#versopolis

[p1w4y-blog]

Mars 2017

Design pour Pochoir

Logo d’équipe du Workshop Versopolis

[romanfive]

This year, we commemorate the fourth centennial of the death of two giants: William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Multi-centennial reminders sometimes serve as an excuse to dust monuments and rediscover something everyone has already heard of, but few can really lay out (without the help of the Wikipedia). I’m looking at you, last year’s Magna Carta. A smooth vellum surface carries a written decision that shaped a significant part of human society, no doubt about that, but by now so distant that we do not recognize our own image in it, nor any reason why we should, so we remain content to cherish it for its age and genealogy. However, we may rest at ease knowing that the legacy of the Bard, who was clever enough not "to take arms against a sea of troubles," the way poor Christopher Marlowe did, and the Señor, who took a bullet to his chest at Lepanto before he found something mightier than the sword, remains alive in our common cultural tissue. Born in the age of discovery of the New World, they both tackled basic and fundamental drives of the human psyche; explored oceans of motives and causes; braved currents of Fate and persisted through jungles of self-reflection. By their effort, talent, and a nod from the gods, they found a literary Fountain of Youth and gained immortality by genuinely being able to hold a conversation with each passing generation. Not only as a immobile relic of the literary Golden Age, which we have to climb up to, but as a modern partner, in full understanding of our age, and a willing assistant in our quest for the Truth. How about a date? Shakespeare and Cervantes, laureates of two hostile households both alike in dignity, share the same date of death, 23 April 1616. As befits the highly pitched drama of the Elizabethan stage, it should come as no surprise that, in truth, they died eleven full days apart. Not a comedy of errors, but a calculated plan to recalibrate the calendar, proposed by an Italian fellow from fair Verona (honestly, you can’t make this stuff up). Catholic Spain complied with the Pope’s instructions to switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1582, while England clung onto the Julian calendar until 1752. Thus, Shakespeare’s Julian April 23 would translate to the Gregorian May 3, if anyone insisted on ruining the magic. Add the feast of St George, the patron saint of England and chivalric soldiers, to the same day and Destiny can enjoy a well-deserved picnic. Shakespeare and Cervantes never saw each other in person, but we may still appreciate a cinematographic entertainment of the idea in Miguel and William (2007). If their meeting actually had taken place, it would have reflected the hostile attitude between the Spaniards and the English at the time, however, nothing two brilliant minds could not handle. What a pair they would make! Sadly, it was not meant to happen in our version of the universe. Not all is lost, though, as one of the giants fathered a couple who bridged the inequality of their respective statuses and changed our perspective of windmills forever. Complementing differences The two nomadic natives of La Mancha are definitely not the first known literary couple who pursued the Truth in their discourse, but in contrast to Platos’ Phaedo and Echecrates almost two millennia earlier, they presented us with a prototype of a costumed hero and his sidekick. Now, that is something we can connect with in full, especially if it involves special powers. We may speculate if Don Quixote’s magic helmet, which for the rest of the world was a mere barber’s basin, has drawn similar reactions from his contemporary audience as Batman and Robin’s underpants-over-trousers style manages from us (even though Don Quixote elaborated on his decision, while I still have no clue in regard to the Gotham’s-finest choice of costume in his animated series). However, we are sure that, in time, his conduct, ambition, and persistence in pursuing a crystal-clear notion of the Truth, and his role of a knight-errant, rose from a ridicule to an inspiration. Many thanks to the skeptical voice of another crystal-clear notion of reality, provided by Sancho Panza, a servant-turned-squire, which allows for the most important issues from Don Quixote’s LARP quests to stand out in the reader’s own environment. The dialogue between the two notions challenges the readers to investigate their own aspect of reality, before they can fully appreciate the story. Perhaps this is a part of the secret of this particular literary success: the reader does not need to understand the frame of the narrative. The reader just needs to connect to the action. We Call Upon the Author While each of us is free to perceive Don Quixote as either a downright loony or a heroic fighter for justice and liberty for all, it might be interesting to peek at the author. A Castilian soldier in one of the major battles of his time, captured by the Ottomans, a purchasing agent (which eventually led him to stay as a guest at the expense of the Crown in Seville for a while) and, lastly, a successful author with an immense influence on the Spanish language. He even applied for an accountant’s position in one of the prosperous ports on the Spanish Main in the south Caribbean, but that change of scenery never took place. His nickname, El principe de los ingenios (The Prince of Wits), hits the spot for the author who skillfully mocked the deserving. I cannot say whether his wit stems from a desire to lessen the impact his physical defects may have had on his self-image (he was wounded in battle and lost the ability to use his left arm). Yet he was as sharp and unyielding as Cyrano, a famous Gascon version of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, even if grown out of chivalric tales and more inclined to fight the system. The main target of his mockery was not so much the lore of knightly tales, a remnant of medieval literature, but those who took excess pleasure in them. Especially when they used the invented tales to propagate their view on how things should be run for everybody else. A conglomerate of myths and romances commanded an influence that reached far to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, as it was a companion to the conquistadors, motivated them and even inspired them also in their topographical exercises (California was originally a name of an island in the sequel to Amadis de Gaul, a literary target in Cervantes’ masterpiece). A notion of honor, bravery, virtue and duty presented by those romances may have worked for conquistadors, whose minds fantasized about immense riches, while their bodies struggled for survival, but in the Old World, it was confined between hard covers of amusing entertainment. They provided the Prince of Wits with the necessary cover for his satire. In the days of duels of honor, inquisitive religious tribunals of the true doctrine, and a strong-willed monarch, satire had to find its way to the audiences in a considerate way. One time, Sancho Panza wonders about the glorified battle cry Santiago y cierra España! and comments whether Spain was perhaps opened, and that it wants to be closed up. That battle cry preceded every military encounter of the Spaniards from the time of the Reconquista, and it called upon St. James, the patron saint of Spain and Matamoros, the Killer of Moors. Some of my Iberian friends snigger at the remark, much too contemporary for modern Spain to enjoy as a mere play of words. Some may even draw parallels to certain EU issues today. Cervantes also made it onto the infamous list of prohibited publications, run by the Holy Inquisition. The readership may gasp in the expectation of Cervantes being hauled by sneering Dominican monks to a damp cell, laden with devices of torture. Why, we do remember how he openly mocked the methods of the Holy Office in dealing with heretics. In Don Quixote, when the Barber and the Priest want to burn several books of the Innkeeper’s that they found guilty of heresy, he asks: “I hope, Sir, they are neither Hereticks nor Flegmaticks (herejes o flemáticos).” To which the Barber corrects him: “Schismaticks (cismáticos), you mean.” No, the sentence purged from the same book reads: Works of charity done in a lukewarm and half-hearted way are without merit and of no avail. Apparently, a sensitive theological ear considered it a tad too Erasmian, in favoring the inner human condition to outer action. Cervantes also poked the influence of invented stories over chronicles, the expulsion of the Morisco population from Spain, governing administrations, and even the mental abilities of the ruling classes. With a dash of ridiculing the Church authority over the common sense of an individual person (that particular dart is still not entirely settled by literary critics, though). “There are many who are errant,” said Sancho. “Many,” responded Don Quixote, “but few who deserve to be called knights.” On his deathbed, Don Quixote came to his senses and detached himself from knight-errantry. The moral of the story steps over boundaries of time, and could wear a ruff just as comfortably as a pair of jeans. It addresses us to stand out as individuals and pursue what we believe to be the Good, in aversion from the corrupted, however, not by retiring to a constructed ideal, incompatible with the surroundings. Not to make that ideal an instrument of lamentation over some good-old-days that never have been, nor a cause for lamination of cherry-picked historical interpretations to parade as the Truth. Let us rather make it a reminder of the human ability to better oneself. Especially in times when giants are not so easily recognizable.

My short essay on Shakespeare and Cervantes, published by Versopolis on 23 April, the 400th anniversary of their death.

[romanfive]

The morning of 22 March kicked off in a usual flurry of seeing three chirping whirlwinds through the start of the day. The oldest kid needed her daily dose of nudges to shift into a higher gear and get ready for school. The middle one demanded immediate praise for his green tractor, and only then agreed to finish his cereal. With proper timing and a bit of luck, there was also a chance for a quick Flush-Wash-Brush, before a patter of little palms and knees from under the kitchen table announced the return of the hungry youngest from his daily patrol of the perimeter. An hour later, peace and quiet tiptoed back into the house, and I took my cup of coffee over to my desk to scan news headlines, before I got to work. That was when silence hit hard. Brussels. Some of my friends in the EU capital had probably gone through a similar morning with their families, before their have-a-nice-day-and-see-ya-laters and a dash to the metro station. Some of them were about to fly home for the Easter holidays. At the end of the day, none of the people I know were hurt. However, they were angry, sad, and afraid. A vicious act of brutal violence tore through their ordinary day and wounded the sense of safety, the very foundation of a normal life that we cherish. Two mothers described the moment when something snapped inside them, and the only important thing was to get their family out of a violent nightmare. One was a Slovenian, employed by one of the EU institutions, reporting from the back seat of her family car on the way to her country, her real home. The other was a Syrian, standing on the uneven ground of a refugee center in a Slovenian village one chilly autumn night, with a plastic cup of steaming black tea in her hand. She had no home left. In November, I spent every weeknight away from home, with the Order of Malta Slovenia relief service. Our team was based in Dobova, a village a stone’s-throw away from the Slovenian-Croatian border. Our task was to provide hot tea for thousands of people, who poured through the border towards Austria and onward, to what they hoped would be a safer and better life. We worked mostly from late evenings to early mornings. Most of the time, my team managed a portion of a long row of desks stacked with plastic bottles of water, packs with food, some basic clothes and diapers for children, and our big thermos bottles with hot sweet black tea. Trains from Croatia brought refugees and migrants to one side of the platform, where registration procedures were completed. After that, endless rows of exhausted, mostly quiet people with families huddled together, passed us on the way to a line of buses parked under a couple of street lights behind the railway station. Their route passed along a heavy metal fence, dotted with silhouettes of heavily-armored police officers. Sometimes, there were no buses, and hundreds embarked on another train to take them to Austria. After the registration, and before they left, was the time when the volunteers distributed food, water, blankets, and helped search for family members, who got stuck behind or ended up with some other group. “Do you think they would help us, if we were in their place?” whispered a volunteer, after she had tucked a pack of small pink socks into a plastic bag and given it to a small woman with a baby sleeping in her arms. “I hope so. Do you have kids?” The volunteer nodded and hurried off to fetch some more water. Our team was one of many volunteer services and groups on the ground; no wonder that we have woven the bindings of cooperation and support. We were there for each other. Apart from volunteers from every corner of Slovenia, there were groups of Germans, Austrians, Hungarians and people from the Middle East, who had worked in Europe, many of them for years. What we truly and sincerely shared was the need to find some sense in the whole mess that came upon us in this part of Europe. For many, who have met with a humanitarian disaster for the first time, the inner struggle was fierce. We knew about refugees; they came to Slovenia twenty years ago, when they fled the Balkan carnage. Some moved elsewhere, some returned, and some remained. We also know about migrants. As it happens, my own brother is just one of thousands of Slovenians who moved abroad in search of a better future. He also has a wife and two wonderful boys. However, this time it feels different. We are tense, cautious. “There are images, you see. Images of victims kneeling down with hooded monsters above them, barking threats to us watching, before they… And those vests they can set off anywhere.” In between trains, each with the capacity to transport 1,100 people, there was time to replenish supplies, clean the railway platform, grab some water and have some hot tea. “Where will thousands upon thousands end up?” “I can’t get the wailing of that girl out of my head.” “I need coffee.” “I wonder how many terrorists have just walked into the country.” “It’s too late to phone home.” Drained police officers and members of other state services passed by, constant overtime slowed down their pace. “Would you like some tea and a croissant?” Some would shake their heads and flash a pale smile, too tired to speak. Others would stop and nod. Hot tea and sweet pastry brought some color to their faces, before they went on their way, either to find a quiet place to rest or to do whatever they were supposed to do. Only later did we started making coffee, but for the police and volunteers only. The refugees and migrants got tea. Black and hot, as they were used to, and extra sweet, for a short boost of energy. The point was to help them relax, even for a second. Every so often, some of the police just wanted to distract their minds with some small talk. They mentioned their homes, their families, they stretched their limbs. But we had to ask the question that simmered beneath casual words. “Can you tell, if there are… Dangerous people? In the crowd?” “We do our best to keep the situation safe. So far, there was nothing to indicate any danger.” “Do you say that or do you mean that?” “I’m here to do my job.” The same police officer was there the night we heard the news about Paris. It was a quiet night, only a couple of trains arrived. We all did our jobs, even if more jaws were tense than usual. More volunteers also flicked the screens of their smart phones, in corners behind doors or at the entrance of the passage that led to the railway station. “Al-shaay? Al-shaay dafi?” We asked the same question and newcomers appreciated the tea the same as any other day. It seemed they had no idea what had just happened in a city that every European knows and adores. Later that month, I heard that some volunteers did not return to their groups after that evening. No one can or should blame them. Why did the others return, though? What was the reason to return to that draft-molested platform, night after night, to hand packages to… People. Perhaps the volunteers figured out that those mothers with children on their backs had risked losing them in the dark Mediterranean precisely because they fled the very same terror that spreads hate and had already shredded life in our cities. Perhaps they reckoned that food and water, provided in addition to some dry clothes and topped with a kind word, do not make the situation any more dangerous to our way of life. Perhaps they simply felt that they should help a fellow human in need. Not much later, the situation changed and our team was relieved by a Slovakian group of the Order, who provided medical care in the refugee camp. I returned to Dobova only in February, as I was invited to meet Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican State Secretary on his official visit to Slovenia. He insisted on visiting the Dobova refugee center and talking to volunteers. Stern guards of the precisely-timed protocol in the Cardinal’s train of bishops, mayors, ambassadors and MPs, gave us five minutes. Not nearly enough to deliver a report, but more than adequate to deliver a simple message. He got it. Maybe he had hoped for it. The volunteer returned to the platform with a couple dozen bottles of water. She also brought some more children-sized socks with her. It seemed that there were no more pink ones left. “We don’t create wars, chaos and poverty. Those happen to people like me. Like them. I’m not here to decide who and I’m not here to find out why. I’m here for those who pass by me, and I can help.” She stacked up the bottles and folded the socks. Then she stood tall.

My short essay on helping refugees from the Mediterranean. Published by Versopolis.