Pricey Arnon,
Thanks for calling to thoughts in these unsure occasions a sure battle of way back and the individuals of Sarajevo, who typically felt remoted and forgotten by Europe and the world at giant through the a few years of siege. Now, it appears to be totally different with Ukraine, and there seems to be far more solidarity. However it’s for the individuals of the occupied cities and cities, who’re woken up by air-raid sirens, to say whether or not they can actually really feel that solidarity. Oksana Zabuzhko is undoubtedly the particular person to speak about this in our debate.
Lower than a 12 months after Susan Sontag directed Beckett’s play Ready for Godot in Sarajevo, I discovered myself within the besieged metropolis too. I used to be a part of a gaggle of 4 writers who had travelled to Sarajevo to precise our solidarity with our fellow writers dwelling within the metropolis, which was uncovered to fixed shelling from the encompassing hills.
However they have been in want of economic assist greater than friendship and type phrases, so we had money bodily strapped to us below our flak vests, fairly a considerable sum of cash, raised by PEN Worldwide to make life simpler for Bosnian writers. It actually wasn’t straightforward for them; one in every of them burnt virtually his total library to maintain himself and his household heat within the freezing Sarajevo winter when there was an influence and heating blackout.
Susan Sontag in Sarajevo
A query about civilisation and barbarism in Europe that Susan Sontag had posed in Sarajevo was echoed by all 4 of us, a bunch of relatively odd and weird travelling writers, carrying navy helmets and bulletproof vests. After we arrived at Sarajevo airport in a navy transport plane, surrounded by tall fortifications, machine weapons and barbed wire, we have been greeted by the ironic signpost for the UNPROFOR airlift: Possibly Airways. And on the slender strip of land that we needed to cross to go away the airport, French peacekeepers had nailed up a avenue signal they’d introduced from Paris: Champs-Elysées.
Because the tragedy of individuals dying amidst gunfire and shelling unfolded, and immersed in deprivation getting ready to hunger, the need to outlive was typically sustained with fairly darkish humour, and by cherishing the hope that Europe, the beacon of civilisation, would come to the rescue. Ready for Godot? A taxi driver who had turn into extremely expert in dodging the streets focused by hilltop snipers instructed me he drove a taxi by day and spent his nights crouching down together with his rifle within the defensive traces above the town. “I’m ready for my Godot there,” he joked.
Life below communist dictatorships, with their pompous illusions of social equality, was utterly totally different from life below parliamentary democracy and capitalism
Susan Sontag, who got here to Sarajevo from New York, might need had a greater understanding of the intertwining of Europe’s great cultural and social achievements with its unbelievably brutal nationalist and ideological delusions, which befell through the turbulent century that started in 1914 with the assassination in Sarajevo.
Maybe she understood it higher than many Europeans. And I can see that you simply too, Arnon, perceive it very nicely. After all you do, since you’re a author, and it’s our job to speak about good and evil, about gentle and darkness, which, like civilisation and barbarism, dwell not solely in a single nation, however typically in a single particular person. I concern, although, that many, maybe most, Europeans are vulnerable to prejudice and simplification.
The tribes of Europe
In February 1993, I used to be invited to Paris to attend a debate …des écrivains, des intellectuels, des politiques, des plasticiens, venus de toute l’Europe… because the invitation stated. It was to be in regards to the large modifications that had taken place in Europe after the violent political and social upheavals in Jap Europe, the autumn of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the battle in Yugoslavia. Once I arrived on the Palais de Chaillot, a large banner with a silhouette of the Eiffel Tower within the background had been unfurled in entrance of the massive home windows, which learn “Les tribus ou l’Europe?”
The tribes or Europe? It dawned on me instantly that I had been invited to the occasion as a consultant of the tribal a part of Europe. Seemingly, for the organisers of this grand debate, the financial and social disintegration of communist societies after avenue revolutions, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of Yugoslavia (the place nationalist and partly additionally spiritual struggles have been raging) was nothing however a treacherous street to tribal societies – to barbarism. A French thinker and a Polish essayist objected to this simplification from the outset. However, the controversy that adopted elicited many phrases of hope for a united, tolerant Europe of solidarity and human rights.
However I merely couldn’t shake off the caption on the Palais de Chaillot; it got here to me in a flash a few years later, firstly of the brand new century and millennium, when the “large bang” additionally led to a proper unification, or relatively I ought to say incorporation of the nations of Jap Europe in Western Europe. I typically assume that this course of did not result in any deeper perception into how the individuals of Jap Europe truly lived.
Obtain the most effective of European journalism straight to your inbox each Thursday
An individual who had spent a big a part of their life in, say, Lyon or Ghent had a distinct life expertise from somebody who had lived in Prague or Vilnius. Life below communist dictatorships, with their pompous illusions of social equality, was utterly totally different from life below parliamentary democracy and capitalism. Thirty years on, the Berlin Wall remains to be within the minds of many Europeans.
Wagging finger at Jap societies
Poland poet Czesław Miłosz speaks vividly about this. To cite from his e-book Native Realm (Rodzinna Europa): “The rotating apple of the Earth is tiny and there aren’t any extra white spots on it. But it surely is sufficient to come right here, in Europe, from one in every of its jap or southern provinces, the place travellers not often go, and you’re already a newcomer from Septentrion, about which it’s identified solely that it’s chilly.”
Many individuals within the West nonetheless imagine that their index finger needs to be wagging at Jap European society as if to lecture them on democracy and the rule of regulation. Within the East, nonetheless, there are lots of individuals whose excessive hopes have been dashed as soon as they realised that their incorporation within the European Union wouldn’t change their lives in a single day from distress to heavenly prosperity. For years, they’d been introduced up within the utopia of a communism that persistently did not materialise.
When the utopia finally collapsed, they instantly clung to a different utopian concept: Europe. Prosperity; democracy; paradise valley; every part will come naturally. However nothing comes naturally. I actually stated it as soon as in a debate, “We dreamt of democracy, however wakened in capitalism,” – and in a relatively ruthless type as nicely, since all Jap European societies needed to cope with transition issues: privatisation, social divisions, and the affect of highly effective teams of nouveaux riches on politics, the media and different spheres of life.
In Germany, which you clearly know very nicely and admire extremely, even now an individual who lived within the GDR is known as an “Ossi”, which means one thing fairly totally different, and never essentially good, in comparison with somebody who lived within the West and is known as a “Wessi”. Maybe, Arnon, some could discover your affection for the Germans a bit unusual, particularly if one comes from part of the world that has had, to place it mildly, a nasty expertise of them prior to now. However I can perceive you to a level.
Know what democracy isn’t
Maybe it’s the Germans who now perceive the European concept greatest. Anybody who desires to know Europe ought to stroll by way of Berlin’s museums of the twentieth century or speak to educated Germans who, owing to their expertise of dwelling below two dictatorships, have outdone the nationalist and ideological insanities. Heiner Müller describes it nicely in his autobiography, which he subtitled, Life in Two Dictatorships.
It’s due to this fact a good suggestion to achieve no less than some information of European historical past so as to ponder the longer term. It’s only after we know what democracy isn’t that we will have a good understanding of what democracy is, or needs to be.
As writers, we would favor individuals to have interaction with our literature greater than with our public interventions on social points. Generally that is merely not attainable. It was through the battle in Yugoslavia that my first main translation into German (and, by the way, into Dutch shortly afterwards as De galeislaaf, 1995), the novel The Galley Slave was revealed. What a thrill for a comparatively younger author! The e-book had been fantastically designed, and the writer ready quite a lot of beautiful issues to say about it for an interview – if anybody was involved in it in any respect, which hopefully they’d be.
On the Frankfurt Guide Honest, the lights have been on all day and the TV cameras have been buzzing on the stand of an Austrian writer that additionally revealed books by Serbian and Croatian writers, as we defined our views on the battle… My stunning e-book lay unnoticed on the desk and hardly anybody checked out it. Within the night, because the publishers have been tidying up their stands and the lights have been being switched off, a feminine reporter from a German radio station got here to see me. “Madam,” I stated, “Would you be so type as to ask me one thing about this novel that has simply been revealed?” The girl smiled amicably. “After all,” she stated, “inform me.” And I did speak for a couple of minutes. “Very nicely,” she stated, “however I wish to ask you: did Slovenia, by seceding, trigger the battle in Yugoslavia?”
The longer term as a whish record
The place is the purpose at which we cease being artists and turn into maybe merely a tad extra unique as interpreters of social and political conditions? I feel that our books may typically present a deeper perception into the social circumstances and human fallacies which have brought on main crises – offered they have been learn, after all.
The longer term? It may very well be only a want record. For now, it’s good to know why and the way we’ve got arrived on the Europe we’ve got. For now, it’s good to know that we’ve got arrived at this state by the use of the majestic heights of civilisation and the deep lows of barbarism. It’s good to know that, no less than in my view, the Enlightenment was the turning level that instilled into European societies crucial social and cultural postulates that now permit us to talk of liberal democracy, openness, solidarity and tolerance.
Absolutely, the Europe of tomorrow won’t be the Europe of at present. Generations are coming of age who’re broadening the horizons for understanding the “different” and “inclusivity”, no matter we imply by that. After all, who can perceive this if not the author? But it surely was the Enlightenment, together with human rights, that set the framework for and restrictions on the following, i.e., liberal, democracy of at present.
It isn’t a limitless house for arbitrary social experimentation, however consists of the rule of regulation, secularism, freedom of speech, and due to this fact additionally a algorithm that make dwelling collectively bearable. And these components should be revered sooner or later too, if we aren’t to seek out ourselves being caught up once more, as we’ve got been so many occasions in European historical past, in violent social experiments through which we seize one another’s throats.
After we are tempted to speak in regards to the outdated, drained Europe, in regards to the typically pointless labyrinths of European forms, about egoism and intolerance, when indignant thinkers forecast Europe’s decline, allow us to bear in mind why, in any case, so many individuals past its borders need to dwell in it? Allow us to ask the Ukrainian individuals why they’re ready to struggle for such a life? Might it’s that the thought of European values is extra seen and higher understood in societies past its borders than inside Europe itself?
The soul of Europe
One of many architects of the pragmatic Europe that we’ve got at present, and through which we really feel comparatively snug, and which so many individuals past its borders discover so enticing, was Jacques Delors, the architect of European integration. It was Delors who noticed within the early Nineties that political and financial unification alone was not sufficient to maintain it in the long run. As if frightened by his personal pragmatism, he cried out that Europe wanted its “soul”.
Even for a author, the notion of a “soul of Europe” sounds considerably fictional. However is not it artwork, particularly literary artwork, typically crucial, ambiguous, unsure, uncomfortable, the very European soul, which displays what occurs in each soul: moments of pleasure and unhappiness, elation and despair, moments of self-love but in addition of the responsible conscience that pounces on us within the wakeful hours of the evening due to our actions?
Evidently, I don’t supply our books as textbooks on understanding and tolerance. “All artwork is sort of ineffective,” stated Oscar Wilde in his sarcastic model. However, I humbly think about that our books can, in their very own method, reply the query of who we’re, the place we come from and in addition the place we’re going, to those that need to learn them. As people and as a neighborhood in all its variety.
All the most effective, Arnon; see you quickly in Amsterdam.
Drago Jančar
This letter is without doubt one of the “Letters on Democracy”, a undertaking of the 4th Discussion board on European Tradition happening in June 2023 in Amsterdam. Organised by De Balie, the Discussion board focuses on the that means and way forward for democracy in Europe, bringing collectively artists, activists and intellectuals to discover democracy as a cultural relatively than a political expression.
For the “Letters on Democracy”, 5 writers envision the way forward for Europe in a series of 5 letters initiated by Arnon Grunberg. The writers – Arnon Grunberg, Drago Jančar, Lana Bastašić, Oksana Zabuzhko and Kamel Daoud – come collectively through the Discussion board, in a dialog in regards to the Europe that lies forward of us and the function of the author in it.