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Je refuse le prix,” Jean-Paul Sartre said on this day in 1964.

With these words, the French writer and philosopher became the first person to freely decline the Nobel Prize.

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Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964.
CreditAssociated Press
But the Swedish Academy wasn’t the first to hear them.

A young journalist landed the scoop after tracking down Sartre at a Paris bistro. The 59-year-old “pope of existentialism” was lunching with Simone de Beauvoir, his longtime partner.

Interrupted before the cheese course, Sartre was stunned to hear that he had just been named the academy’s literary laureate. (A week earlier, after learning that he had been nominated for the honor, he had written to the jury asking not be chosen. His letter didn’t arrive in time.)

That evening, Sartre read a statement to the Swedish media to explain why he refused the prize — and the $53,000 that came with it.

Official honors, he said, exposed his readers “to a pressure I do not consider desirable.”

The jury did not change its decision.

More than a decade later, Sartre, or someone related to him, allegedly asked for the money that he had turned down, according to the Swedish Academy’s former secretary.

This time, it was the academy that declined.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/briefing/transgender-turkey-nfl.html