bunpeiris Literature

WRITERS Vs. HUMANITY    Being compiled by bunpeiris

I am just a chronicler. My passion is to discover and to write about it.
Tom Wolfe, Time 13th February 1989

Ah, what an age it is!
When to speak of trees is almost crime
For it is a kind of silence against injustice
To Posterity: Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) “To Posterity” about Germany under the Nazis

I’m torn, as I believe Brecht was in the poem.
I’m angry, that we have so perverted the world that on one level it does feel ‘almost
a crime’ ‘to speak about trees’.
I am angry that we have made injustice
so massive, complex and ubiquitous that to speak, or even think, about anything
else, can feel like, and maybe even be, a treacherous silence.
I’m heartsick that we have so obliterated peace that the momentary sensation of
it is almost necessarily an illusion.
What kind of world have we made, where we can fail each other, or even betray
each other, by walking ‘calmly’ across the street?
Clearly, if nothing else, it is a world without innocence. None of us have any
excuse.

Rabbi Sheila Shulman, Associate Rabbi, Finchley Reform Synagogue

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/41443579?

Write me, O writer, a justification of Jew-baiting & death camps:
put it in the invented mouths of an invented zealot:
make it convince.
The artist’s pride: he must see if he can do it.
What is the point of the dialectic of fiction or drama unless the evil is as cogent as good? [1]
Anthony Burgess: Earthly Powers (A novel)

Every playwright I his heart is mother Terersa, always on the side of the individual against the institution.
And every playwright must also think like a dictator, there’s no democracy on the stage
Vaclav Havel, 19th November 1990, Time

Can Poetry serve our fellow men?
Can it find a place in man’s struggles?
I had already done enough tramping over the irrational & the negative.
I had to pursue & find the road to humanism outlawed from contemporary literature but deeply rooted in the aspirations of mankind.
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973): Memoirs
Pablo Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Literature is the denunciation of the times in which the writer lives.
Camilo Jose Cela, Time, 11th December in 1989

In Spain, a writer is always a presumed heretic.
Camilo Jose Cela, Time, 11th December in 1989

Art is on the side of the oppressed.
What writer of any literary worth defends fascism, totalitarianism, racism, in an age when these are still pandemic?
In Poland, where were the poets who sang the epic of the men who broke solidarity?
In South Africa, where are the writers who produce brilliant defenses of apartheid?
Nadine Godimer, 26th June 1991, Time
[Nadine Gordimer won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991]

I think a writer has to be responsible towards history & society.
Writer Li Guo  (Lee Kim Chai), 10th June 96, The strait Times [Singapore]

My Novels are concerned with either social or historical issues. For me, fiction is all about people. Whether good or bad, the characters have to be vividly portrayed.
Writer Li Guo (Lee Kim Chai), 01st June 99, The strait Times [Singapore]

The novel was there not to convey abstract ideas or philosophies, nor to form symbolic shapes or offer lazy consolations. It was about character & freedom, & dealt with the reality of human figures in their emotional & moral lives. If it resembled philosophy, it was quite distinct from it.
Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)

Moravia believed in one value: the value of intelligence.
Enzo Siciliano on Albert Moravia
Newsweek, 8th October 1990

Solzhenitsyn & I differ most sharply over the defense of civil rights, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom to choose one’s country of residence, the openness of society.
For me, these rights constitute the basis for a fully human life & for international security & trust. I have no doubt whatsoever as to the value of defending specific individuals.
Solzhenitsyn assigns only a secondary importance to human rights & fears that concentration on them may divert attention from what he sees as more important matters. [2]Andrei Sakharov, Guardian Weekly, [U.K],  7th October 1990

Footnote is by My Sri Lanka Holidays bunpeiris
Monday, November 26, 2007

[1] Dr. Ediriweera Sarachchandra (3 June 1914 – 16 August 1996) of Sri Lanka made a highly credible  attempt on this phenomena in his plays Maname  and Sinhabahu. More this later on.
[2] Solzhenitsyn’s views should take root in Sri Lanka.It would be the ultimate tribute to those in the “Sri Lanka Defence Forces” who gave their lives so that we could live.

Collective Civic Responsibility Vs. Individual Freedom in the Third World
There is no transitional value except to hold Collective Civic Responsibility over & above Individual Freedom in the Third World. Until the undeveloped countries become developed countries, so called Universal Values of the Western Counties may best stand behind. bunpeiris

Sri Lanka Holidays http://www.my-srilankaholidays.com/2007/11/collective-civic-responsibility-vs.html