3.5.06

Peter Handke censored in France

I am repeating myself but every time I notice that freedom of expression is not respected in the West you can be sure that it will be on this blog.
Hypocrisy is becoming a number one value in our western societies. The whole world was offended by the reactions of Muslims to the publication of the Danish cartoons but this whole world will not be offended by the cancellation of a play by Peter Handke scheduled for the 2007 season at the 'Comédie Française' under the motive that Handke was present at Milosevic Funerals. Handke made public his statement at the funerals:

"J'aurais voulu ne pas être le seul écrivain ici à Pozarevac, mais être à côté d'un autre écrivain, par exemple Harold Pinter. Il aurait eu besoin de mots forts. J'ai besoin de mots faibles. Mais le faible, aujourd'hui, ici, sera juste. C'est un jour pour les mots forts, mais aussi pour les mots faibles. (A partir d'ici je parle en serbo-croate - écrit tout seul ! - retraduit après coup.) Le monde, le prétendu monde, sait tout sur la Yougoslavie, la Serbie. Le monde, le prétendu monde, sait tout sur Slobodan Milosevic. Le prétendu monde sait la vérité. C'est pour ça que le prétendu monde est absent aujourd'hui, et pas seulement aujourd'hui, et pas seulement ici. Le prétendu monde n'est pas le monde. Je sais que je ne sais pas. Je ne sais pas la vérité. Mais je regarde. J'entends. Je sens. Je me rappelle. Je questionne. C'est pour ça que je suis présent aujourd'hui, près de la Yougoslavie, près de la Serbie, près de Slobodan Milosevic."

For those who know Handke, he is a man with a moral conscience (not everybody's average conscience) for our non moral time. If I was Handke, my presence at Milosevic funeral would not have been for Milosevic but for his country dislocated merryly by western powers in the name of Humanitarian intervention. I would have been there to denounce the hypocrisy of the West. I would have been there to denounce the crimes of the US army. I would have been there to denounce NATO's undiscriminated bombardments of Serbia. I would have been there to denounce a selective justice. I would have been there to denounce Europe for its inability to save one of its own. I would have been there to defy dishonesty and to affirm that lies cannot pass. I would have been there to reassure myself about the future of Humanity and to affirm that truth does still matter.

Will Alain Finkielkraut, André Glucksman, Bernard Henri Levy and Salman Rushdie protest at this censure ?

Handke is one of my preferred authors, I respect him and I wish him well.

Update:
Extracts from an interview with Peter Handke by Focus, a German magazine, published on March 27th and translated and published in Le Monde (May 4th).

Update:
Peter Handke: ''J'écris pour ouvrir le regard''

1 comment:

Gert said...

It's very stupid and somewhat ironic to cancel someone's play in "retaliation" for his desire to express himself.

Is this a new play? If it is then undoutedly it will show up somewhere else, making even greater fools of the suppressors.

 
Since March 29th 2006