Mighty pen

Following yesterday's Nobel Prize nomination, the Committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to a man who knew the weight of his words would probably put an end to his freedom. Jailed since last Fall, Liu Xiaobo wrote Charter 08 - a document that calls for the return of democracy in China. How can words threaten a government to that extent? History is full of such stories.

Apparently, it was British playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton who coined the expression the Pen is mightier than the sword. He was famous with another line - It was a dark and stormy night - which was apparently used by Charles Schutz. But, this information I am being fed to keep up appearances... 

For stream of consciousness reasons...

I remember in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable lightness of Being - the Zeitgeist novel of the 80s or was it the Zeitgeist novel of my 20s ? - there is that tale of a communist leader who is banned from the Party. And, whose presence in photographs, has been erased. The sole remnant of his passage in history, is a hat that has been forgotten and that floats away.

For more information and well-researched information about the Noble Peace Prize, read on...http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2010/10/nobel_peace_prize