Some thoughts on poet­ry and crisis

 

I do not think an artist can describe his pain while he is in pain. As a cit­i­zen he might want to express an opin­ion or take an action con­fronting the urgency of facts. But as an artist he will do that on the terms of his art which requires a cer­tain dis­tance and elab­o­ra­tion of the cir­cum­stances, a process much dif­fer­ent than say  that of the jour­nal­ist or the activist. Espe­cial­ly since the last years we have heard almost every­thing from every­one in this pub­lic debate about the Euro­pean cri­sis, this kind of elab­o­ra­tion is nec­es­sary. We need time in order to get a deep­er under­stand­ing which will tran­scend the com­mon places and the too obvi­ous truths. “ ..to remain  aware of the weight of fact with­out yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion to become only a reporter is one of the most dif­fi­cult puz­zles con­fronting a prac­ti­tion­er of poet­ry. It calls for a cun­ning in select­ing one’s means and a kind of dis­til­la­tion of mate­r­i­al to achieve a dis­tance to con­tem­plate the things of the world as they are, with­out illu­sion”, Ches­law Milosz writes.

What I find extreme­ly inter­est­ing is that this is a cri­sis of iden­ti­ty and val­ues more than any­thing else. It rais­es many ques­tions about what we con­sid­er accept­able in the polit­i­cal field about what kind of soci­ety we want to be part of. The chal­lenge is to rede­fine our­selves and to do that we should open up to oth­er fields of thought besides the dom­i­na­tion of neces­si­ties. I do not believe in the role of the artist as a pub­lic fig­ure who rais­es his voice to assert a lead­ing role. Because he is a spe­cial receiv­er he can become a spe­cial sen­si­tive trans­mit­ter.  Every jour­nal­ist who meets an artist today will ask the same ques­tion. “How does the cri­sis affect your art “. In dif­fi­cult times there aris­es the demand for art to give answers. Usu­al­ly this is just bad art. This appeal for answers is the dis­guised mis­trust that soci­ety holds against poet­ry: That it should prove its use­ful­ness, become countable.

In our post-cap­i­tal­ist world lan­guage often func­tions as a struc­ture of oppres­sion, of pow­er and it is exten­sive­ly used as a tool, a mere instru­ment val­ued for its appli­ca­tions. In poet­ry, lan­guage is dis­rupt­ed, is dis­lo­cat­ed  and this maybe brings for­ward the pos­si­bil­i­ty for us to deny the world as it is.

It seems now a days that our world is described through a unique nar­ra­tive, that is: eco­nom­ics. But we can­not accept our lives to be reduced in num­bers. We need alter­na­tive nar­ra­tives in order to live . Poet­ry is an alter­na­tive nar­ra­tive of cru­cial impor­tance. By cre­at­ing new metaphors, new vehi­cles of mean­ing, it regen­er­ates our spir­it, helps us devel­op crit­i­cal think­ing, describe our­selves, inter­pret our lives with more com­plex­i­ty and depth. It opens up a space of pos­si­bil­i­ties with­in what we con­sid­er as reality.

More than, that it implies the fact that per­haps we need to think more care­ful­ly about the un-real­is­tic or even the unat­tain­able in order to pre­serve what is real.

If we look at the recent his­to­ry of Greece we will see that we have been in an almost con­stant state of cri­sis, war, civ­il war, dic­ta­tor­ship. Many of the poets we know and love have writ­ten their poet­ry in much more dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. The artist is always in a state of dis­pute with his time and envi­ron­ment, he is the crit­i­cal mind and the wit­ness, the eye that is not afraid to look and report. I am just wor­ried about the notion that in times like that we ask art to become use­ful, to bring for­ward answers for what we can­not explain, which is wrong. Poet­ry is always the field of the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of ques­tions, or it los­es its crit­i­cal qual­i­ty which is free­dom. In more obvi­ous­ly total­i­tar­i­an regimes a poem could and has been a threat to their order of things. Today the oppres­sion, the way pow­er is imposed is much more sophis­ti­cat­ed and insid­i­ous. It is in many ways inter­nal­ized, so most of the times we do not even real­ize we are controlled.

Artists do not change the world, they rather invent incon­ceiv­able struc­tures of words, sounds, images, mean­ings. They are wor­ri­ers and founders upon the chaos of possibilities.

Poet­ry is a uni­ver­sal lan­guage  but more impor­tant­ly it is also the lan­guage of doubt , a space of risk where our con­science is awak­ened, where we ques­tion our beliefs and ideas, where we become active. In poet­ry we hear the foot­steps of oth­ers, the poem is the pas­sage and because of it we tra­verse bor­ders, gen­res, struc­tures, dis­truc­tions and trans­for­ma­tions. Lis­ten­ing to a poem is a con­scious and ener­getic act (prax­is) that can change you. That is why to write or read poet­ry is a polit­i­cal act in itself.

 

 

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