Literature in ExileIn December 1987 a group of published novelists, poets, and journalists met in Vienna to participate in the Wheatland Conference on Literature. The writers presented papers addressing their common experience--that of being exiled. Each explored different facets of the condition of exile, providing answers to questions such as: What do exiled writers have in common? What is the exile's obligation to colleagues and readers in the country of origin? Is the effect of changing languages one of enrichment or impoverishment? How does the new society treat the emigre? Following each essay is a peer discussion of the topic addressed. The volume includes writers whose origins lie in Central Europe, South Africa, Israel, Cuba, Chile, Somalia, and Turkey. Through their testimony of the creative process in exile, we gain insight into the forces which affect the creative process as a whole. Contributors. William Gass, Yury Miloslavsky, Jan Vladislav, Jiri Grusa, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Horst Bienek, Edward Limonov, Nedim Gursel, Nuruddin Farah, Jaroslav Vejvoda, Anton Shammas, Joseph Brodsky, Wojciech Karpinski, Thomas Venclova, Yuri Druzhnikov |
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abroad American Andrei Kurbsky Anton Shammas Award became become born Brodsky's called century creative critic Cuba Cuban culture Czech Czechoslovakia Czesław Miłosz dissidents Edward Limonov emigration émigré émigré writers English essayist essays European exiled writer existence experience feel foreign France French friends Georgy Vladimov German glasnost Gombrowicz happened Horst Bienek human invisible Ivan's Jan Vladislav Joseph Brodsky Kurbsky language Lev Kopelev Libuše Moníková Liehm literary Lithuania living means Miłosz Moscow Nabokov native Nâzim Nedim Gürsel never novel novelist Nuruddin Farah one's Paris perhaps person poems poetry Poland Polish political Prize problem published question reality refugee responsibility role Russian émigré Russian literature Russian poet Russian writer sense short-story writer society Somalia someone Soviet Union Spanish speak story Tanase things tion totalitarianism tradition translated Turkish University USSR Vladimov William Gass words writer in exile written wrote Yury
Popular passages
Page 105 - The allure of the past is indeed strong. As Joseph Brodsky points out, an emigre is necessarily a retrospective being, for the native shore is the only known shore, the only territory that is familiar and thus seemingly safe: "Whether pleasant or dismal, the past is always a safe territory, if only because it is already experienced; and the species' capacity to revert, to run backward — especially in its thoughts or dreams, since there we are generally safe as well — is extremely strong in all...
Page 15 - For man, the immaterial, unreal time of mathematicians freezes and realizes itself in memory. This is not only a question of individual memory, for a man's home, fixed in time, is shaped not only by his own history, but also by the histories of those who surround him, by his family and tribe, and by the palpable history of tilled fields, of ancient villages and new cities, and above all by that changeable, unfathomable, mythic reservoir of his native language. A man's native village can be engulfed...
Page 12 - Prayer ("Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner") synchronized with one's breathing.
Page 146 - And this, not in one year, nor yet in two — but throughout many years have I toiled with much sweat and patience; and always have I been separated from my fatherland, and little have I seen my parents, and my wife have I not known...
Page 146 - ... but always in far-distant towns have I stood in arms against your foes and I have suffered many wants and natural illnesses, of which my Lord Jesus Christ is witness. Still more, I was visited with wounds inflicted by barbarian hands in various battles and all my body is already afflicted with sores. But to you, O tsar, was all this as nought; rather do you show us your intolerable wrath and bitterest hatred, and, furthermore, burning...
Page 145 - And wherefore have you spilt their victorious, holy blood in the churches of God during sacerdotal ceremonies, and stained the thresholds of the churches with their blood of martyrs? And why have you conceived against your wellwishers and against those who lay down their lives for you unheard-of torments and persecutions and death, falsely accusing the Orthodox of treachery and magic and other abuses, and endeavouring with zeal to turn light into darkness and...
Page 108 - For one in our profession, the condition we call exile is, first of all, a linguistic event: an exiled writer is thrust, or retreats, into his mother tongue. From being his, so to speak, sword, it turns into his shield, into his capsule. What started as a private, intimate affair with the language, in exile becomes fate - even before it becomes an obsession or a duty.
Page 108 - I indeed wish it got more takers. Perhaps a metaphor will help: to be an exiled writer is like being a dog or a man hurtled into outer space in a capsule (more like a dog, of course, than a man, because they will never retrieve you). And your capsule is your language. To finish the metaphor off, it must be added that before long the capsule's passenger discovers that it gravitates not earthward but outward.
Page 101 - For good old exile ain't what it used to be. It isn't leaving civilized Rome for savage Sarmatia anymore, nor is it sending a man from, say, Bulgaria to China. No, as a rule what takes place is a transition from a political and economic backwater to an industrially advanced society with the latest word on individual liberty on its lips. And it must be added that perhaps taking this route is for an exiled writer, in many ways, like going home — because he gets closer to the seat of the ideals which...
Page 145 - And I have not let my tongue say more than this on all these matters in turn; but because of the bitterest persecution from your power, with much sorrow in my heart will I hasten to inform you of a little. Wherefore, O tsar, have you destroyed the strong in Israel and subjected to various forms of death the voevodas given to you by...