Publikacija SEP 2011 - Vilenica

This then fills me with hope that poetry still possesses some level of
decency, which admittedly can be attacked, yet never refuted. Similar
to classical music, painting, and ballet. And with this, I am finally
coming closer to what I should have started with. When they – all of
the Chernobyls, Fukushimas, economic crises, stock market crashes,
wars, media manipulations, the unravelling of structures and technological
wars – will defeat our pompous civilisation and burn all bridges
to Kant’s moral and its starry sky above the head and the law of nature
per se, the ones surviving won’t be able to plot storyboards for thrifty
Hollywood blockbusters at the fires, but will have to narrate and sing
to one another. Ultimately, some are doing so already …
And at the common human referendum, the word will get its voice
once more, for which it will be heard. I would like to mention that
I have visited the literary festival in the University city of Olomouc
twice in a row. The city is situated in Hana, a region in Moravia.
Moravia is known for its folklore, and the greatest Czech poets have
always been born there. Well, there is enough wine at disposal, making
it good grounds for writing poetry. And in the past, Catholicism has –
and slightly still does today – lived with all of its attributes, which turn
a mere look at the bodice of a young woman into a Villonic ballad.
Yet this festival did not make me experience anything like that.
Together with other literary dignitaries, I crouched on the stage before
the crowd, which was roughly as academic and lively as a burial site
for urns. As if all of the young obstinate youths whom I once taught
would have been saying to me: “You see, do you see Here’s your poetry
reading! More a ‘grandpa sleeping’!”
Alas, I smiled. Playing with language is an act of poetry too.
But I was highly unsatisfied. The boring academic poetry reading had
ended and I was in despair. Isn’t it possible to bring back the times when I
hitchhiked to the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague to see Ginsberg playing
his small hand organ and singing his poetry, being alive, if not even immortal
Wasn’t the Japanese Nanao Sakaki able to incite the people with
his Buddhist mantras in the packed hall of the Prague Lucerna, which
usually plays host to a completely different culture, as did the jazz trumpet
of Louis Armstrong, who played there in 1969
38