writing, Philosophy, African American, Nobel Prize, Literature

40 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 1994

About the author

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. Morrison earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor for fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and '80s. Her novel Beloved was made into a film in 1998. Morrison's works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States and the Black American experience.
The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities, in 1996. She was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters the same year. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 29, 2012. She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. Morrison was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2020.

Reviews

[Sidharth Vardhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love. But she knows tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience."

Read it here:

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_priz...

Or listen to it on YouTube

[Noura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this while hearing Toni Morrison give the speech is a different kind of experience.

You can find it here http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer... and I would suggest giving it a go because it’s something to take into consideration.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a collection of lectures by some of the greatest writers of our time, it's hard to imagine anyone not finding something to admire. They all--in one way or another--address the basic question: why write? Why do I write? Why do human beings write? Why does writing matter? And while their answers might differ, their passion for the subject is the same. If you love literature, if you are a writer or a passionate reader, you will find more than enough in this book to make it worth picking up.

[gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very strong start to Toni Morrison seminar

[Hollis Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a concise summary of Morrison's views on language and literature and a joy to read. If someone ever asks me what the point of literature or literary criticism is, I will probably recommend this to them.

[Tegan Silanskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you haven't read this, it's really important that you do. What Morrison says, in many ways, relates to us all and is profound. The English nerd in me gets goosebumps everytime I read it.

[Azam Amir · Rating 5 out of 5]

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

[Burcu]

Toni Morrison'in ardindan BirGun Pazar'da cikan yazim: https://wanderlustpress.net/2019/08/1...

[Soraya Keiser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toni Morrison is a brilliant writer. This speech helps place all of her work, and the importance of her work, into context. I read it twice through at the beach and was struck by different things both times. At one point she quotes Lincoln's Gettysburg Address saying: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." It's too hard to sum up the pain and sorrow of the Civil War, and instead Lincoln focuses on a deeper sense of mourning and respect for the people who died. I think that Morrison's work does something similar. I really liked this connection because last week I went to Lincoln's presidential library and museum (I KNOW BE JEALOUS). Long story short I was really moved at the museum (so much so that I cried during the holographic video on the importance of archives and connecting with the past and making history tangible and real...). Anyways... I'm convicted to finish making my way through Morrison's whole collection.

[Bess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quotes from the speech:

"The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge."

"Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation."

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had this posted on my door for a year back in College. I made everyone who entered read it. I've relaxed a little and can see that now as pretty heavy handed... but I still maintain this is the treatise and the foundation of the community with whom I intend to share my life. It tells complex truths that teach us the power of narrative, the infinite possibility of abusing that power....the conjuring effect of narrative.... the risk we take in turning our lives over to the power of stories...and the greater risk in refusing to engage. I get a little short of breath thinking about it.

[lia]

my mum gave me this because she loves toni morrison, i read it twice in one night because it was very short (but good). i think i should give this to my english teacher as he would like to deeply analyse it.

[Najah.farley · Rating 5 out of 5]

the first time that I heard this speech--my life changed. anyone who wants the opportunity to understand the power of words should listen and understand this speech.

[Anna Qu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such an amazing speech. Anyone really invested in literature should read her acceptance speech

[Freddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a Nobel lecture that reads more like a poem, Toni Morrison reflects on the power, limitations, forms, misuses, and legacy of language— I’ll definitely be returning to this.

[Darth Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lit...

Listen: https://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplaye...

[Jomar Canales Conde · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Language can never “pin down” slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable.

Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?

Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

“Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.”

the world is poorer without toni. to hear her recite this speech is to be changed. words to live by, to sob at, to stir one out of the depths of despair and despondency. words of sustenance. with humility and reverence i try to honor its tenets, give them justice. i certainly try.

[Jessi Waugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy reading works by people far smarter than myself, though I cannot hope to grasp half their meaning. Tony Morrison’s speech was about the value of language, the ways we hurt it, and the ways we nourish it and ourselves.

“Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no name.”

“It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.”

[summer (oscar wilde’s version) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“the conventional wisdom of the tower of babel story is that the collapse was a misfortune. that it was the distraction or the weight of many languages that precipitated the tower’s failed architecture. that one monolithic language would have expedited the building and heaven would have been reached. ‘whose heaven?’ she wonders. ‘and what kind?’ perhaps the achievement of paradise was premature, a little hasty, if no one could take the time to understand other languages, other views, other narratives. had they, the heaven they imagined might have been found at their feet”

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.”

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

[trx · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives”

“Don’t you remember being young when language was magic without meaning? When what you could say, could not mean? When the invisible was what imagination strove to see? When questions and demands for answers burned so brightly you trembled with fury at not knowing?”

The 1993 Nobel lecture is perhaps one of the most important things Toni ever wrote. My own language fails me at the honesty and profundity that this speech exposes; it truly says everything that needs to be said about the human relationship with language, and does so in the most articulate and masterful way. It is marvelous…

[Vuma Lilli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my god.

"She is worried about how the language she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes. Being a writer she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency – as an act with consequences."

[floydbnk · Rating 4 out of 5]

read this for senior seminar not a lot of ppl rlly got it i loved it tho

read this, the solzhenitsyn lecture, and stuff by miguel de unamuno, very important to how i write and grow my relationship with language and the word

[Carolynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of periphery work by my favorite people. This is one I revisit when I see it at a library. Her visions into humanity are that affecting to me.

[pumpampim · Rating 4 out of 5]

delicioso

[Roger DeBlanck · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her Nobel Lecture, Morrison confronts the dangers of polluting the use of language for nefarious purposes. To combat these dangers, she offers an ingenious mediation on the vitality of language and its responsibility in narrative art to expose the crimes of the past and provide a road forward of hope for the future.

Morrison attests to language as a living thing, which we must remember we have control over. Language is, moreover, an agency that has the ability to act, and with actions there are consequences. Language can be susceptible to death, erasure, and peril. She sees dead language as not only a language no longer spoken or written, but a type of language that is unyielding in its pursuit to destroy others.

Dead language is a paralytic system that is statist and wants to censor. It is dumb and predatory language, ruthless and policing, with no other purpose than to propagate its own narcissism and course of domination. It halts intellect, dismisses conscience, and suppresses humanity. It cannot tolerate the thoughts and ideas of others. It shelters despots and proclaims false stability. Dead language is oppressive and foments violence. It is sexist, racist, and theistic language that limits knowledge because it refuses to allow new knowledge and the exchange of ideas.

To oppose a dead language, Morrison reminds us that the vitality of language rests with its ability to capture and “limn the actual, imagined, and possible lives of its speakers, readers, and writers.” She sees the sublime labor of words as generative and as making life-sustaining meaning that exalts our human differences. Morrison tells us that the meaning of life might be that we die, but she believes that we must “do language” by acting in the pursuit of doing good in this world, which will represent the measure of our lives. Our future, therefore, depends on the language we choose.

[Yordanos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rereading:

“The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.”


Sigh 😔

[Aberjhani · Rating 5 out of 5]

to hear toni morrison speak of narrative as "one of the principle ways in which we absorb knowledge," and language as "meditation," is to enter into a miraculously new understanding of what it means to sit down with a novel, biography, book of creative nonfiction, or even a simple short story. to note that she is stating these declarations while accepting the 1993 nobel prize for literature before members of the swedish academy doubles the thrill. [return:][return:]for those who have found masterworks by morrison, such as "beloved" and "jazz," somewhat daunting, hearing what she appreciates most about literature provides invaluable clues to what one experiences in her own literary art. the autumn-breeze whisper of her voice is an enthralling contrast to the laser heat and precision of her mind nobly at work.[return:][return:]aberjhani[return:]author of "encyclopedia of the harlem renaissance"[return:]and "visions of a skylark dressed in black"

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Don’t you remember being young, when language was magic without meaning? When what you could say, could not mean? When the invisible was what imagination strove to see? When questions and demands for answers burned so brightly you trembled with fury at not knowing.”

“Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.”

“Early in October an artist friend left a message which I kept on the answering service for weeks and played back every once in a while just to hear the trembling pleasure in her voice and the faith in her words.”

[Lady J. Raquelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge."

"We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives."

This speech was my first time reading anything of Toni Morrison's. Even in her speech, I can see and feel why so many people in this world have so much respect for her works, for how she used her language. I'm excited to dive more into her world.