Susan Sontag accepts German award

[MIKE BURN]

Quote:

---

Sunday, October 12, 2003 Posted: 1320 GMT ( 9:20 PM HKT)



FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- Lauded as a writer unafraid to speak the truth and an "intellectual ambassador" between the United States and Europe, U.S. writer Susan Sontag received Sunday one of the German-speaking world's most prestigious literary prizes.



In her speech accepting the German Bookseller Association's 15,000 euro ($17,700) Peace Prize, the 70-year-old Sontag did not disappoint, chastising the U.S. ambassador to Germany for his refusal to attend the ceremony and praising the role of books in the democratic world.



"Especially now, in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom," Sontag said.



While Sontag denies that her recent criticism of U.S. President George W. Bush -- which met with sympathy in Germany, which staunchly opposed the war -- was the motive behind her receiving this year's award, her criticism of American ambassador Daniel Coates met with resounding applause.



"I can only more regret the deliberate absence of the American ambassador ... whose immediate refusal ... to attend our gathering here today shows he is more interested in affirming the ideological stance and the rancorous reactiveness of the Bush administration than he is by fulfilling a normal diplomatic duty," Sontag said.



In contemplating two centuries of trans-Atlantic relations, she argued that while the Bush administration seeks to depict the rift as ever-widening, never before have Europe and the United States been closer.



"The dominance of America is a fact. But America, as the present administration is starting to see, cannot do everything alone," Sontag said. "We are not shut off from each other. More and more, we leak into each other."



Sontag, whose works have been translated into more than 30 languages, also recalled her love affair with European, especially German, literature that began when she was 10.



"Through her work, never losing site of the European legacy, she has become one of the leading intellectual ambassadors between the two continents," the statement on the prize reads.



Sontag is popular in Germany, where she has lived periodically. Sontag also spent three years in Sarajevo during the Serb siege of the Bosnian city in the early 1990s and has campaigned on behalf of jailed and persecuted authors.



German writer Ivan Nagel praised Sontag in a laudatory speech for letting her emotions and her conscience guide her work and challenging her readers to do the same.



"She urges us to base our verdict not on the foundations of legal paragraphs nor in their name, but on the basis of each individual's common sense and human feelings," said Nagel.



"Sontag's verdicts, from Vietnam to Iraq, have always been sober and clear, and frequently also prophetic."





Sontag: "America, as the present

administration is starting to see,

cannot do everything alone."

---