This time I'm going to write about the Nobel Prizes, this prizes are given by the Swedish Academy since 1895, when the chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel started with the prizes, a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of
categories by Swedish and Norwegian committees in recognition of
cultural and/or scientific advances.
In 1998 the Portuguese writer José de Sousa Saramago received the Literature Nobel prize, because his works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. I have chosen this man because his incredible rich language and the form he writes his writings or poems, here you have one of them:
Es tan hondo el silencio
"Es tan hondo el silencio en las estrellas/
Ni el son de las palabras se propaga/
ni el canto de las aves milagrosas./
Pero allá, en las estrellas, cuando somos/
un astro redimido, es donde se oye/
el íntimo rumor que abre las rosas."
Saramago was born in 1922 into a family of landless peasants in Azinhaga, Portugal, a small village in Ribatejo Province one hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon. "Saramago", the Portuguese word for wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum), was his father's family's nickname, and was accidentally incorporated into his name upon registration of his birth.
This man suffered a lot when his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon
for treatment, Saramago recalled, "He went into the yard of his house,
where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by
one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he
knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn't
mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago said, "you have no
feeling."
More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in
Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages.
A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago was criticized by institutions such as the Catholic Church, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, with whom he disagreed on various issues. An atheist, he defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition.
I have to mention also the man who liberate Africa and have die recently, the for ever immortal in our hearts, Nelson Mandela. He received the Peace Nobel Prize in 1993, but this important award isn't enough recognition for the incredible work that has done this man. Click here if you want more information about him.
“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what
difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the
significance of the life we lead.” — Nelson Mandela
In Memoriam
