Dissidence and literature

Technologically, the world has come very far in the recent years, but still, dictatorships follow the same path as they always have, but of course, now they do it in a more sophisticated way. They still burn and ban books, but now they also try to limit and control the use of the Internet, because it is through the internet that the written word can reach millions of people in an instant and bring them the information that these governments and powers have tried to hide. In the past, once a writer was in exile, he/she would be more or less disconnected from his/her people, but today, this is not the case at all. Books and articles can be written and be made available on line. Discussions can be made, and the truth can rise to the top. Of course, this age of technology has its own complications. Just the same way that writers and dissidents can use the Internet to reach people, dictatorships and their agents and supporters can do the exact same thing and try to distort the truth. But this is a battleground of a very serious war that goes on without pause and to which every writer needs to remain dedicated. The future belongs to the young generation, and in order to make this future better than the present is for the older generation to succeed in giving to the youth the burden of history it has carried. However, let's not forget that history can be abused and twisted. For example, there are still those who say the holocaust never happened, even though the holocaust is a very well documented event of recent history.

As human beings, we have a tendency to turn our backs on what causes us sorrow, pain, and despair, especially when these are historical events that bring our conscience, whether personal or social, under a microscope. So a writer who writes about such matters is always faced with a great deal of resistance. Also, let's not forget that governments and extremist political groups have and will use literature as a tool of propaganda. Of course, it's needless to say that when literature becomes a tool to serve a certain ideology, it automatically loses its soul and becomes lost. Any intelligent reader can spot such a condition without effort, no matter how skillfully it's done. Literature is not to serve a certain ideology, but to become the honest bearer of the human experience and condition, whether in the fiction or non-fiction form.

There are also those who take the power of literature too lightly. Without words and literature, we become secluded and imprisoned in our own bodies. What is the use of experience if it cannot be shared? I learned more about the holocaust from Anne Frank's Diary, Ellie Wiesel's Night, and Imre Kertesz's Fatelessness than I have ever learned from any history books. This is because these amazing works of literature not only tell us about what happened, but they tell us about how people felt as they experienced such horrors, so that we can put ourselves in their shoes and not only know but feel their experiences. Without literature, history and the human experience, which is a very important part of history, becomes a cold and impersonal recitation of numbers and words that can rarely bring tears to anyone's eyes or touch anyone's heart.

I am a practical person by nature, and as I told you, I wanted to become a medical doctor, but I ended up becoming a political prisoner at the age of 16 and spending more than 2 years in prison, and then I became a writer. I have always admired those who act on their convictions for a good cause: doctors who risk all and work in war and poverty torn regions to save lives, human-rights activists who are at the front lines of humanitarian disasters, journalists who risk their lives to bring us reports and images about events happening across the globe, engineers who build roads and schools in remote areas or bring clean running water to those who need it.

What is the role of the writer? In my humble opinion, every writer is a part of humanity's collective conscience. As a writer, I am here to remember and to make sure that the world knows and remembers. Some people say, “but these are only words.” I would say that these are the words that contain our humanity. We're here at this conference to speak about dissidence and literature, but I would like to ask you “what is dissidence?” To you, is dissidence a political act or a human one, or maybe both? I believe that when dissidence is mainly political and serves a certain ideology or religion, it should be left to politicians. However, when literature enters the arena of dissidence, in order for literature to keep its soul and humanity, it has to serve the human conscience without serving an ideology, and if it manages to do this, it would deliver to the future generations the truth of our experience, humanity, and imagination. But this is easier said than done. As human beings, we are very much prone to letting our political views cloud our judgment. So when a writer allows his/her ideology to shape and define her work and become its blueprint, we see the death of good literature, which bears witness to human and historical conditions, and, we see the rise of a phenomenon which I choose to call “literary propaganda.”

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