Heresy and Rebellion in Prague
18. May 2010 16:10
The Prague Writers’ Festival which begins on June 6 is all about the encounter of ideas. Over the last twenty years this annual event has become a lively forum for writers from many parts of the world, and the diversity of their work and thought has been the festival’s greatest strength. This year it revolves around the theme of Heresy and Rebellion, pointing to the perennial tension between the writer and the society in which he or she lives. A couple of days ago I met the festival director, Michael March, to talk about this year’s event.
You decided immediately after the fall of communism 20 years ago to create an international literature festival in Prague and it’s been going ever since. The moment the Iron Curtain opened, you leapt across…
“I was blindfolded, directionless. Someone spun me in this direction and I crossed these borders that were no longer borders, and ended in Prague. I created the Prague Writers’ Festival in a country that had no literary traditions vis-à-vis the international world. These were myths – there really weren’t readings in this country. We helped create the tradition as it now exists. We were the first. We opened the doors.”
But even 20 years later I sometimes feel that this festival still has not become an intrinsic part of the Czech cultural world. There is a separate and more introverted Czech cultural scene, and your international festival exists almost as if in parallel to this.
“It’s the fate, almost the DNA, of the country, to be closed, to be suspicious. We’re strangers. All writers are strangers. The writers, to be effective, have to be heretics. They have to be outside the circle. They have to be observers. Poets and philosophers observe the world from the outside, and we create the world. In Greek the word for poetry means ‘to create’. And so the festival, to be effective, to be alive, must be in opposition, must be strange to the everyday accommodation of the real.”
Another aspect of the festival that I find very interesting is that you are also encouraging and actually publishing translations into Czech.
“The festival is a cultural foundation. We have a series called ‘World Poets in Prague’, directed by Vlasta March, the foundation’s vice-president. We are publishing three bilingual editions for the festival. One is Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s ‘A History of Clouds’ translated by Tomáš Kafka; then there’s Derek Walcott’s ‘Feast’ – the first translation of his poetry into Czech, translated by Miroslav Jindra, who received this year’s State Prize for translation – and there’s my own volume of poems, ‘Only a Promise’, translated by Hana Žantovská and Jiří Josek.”
You have some very famous, internationally highly respected writers coming to the festival, with no less than three winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Tell me a little about the people who are coming and the process of getting them here.
“The festival is constructed with the idea of ‘Heresy and Rebellion’ and we invited writers to share their experience of this theme. Gao Xingjian has lived in China. His novel ‘Soul Mountain’ was extremely well received. He received the Nobel Prize in the year 2000. The political process catapulted him towards this prize. You could say the same thing for Herta Müller, a very great writer, a very poetic, lyrical writer.”
I should add that Herta Müller is an ethnic German from Romania, and she moved to Berlin shortly before the fall of the Iron Curtain. She has lived in Germany since.
“Herta is just a wonderful writer, but she’s been scarred by her experience in Romania and the death of her friends. She writes about this. But it’s not just her experience in Romania. It’s the mechanism of oppression, torture and power that she’s writing about. So it’s quite universal.
You mentioned two of the three Nobel Prize winners. Who is the third?
“The third is Derek Walcott. Born in Saint Lucia, he received the prize in 1992. He’s a poet of the Caribbean - the sea, the sun, and a poet that has faced colonialism. His ancestors were slaves. He writes in English. The language of Saint Lucia is Creole – a bit of French – it’s the West Indies. We will speak at the American Center about slavery with Assia Djebar, John Wray and Jan Švejnar. They will talk about slavery in a very large sense, as an economic system, a business, terror, occupation, colonialism.”
It strikes me as very interesting and stimulating in the Czech context, to bring a writer from the very different world of the Caribbean to the Czech Republic to exchange ideas.
“This is the sense of comparison that we wish to see drawn. Diogenes said, ‘The art of slavery is to control the master.’ Of course, this makes perfect sense seen through the lens of occupation of the Czech Lands. The Czechs managed to control their masters – through indifference, through rejection, a contempt which now comes with a master card. In speaking about slavery and colonialism, we must reflect upon our own history and identity. The festival creates the context to create literature, living literature in conversations and readings. The whole art of the festival is in living, in creating.”
The Prague Writers’ Festival has a great website. It’s labyrinthine, in fact. I’ve really enjoyed delving into the website in both English and Czech. It includes plenty of extracts from the writers’ work. It has become more and more a focus of the festival, hasn’t it?
“It is quite natural. We’re trying, in an organic sense, to exercise our thoughts with those willing to exercise.”
Radio Praha
16-05-2010 00:01 | David Vaughan