The concrete prevalence of literature continues to breed a whirlpool of timeless imagery and a tableau of entertainment, while being fixed on the pulpit of human understanding and the access of truth. This art form reflects the broad ensemble of cultural differences, which reverberates the very core of our diversity.
The celebration of not just the gift of words, but the wizards who have wrapped such gifts in their utmost ingenuity, acknowledges the impact literature has rendered on people’s lives. And so, last Tuesday, November 8, the University acknowledged one of the wizards of words by conferring honoree and Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa the degree of Doctor of Literature honoris causa at the Teresea Yuchengco Auditorium.
Llosa, writer of the internationally recognized novel, The Time of the Hero, a giant figure in literature and a 2010 Nobel Prize awardee, stands in the spotlight as he is yet again praised for the sublimity of his works and writings.
Before Llosa’s conferment, Brother President Raymundo Suplido FSC says, “Through his works, dreams are created, and the fictional world he has fashioned continues to transform his readers, bringing sense in the senselessness of the world.”
Llosa, upon receiving the degree, shares to the audience, “An essential fact of my childhood is magical operation; that was to transform the letters of a book [into] images and the images [into] living experience and the way how the world enriched extraordinarily. And this operation was able to transform me and the characters of the stories, short stories, and novels that I wrote.”
As the literary artist narrated his unwinding journey towards the discovery of his passion, he describes how the beauty of his magical operation refined his life. He says each time he comes across a book that spurs a change in his feelings, it teaches him to gain a more plenary understanding of life and of people, while giving an illusion of the limitlessness of human beings’ lives.
The awardee, burning with the desire for literature, does not only share the stupefying wonders of its impact on his life, but also highlights its relevance towards society as a whole. According to Llosa, good books, novels, poems, and essays enrich the life of their good readers. Yet even though it is quite far-fetched to comprehend how books can transform the lives of its readers for the better, Llosa believes that the existence of such still contributes to the eventual development of better and wiser dispositions.
“Once, literature was just an entertainment that you can eliminate and consecrate to more practical things. But it is a mistake, a very dangerous mistake,” Llosa further elucidates.
“Literature is, of course, a great form of entertainment which I think is the best entertainment that we have been able to create. But at the same time, [it] is also a time of knowledge of the world, of the history of human beings that we cannot learn through other disciplines.”
Llosa ends his speech with how literature enables people to feel the realities of their living experiences through the stories good books can tell. Thus, the remarkable reality of literature enables people to learn about the most secret aspects of our culture, allowing us to transcend the insurmountable and ourselves.
