Jean-Paul Sartre, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The Nobel Prize refusal of 1964 and the War Diaries episode with the Prix du Roman Populiste are, at bottom, the same structure — and I can speak to it honestly because I caught myself in the act, in writing, years before Stockholm. When the letter arrived from the Cahiers de Paris proposing my name for the Populiste prize, my first reaction was satisfaction — I was far away in the Army, so I would not have to get involved.1
That pride, that pleasure at the prospect of a prize dropping into my lap without my having to reach for it, is precisely what I then had to examine. Because when I reread the letter and discovered I had to put myself forward as a candidate, the satisfaction collapsed immediately.2 I invented a pretext — the populist label, the ideological banner I would be ranging myself under — but I named the real reason in the same breath: I wanted the prize to fall into my lap without my having to compromise myself.3
That is mauvaise foi in its most naked form, and I knew it. If I genuinely scorned prizes, I should simply refuse. If I wanted the prize, I should take it upon myself to bid for it. The trick was to mask a lash of pride behind a principled-sounding objection.4 There was a further layer. I wrote to Beauvoir about it, knowing perfectly well what she would answer — that labels are nothing, that we need money, that when it is offered one grabs it.5
By writing to her I was already more than half convinced by the reply she had not yet given me. It was a way of shifting the terrain from pride to cynicism: whatever I do is for money, so accepting is merely extorting two thousand francs from suckers, and I could wink at myself over the whole transaction.6 That wink, I noted at the time, was made easier by my long-standing sense that anyone who takes my work seriously is a mug — which itself comes from some inability to take myself seriously.7
But there is also the other side of the phenomenon, which I also recorded honestly. The prize, inasmuch as it is given — awarded by a jury of one's elders, conferred as a verdict — disgusts me. I described the photograph of old Rosny congratulating Troyat: the young man bending over respectfully with the smile one wears when trying to catch the words of a venerable dotard, and the old man saying "very well done, young man, keep it up." The nausea that image produced in me is real.8
The idea that one owes one's worth to the judgement of certain people is intolerable — and once one possesses the prize, one wears it like a May-queen's crown until the memory fades.9 The 1964 Nobel refusal is this same structure at a larger scale. The institutional consecration, the verdict delivered by a jury that thereby positions itself above the writer, the transformation of the work into a prize-winner's property — these are what I refused, and I refused them for the same reason I identified in the War Diaries: the prize, as given, is a form of being frozen by the Other's judgement into a fixed identity, a pour-soi treated as en-soi.
A writer who accepts that freezing has, in some sense, consented to be what the prize says he is. I was not willing to consent to that.
First of all, satisfaction: I'm a long way away in the Army, so I won't have to get involved in it. Always that pride which makes me not want to ask for anything. Yet I'd be very pleased if I got it — that prize of 2000 francs.War Diaries, p. 346
Whereupon, I reread the letter and realize — calamity! — that it's necessary to put oneself forward as a candidate. All that insular pride collapses — I can no longer wash my hands of the whole thing.War Diaries, p. 346
But the deeper reason is that I want the prize just to fall into my lap, without my having to compromise myself.War Diaries, p. 347
Falsity, and inauthenticity, of that point of view: for if I scorn prizes, then I really should refuse them; and if I want them, I must take it upon myself to bid for them. The trick here was to mask that sudden lash of pride — on the pretext of refusing the title of populist.War Diaries, p. 347
The Beaver is authentic without trying: by her very nature, I'd say, if authenticity could ever have its source in nature. I knew she'd answer me quite simply: 'What do labels matter — we need money. When it's offered, try to grab it!'War Diaries, p. 347
In writing to her, therefore, I was more than half convinced by the reply she'd not yet given me. Fresh swinishness here: knowing that the Beaver would pose the question on the terrain of money, I posed it there myself by writing to her — and thereafter kept it there.War Diaries, p. 347
This, moreover, was made easier for me by the impression I've always had that people who take my works seriously are mugs. It obviously comes from my sense of 'diminished reality', and from my inability to take myself seriously.War Diaries, p. 347
A photo in Match showed the aged Rosny congratulating Troyat, who'd just been awarded the prize. Troyat was bending over respectfully, with an attentive smile — the kind of smile one wears when one's trying to understand the words of some venerable dotard with his mouth full of pap. And the old man was saying: 'Very well done, young man, keep it up!' And I felt nauseated.War Diaries, p. 347
the idea that one owes one's worth to the judgement of certain people is intolerable to me... I certainly don't find one cuts much of a figure when one possesses it — when one becomes 'So-and-so, the Renaudot or Goncourt prizewinner'. It's all a bit too reminiscent of being crowned queen of the May.War Diaries, p. 347