Nobel Laureate for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa was conferred the honoris causa doctorate degree at the De La Salle University on Tuesday. Photo by Marc Jayson Cayabyab

Nobel Laureate for literature Mario Vargas Llosa, conferred the honoris causa doctoral degree for literature at the De La Salle University (DLSU) on Tuesday, touted the role of literature in society of challenging oppressive regimes and being the source of world stories and humanity.

In his speech after being conferred the honorary doctorate, the Spanish-Peruvian writer said repressive regimes have looked suspiciously at literature and regarded it as the enemy of any ruling administration.

“Regimes in history have tried to control human life since the beginning until the end. Individuals have been very suspicious about literature. And they have always tried to control this activity,” Llosa said.

READ: ‘Literature is the enemy of any dictatorship’

He said dictatorships have always regarded literature as an enemy, precisely because it has the potential to wake up from the reader the civic responsibility of guarding for a better society.

“Dictators, dictatorships were not wrong because literature is the natural enemy, something that was against violence as an instrument of control of society, against the kind of fear, insecurity that all dictators could use in his citizens, in individuals,” Llosa said.

Llosa said reading good literature instills on a reader the civic duty to criticize the world and aspire for a better society.

“Good books develop in us a kind of natural criticism of the world as it is, and the longing for a better world, better societies, better institutions, values that would be able to create opportunities open to all the citizens, societies, in which inequalities will be diminished, in which there would be opportunities for everybody to materialize their dreams,” Llosa said.

He added that literature instills on the reader a “kind of dissatisfaction” on the “malaise” of the world, with the hope that “life will change, that societies will overcome all the limitations.”

He said the reader of literature can imagine—”invent with our imagination”—a more fair and just world.

In urging the people to read good literature, Llosa said literature has the potential to take the reader inward toward his or her self, finding out each one’s stories as human beings, and partake these as part of the greater narrative of crafting the history of humanity.

“Literature is, of course, a great entertainment. But at the same time, it’s a kind of knowledge of the world, of the history of human beings… I think literature is able to make us feel that we are having living experiences,” Llosa said.

“Reading stories of good books, we learn to enter into the intimacy of a culture in the most secret aspects of personality of human beings, and to enrich in this way our knowledge of what we are,” he added.

READ: Which are the Nobel laureate’s favorites among his novels?

Llosa recounted his La Sallian roots—learning primary education at a La Salle school in Bolivia—and his childhood experience of transforming the letters of literature into the images of life.

“I remember an essential factor of my childhood—this magical operation that was to transform the letters of a book in images, and the images in living experience,” Llosa said.

It seems like his conferment of the doctorate degree at the DLSU is a homecoming of sorts for the Nobel laureate and a La Sallian brother.

“I have very rich, vivid and moving memories of my stay in La Salle School in Bolivia… I remember brothers, fellow students, and particularly Brother Justiano who I think was Spanish and could teach me how to read,” Llosa said.

“And learning how to read has been the most important event of my life,” he added.

Llosa’s critically acclaimed novels include “La Ciudad y los Perros” (1963, “The Time of the Hero”); “La Tía Julia y el Escribidor” (1977, “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter”); “La Fiesta del Chivo (2000, “The Feast of the Goat”); “Travesuras de la Niña Mala (2006, The Bad Girl)”; “El Sueño del Celta (2011, “The Dream of the Celt); “El Héroe Discrete (2013, “The Discreet Hero”); “Cinco Esquinas (2016, “Five Corners”).

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010 “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.” TVJ