KOSMOPOLIS. International Festival of Literature 14 to 19 September 2004 Barcelona - CCCB CAFÉ EUROPE – HAVANA Literary Café Drago Jančar; To Write in the Language of a Small Nation Translated by Tamara M. Soban When giving a reading abroad, I am often asked by my foreign readers what it actually means to write in the language of a small nation. How does it feel, for an author, to write in a language that is spoken and read at best by two and a half million? In recent years, since it became clear that quite a few new “small” languages would appear in the European Union, and more notably, in European culture, this cute question was joined by another, a favorite of the members of the press: Aren’t you concerned about the survival of Slovene culture, in particular the Slovene language? In Slovenia too, I have heard not just anybody, but a Slovene author say: What is the point of writing in Slovene, since these works might only survive in some library or other, to be studied by eccentric scholars, similarly as dinosaurs are studied today? Somewhat irritated, I replied to my fellow writer that all my books have been translated into so- called “big” languages, so he need not worry about me. But that is of course no answer. Librarians will tell you that the paper used in book-printing today is very short-lived, it disintegrates, turning some books into dust in a matter of decades. Just as we can only guess what treasures of ancient Greek drama and philosophy disappeared in the flames that engulfed the library of Alexandria, it may be up to conjecture in a hundred years’ time what Slovene literature used to be like, even if it is translated into the languages of big nations. Not only will dust cover our books, they may even turn to dust, just as literatures published in “big” languages will — together with Slovene literature, be it original or in translation. True, books of great importance are, for fear that they too will turn to dust, being transferred onto microfilm and into digital form, but — what evidence do we have of the durability of these media? Everything goes the way of all flesh, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, people and books. Why then should, in an absolute sense, the question of the meaning of writing in a language of a small nation be essentially any different from the question of the meaning of writing in general, of the meaning of indulging in such a useless thing as art, as Oscar Wilde would put it? 1 KOSMOPOLIS. International Festival of Literature 14 to 19 September 2004 Barcelona - CCCB Obviously I realize that my German or Russian — let alone American — readers won’t be satisfied with this answer. They have long known that bit about transience and eternity, what they want to know now is what it’s like to live with a small language, and moreover, to write in it, that’s the part they don’t know, that’s the unusual experience they lack, because after all, how could they possibly have it? Surely it can’t be an advantage to write in a language understood by not very many people, surely it must occur to a great number of people, not only authors, that this language will disappear some day, or will be relegated to the level of private and literary usage, a fate that has in the past befallen many languages in Europe and the world, also very prominent ones in terms of literature. But what do we know about that, how can we see into the future of a globalized world? In Austria there lives a Slovene speaking minority whose numbers have fallen drastically in the last century on account of Germanization. Despite this, there are a few authors there who write wonderful literature in Slovene. The following true anecdote also comes from those parts: An expert on linguistic studies attended a meeting of an organization for the protection of minorities, and he told the representative of the Slovene minority, an island amidst the German-speaking majority, that he had a piece of bad news for him. In the next hundred years, he said, a lot of languages will disappear, and Slovene among them. The Slovene representative was saddened by this. But I also have a piece of good news, said the expert. Among the languages to disappear will be also German. When I now think of my readers who speak the language of a large nation and benevolently ask me how I feel as an author who writes in the language of a small nation, I realize that they look upon me — even if with admiration — as a member of an endangered species: He writes such beautiful things in such a small language. Strange: I have never felt like a member of an endangered species. Thus the portrait of an artist as a young man was — minus a few problems with the political police and censorship of the previous political regime — very similar to such portrait molded by any other linguistic or literary environment: A young poet strolling the streets of a small town on the Slovene- Austrian border who knew by heart pages upon pages of Baudelaire in French; a friend of mine was enthusiastic about Dadaism; rivers of verse by Slovene poets flowed through our artistic souls, to say nothing of Eliot, Pound, Kafka and Dostoevsky. It never occurred to any of us that the lack of a Slovene word for a coffee-house wooden newspaper holder might pose any sort of creative problem. A person who has truly decided to take the uncertain path of art, who has sailed on the translucent, airy currents of language or followed Orpheus into the underworld, does not deliberate about large and small languages, they just take 2 KOSMOPOLIS. International Festival of Literature 14 to 19 September 2004 Barcelona - CCCB hold of a subject, a story or a poem, and work with the matter in the language and life that they have at hand, in their head and their heart. There is an old story about two young writers: One opted for literature because he dreamed of the glory, the money, and the admiration of beautiful women it would bring him. But he grew old embittered by failure and angry at literature, himself and the whole world. The other delved into language with passion and wrote his stories, caring about nothing else, and his books brought him everything the first writer had dreamed of. Nowadays, some of my fellow writers invest a much greater effort in searching for translators and foreign publishers than in their sentences, and pay much more attention to these tasks than to thinking, reading and writing. And more than a few blame not being known by the world on the fact that they write in the language of a small nation. Would anyone know of Joyce today, they say, if he had written in Irish Gaelic? In saying this they forget not only the specific Irish historical situation, but also the fact that Joyce’s literature, in all its universality, is also very Irish, Irish down to its last association and metaphor. Today there are no insurmountable barriers preventing authors writing in the language of a small nation from crossing their linguistic borders with translations of their works. The world is becoming smaller, more readily understandable and accessible than ever before. Back in 1982, when I found myself in the United States on a Fulbright grant for artists, I wrote a postcard to my professor of Slovene language on my first day in New Orleans: They say Slovene won’t get you anywhere. Look where it got me — to America. I do not rank among the famous authors who sell soaring numbers of copies and have their pictures taken with film stars. Neither do I recognize myself in the above anecdote about the two young authors. Of course, it would be a lie to say that I couldn’t care less about the glory of the world, of course I am pleased to have readers in towns whose names I don’t even know, and books in languages I don’t understand. I am glad to be somehow at home in far-away cultures and lands, but that has nothing to do with writing per se, nor with the question of how I feel, writing in the language of a small nation. Why do small nations exist at all? asks the Croat poet Vlado Gotovac in his essay “Svetovna uganka” (The Enigma of the World). Nobody wants a weakness — and that’s what a small nation is, a weakness. Gotovac considers this phenomenon mysterious in its unnaturalness, concluding that the enigma of small nations is the enigma of the diversity of the world. And despite its mystery, there is nothing so irrational about this phenomenon that it could not be easily understood. Just as the diversity of nature and life is at the same time both understandable and mysterious. We all gaze at the same sky, says Gotovac, there 3 KOSMOPOLIS. International Festival of Literature 14 to 19 September 2004 Barcelona - CCCB is no such thing as a provincial sky or a provincial landscape. What is provincial, say I, is fear of oneself and one’s own potential. So the next time I give a reading in Germany or somewhere else and someone in the audience stands up and asks me the question of how an author writing in the language of a small nation feels, I’ll have some sort of answer ready.