“I consider distinguishing me with an honorary doctorate as a symbolic and political recognition by the Academy of our Land of Metaxas, from which, after all, we all originated and in which we meet, still as real as possible, although without borders, passports and languages,” Olga Tokarczuk said during a ceremony at Sorbonne University. The Parisian university is one of the members of the 4EU+ Alliance, to which the University of Warsaw also belongs.

On 25th March, a ceremony was held in the Sorbonne’s Grand Amphitheatre to award honorary doctorate degrees to eight distinguished scholars and people of culture. Among them is Olga Tokarczuk.

“It is with great joy and full appreciation that I would like to congratulate you on being awarded an honorary doctorate from Sorbonne University. This distinction, which is one of the highest academic honours, is not only a recognition of your outstanding literary work, but also of your contribution to literature, culture, the arts and open thinking. Your successes are an inspiration and hope for the future for all of us, which has also been recognised and appreciated at the University of Warsaw. We are proud of such an outstanding graduate. I am convinced that through your literary and social activity, you are fulfilling the most beautiful and important mission of the University, which consists of dignity, respect for people, tolerance, identity and the search for truth,” Prof. Alojzy Z. Nowak, the UW Rector, wrote in a letter to Olga Tokarczuk.

“Space becomes a question, it ceases to be obvious, it is a doubt. Olga Tokarczuk’s universe is exactly like that: it is a question, a doubt in space; what seems familiar, ordinary to us, under her pen becomes extraordinary, emerges from routine, reveals itself in contact with otherness. In this relationship between rootedness and displacement, her writing takes on its full force,” Prof. Margaret Smorag-Goldberg, literary critic and lecturer at Sorbonne University, said in her laudation.

Olga Tokarczuk is one of the most outstanding representatives of contemporary literature in Poland and abroad. Her works include novels, collections of essays, a volume of poetry and film scripts. She is the winner of the Booker Prize for her novel Flights (2018) and a two-time winner of the Nike Literary Award for her novels: Flights (2008) and The Books of Jacob (2015).

In 2019, the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation recognised Olga Tokarczuk’s narrative imagination and awarded her the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018. The writer has thus joined the ranks of Nobel laureates associated with the University of Warsaw. Among those who studied at the UW were: Henryk Sienkiewicz, Czesław Miłosz, Józef Rotblat, Leonid Hurwicz and Menachem Begin.

The Senate of the University of Warsaw awarded Olga Tokarczuk an honorary doctorate by acclamation on 16th December 2020. The conferment ceremony took place on 23rd February 2022.

The land of Metaxa

Olga Tokarczuk received her honorary doctorate from the President of Sorbonne University, Prof. Nathalie Drach-Temam.

“It is with great joy that I receive this honourable title. I would like to thank you for appreciating my work, but I am aware that I stand before the Academy as a newcomer from another world, from an unknown place and an undefined time, where academic instruments, indexes and reviews do not play an important role. I come from a land called Metaxa. This is a term once used by Plato to describe a mysterious reality that transcends human experience and beyond what human beings can imagine. This realm has a paradoxical, infinite dimension, situated between concepts. It is something between language and imagination, between representation and presentation, something intangible but at the same time very real, because it affects the world and its history. At the same time, Metaxa is a land of experience that remains vague and difficult to describe. It cannot be defined in a scientific way. It is a place that is constantly effervescing, bubbling. It is where the sources of myth beat, where stories are born, where powerful representations are created. Above all, however, the Land of Metaxa reflects the multidimensional complexity of the world, which protects against the human mind that often simplifies things,” Olga Tokarczuk said during her talk.

The laureate referred to the times of particular uncertainty in which humanity is currently living.

“The global struggle for world domination uses information as a weapon with which to mislead, manipulate, deceive and ultimately kill. Faced with this reality of pervasive lies, we must pay close attention to the real contours of our world. In view of this, is the era of literary fiction over? Do we now demand the truth and nothing but the truth? What do readers expect who ask me at author meetings: ‘is everything you describe true?’? What should I tell them? That it is a truth that never happened?” Olga Tokarczuk said, adding: “I consider distinguishing me with an honorary doctorate as a symbolic and political recognition by the Academy of our Land of Metaxas, from which we all, after all, came and in which we meet, still as real as possible, although without borders, passports and languages.”