Bzzlletin. Jaargang 4

Lecture by Kalevi Haikara
P.E.N. Conference 13th May 1976

Ladies and gentlemen! Dear friends!

Bob den Doolaard gave us a soft, careful introduction into this discussion. My lecture is third after him, but not the last one. I think this a good opportunity go give a little bit more polemic, perhaps even a little bit more aggressive speech.

Because Bob remained too careful. He told us that the world is changing and international PEN must adapt itself to this change within the framework of its Charter. Like some previous speakers I don't think this is enough.

I am of the opinion - and I think Bob will agree with me - that we do not want to act only running behind the change and cleaning the trash away. We want for our part to promote freedom of speech, international good understanding and mutual respect as much as possible. The grip of PEN on the events of the world must so be more firm. I do not deny: even adapting ourselves can mean to us insurmountable difficulties, but in spite of that I think it important that we try to give our contribution, help, inspire, why not even push a little the world to change in that direction which to us seems to be the right one. The direction marked out by the principles of our Charter.

I admit right now that I do not expect we can very much influence the progress of the world. But try we must. For the world really seems to change more and more threateningly in a direction we do not like. The events of the last few years are not encouraging, though we have seen the European Security Conference and some other more or less promising signs of the spring. I do not agree with the words of Bob den Doolaard spoken at the Vienna Conference. With plenty of others I see the European Security Conference even with its many shortcomings as one of the most promising encounters of the last years. It beats the conferences in Czechoslovakia, Vietnam and Chile any time.

We live in a world we often call civilized. We even believe in the progress of the civilisation little by little. But this best possible world of ours is characterised by many very unpleasant phenomenons. As Bob den Doolaard in his lecture pointed our, tolerance and mutual esteem and understanding have by no means developed upwards like some other more profitable sectors of our societies. When you follow for instance the information you get through International PEN and Amnesty International, the direction in which the world is developing begins to look more and more horrible. We all

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have noticed that persecutions of persons because of their opinion are getting more frequent. But with them are the amount and shall I say universality of the torture growing so quickly that with the words of Bob we could speak about an explosion. More and more people just disappear thanks to some governmental magic and there is plenty of news indicating that capital punishment has become more and more frequent too.

This kind of development, which is going on even in countries of very old culture, makes one sceptical about the sense of our whole culture. Or at least it makes one ask whether the influence of our culture is good after all. Or perhaps we are just putting the stress on wrong places in it.

A Finnish author Christer Kühlman has analysed the question in a way worth quoting. ‘The situation would be different’, he writes, ‘if the educated class really would stand for all that which from the point of view of the society would be reliable, constructive and adjusting as in its own circle saying it stands for. The experience hoewever indicates just the opposite, that the education - understood according to its most common definition as something like the combination of knowledge, passed more or less ritual examinations and a certain (refined) manner of behaviour laid down by the rules - this education does not guarantee the preservation and process of the society. No discipline of violence is too cruel to attract a civilised person! The educated class if for the society (he means of course the capitalist society) perhaps a guarantee against communism but not against nazism against the riots caused by hunger, but no massacres caused by morbid patriotic feeling. Wouldn't it be little by little time for us too togive up the myth of the educated class. Would not it be little by little time to define the concept of civilisation with a bit less aristocratic pharisaism? Nobody is born civilised:’

Maybe we really have not submitted our concept of civilisation and culture to a sharp enough criticism. We have seen that civilisation includes the ability to read but not necessarily the ability to understand what one has read. It includes increasing knowledge but not so often developing the power of comprehension. Our civilisation includes more or less subtle manners, habits and living conditions but no claim to guarantee them to everyone. Rather it seems to include as an essential part the idea that we can be civilised, nations of culture, only if there are uncivilised people too. Usually we do not like looking directly into the eyes of the truth that some people have to pay the cost of our civilisation, but we have no scruples in living according to that that principle.

We have accomodated ourselves to this mechanics. We call Greece the birthplace of democracy and the existence of slaves in ancient Greece has not spoiled the glory of the epithet at all. We speak often and not without cause about European civilisation, liberty, democracy. The Third World is paying for this happy state of affairs all the time. Few words are used in the USA as frequently and loudly as ‘democracy’. That is fine. But as we know the democracy of the USA seems to need supporting annoyingly many bloody undemocratic dictators, surprisingly many offences against democracy, meddling behind the scenes as well as publicly in the democracy of other countries. In the Soviet Union they speak about the democracy of socialism; anybody who does not accept it is more or less automatically mentally ill and fit to psychiatric hospital.

It hardly is a mistake to say that in the system of our basic values there is something badly rotten.

I am even afraid we have to talk about something rather totally rotten. Both the quality and tenor of our life have become distorted. We live in a trash society, society of goods, where everybody runs after money and commodities. If somebody sometime tries to get something else, for instance something spiritual, even that is pursued as a commodity and will gradually be changed into a commodity. We produce and consume literature, thoughts, leisure like heaven knows what Lego blocks. We buy and sell our energy, time, ourselves, our children, each other. Our life is not any more the life of human beings, interaction of people where you get and give, it is superficial mercenary correspondence between some kind of production, consumption and acquisition companies concerning the trade, exchange or renewal of this or that commodity. We produce emotions, exchange momentary friendly services, buy affection and sell eternal love. And this critique does not hold good in the capitalist society only.

In this muddle of producing and consuming, paying and buying, man, the human being, has been badly forgotten. We do not - by any means - breed in our homes or at our schools versatile or balanced personalities. We do not even strive after that. We are breeding and schooling labour for the requirements of the trade and industries. The leisure is not granted for people for developing themselves as human beings, or for living as rich or fer-

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tile life as possible. They get it to renew their working energy so that they would be able to serve the production machinery better and better. And when civilisation is more and more bringing about useful tools or extensions of tools, the emotional education is left into the hands of entertainment industry. And we know what it gives us.

Entertainment offers in effect three kinds of approaches to life. The first is clear propaganda of the consumption society here in the West and offers successful executives, attractive women and fashionable families. Houses like living places for gods. The goods and trinkets are the measure of human value and sheer luxury every bit of them. The other sector presses upon us daydreams about eternal unphysical love or skillfull physical love that never gets tired and that one never get tired of, and where human spirit is seen as totally innecessary. The third rule of life comes from the entertaining violence that shows indisputably that a person suspicious enough and ready to violent acts, will get out of any fix in the world.

And when the rules of life stay in this category, the ethical supply too remains in the minimum. One has to respect private property, they say in the West. What is good for the state is good for you, they say in the East. And to keep the armament industry running in both pounts of the compass the borders of the fatherland must be kept holy, untouched and unoffended.

Hardly any value is seen in a person, a citizen himself. And still the first precondition for freedom of expression is that the value of human being as a human being is recognised. Not only operational value for some economic, political or technical purpose but a value that not even the smartest machine can replace. Value as the perceiver of new possibilities, seacher for new means and ways, value as the creator of beauty, human comfort, life. This value has in the East as well as in the West been condemned now as the reverie of the petty bourgeoisie, now as irresponsible individualism. But is that not exactly the aim towards which the greatest dreams of human kind have stretched? That is the nucleus in the Sermon on the Mount. This picture of man belongs also to the millennium that loomed in the horizon of the classics of socialism although in the middle of political struggle they often had to express it in more political or economical terms.

This idea of man seems to have been lost from the horizon of the socialism and the capitalism aswell. Capitalism promises to defend the individual and is oppressing and exploiting masses like hell. Socialism promises to defend the masses and forgets the individual every day. Capitalism speaks about abstract liberty and thinks it can in the name of liberty do anything. In the name of liberty the humankind has been oppressed and burdened so that hardly even the bad deeds of the religions can equal to that. Socialism for its part stresses righteousness and in the name of that does injustice to those who try to speak about righteousness that differs from what the government or the ruling party at the moment thinks desirable.

The mass spirit reigns as well in the capitalism boasting with individualism as in the socialism boasting with scientific view of the

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world. It may be that the world has not after all changed so much in all sections. George Orwell say the phenomenon as early as 1945 almost desperately: ‘Political writing in our time’, he wrote, ‘consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox. ‘The greatest part of people in both systems are ready to go blindly after their leaders and stone to death people whose opinions are not in fashion. Among the communists this is called class instinct; they speak in praise of the loyalty to the party. Among the political right wing the terms are in Finland straight patriotism and non-political. It is almost shocking to think how many left wing people have been silenced in the name of non-politicality and that right wing opinions are never attacked on the pretext of it.

I have not spoken so long about human ideals in order to urge PEN to rush into the world to wave the glistening white flag of humanity. But I want to emphasise that when we in PEN defend the right the man to dreams, hopes and thoughts and to expressing them, we are keeping alive the time-honoured vision we so to say move on the mainstream of the Utopias of humankind.

It is of course true that the amount of heretics is small in any country and that the persecution of dissenters so concerns only a little group of people. The great people of the Soviet Union hardly feels freedom of speech very restricted. Far and few are people wanting to discuss convenient topics. But the heretics, dissenters, are often just those people who have to guts to look towards new horizons, search for and find new solutions, help people adapt themselves to the society and society to the people. When a society suppresses their speech it also suppresses a great deal of its own possibilities of developing. George Orwell was certainly right when he wrote: ‘...any attack on intellectual liberty, and on the concept of objective truth, threatens in the long run every department of thought.’ The Bible gives an advise: ‘...if thy hand or thy food offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee.’ When pushing the dissenters into prisons, concentration camps or psychiatric hospitals, the society is following exactly this piece of advice. We have onefooted amputated societies in the world more than we need.

Some of us may feel slight superiority. This is no concern of ours. We live in societies which we may freely call free. In our societies everybody is allowed to say or write whatever he or she wants to without getting into any special danger. Everybody can in our societies even publish his or her thoughts at least through paying the costs or establishing a private publishing house.

This kind of vision is a self made product of a ‘free country’ and as such already indicates the relatively of liberty of expression. For it is not true. All words are not allowed to be said even in the hustle of the market economy. Freedom is one of the least absolute things in the world. It changes year by year, day by day, country by country, government by government. The relative unriskyness of expressing one's thoughts in the so called free world means that in politically stable democratic times the person saying a wrong word will not be taken into jail. He just loses his bread of finds out that he has no possibility of saying anything more in public. After all only few of us can afford establishing new papers or publishing houses.

Would it be best to define the love of freedom of expression in the ‘free world’ by saying that in our countries freedom of speech is so highly esteemed that all hotheads must not even have the right to use it. Freedom of expression finds plenty of opposition out of sight, in for instance the administrative means of keeping the writers in line. When the scholarships are directed to the purpose, the government cultivates favourable words more and more and inconvenient words less and less. The end of the regime's rainbow will be found instinctively by most writers very soon.

It is not rare either, that those who boast of having in the last wars defended the western freedom, on that ground tell others to keep their mouths shut. ‘We fought so that you and the likes of you can freely say anything you like. So shut up! Go to that ideal country of yours if you don't like it here.’

Of course the word has plenty of restrictions both in east and west. But let us assume very naively that there exists freedom of expression in some capitalist countries, in democratic times. A writer may say anything he likes. How happy is his situation in fact?

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Not too happy, I'm afraid. He has to pay for his freedom a price that can easily be too high. The paradox of freedom of expression is that the word is important only where it is not free. When it is free to move, it usually does not mean very much. Regimes seldom bother to censure insignificant words.

In the West we pay for the freedom of the word with the inflation of the word. Here you can open your mouth because it doesn't matter what you say. The world situation could be expressed also by stating that a writer has only two alternatives: either he gets frustrated in prison because he has said something important, or he gets frustrated by a high pile of papers and magazines in which every truth and every lie is equally insignificant.

Sometimes here in the West one feels bound to wonder, which one indeed is more dangerous: that you may have to pay dear for writing the truth or that it seems so attractive to write commercial rubbish in order to win friends and influence people. If you write inconvenient truths, the managing director of your publishing company hardly notices you in the company banquets. If you produce properly infantile entertainment he is all smile untill the end of the banquet, after that he invites you to dinner with the board of the company and finally offers to take you home with his limousine. This ‘finally’ of course happens to young females. It is a fact that liberty of expression is not seen as a value in many societies and circles of society.

People always demand more time to speak or more columns for their own men. And when an annoying adversary is for example fired from his job we may disapprove it in theory but in practise we feel satisfaction like relief and do our best not to be compelled to interfere with the affair.

And it is not so odd after all. In freedom of speech there is something very straining. I mean the freedom of speech of other people. Speaking about liberty of word makes sense only concerning those words that are meant to matter. They always question our reality. And our reality is mainly rituals without religious meaning. We choose the papers we subscribe to according to a ritual. We have a ritual of voting, a ritual of praising the patria, we react almost to all things according to some learned ritual, following certain rules.

Of course, this is ridiculous. Words that are meant to matter stirr the rituals up. They upset our trust on our authorities. They make our view of the world, our manners and habits move. No wonder the people who open their mouths are regarded as nuisances. If their mouths are not shut officially, at least other people turn away from them and in the long run it has the same muffling effect.

After this it is a real pleasure to say that the task of PEN should be - except to help individual writers and thinkers in trouble - also to spread out the idea of the freedom of expression among people and make people see how important things there are at stake. It is an obligation that really demands using all influence we can have and doing our utmost just as we according to our Charter have pledged outselves to do.

When I ask, shouldn't we try to give people as truthful a picture of the world and problems of freedom of speech as possible. I know I wake up a counterquestion: how indeed could we influence the view of the world of men when there are umpteen factors forming it. We cannot possibly do much. All the more persistantly we have to try. I am not sure we have done in this respect everything we can. I rather feel we have concealed our talent into the earth or at least into a side room. When I became the secretary of the Finnish PEN I went through the papers of the club and was astonished in seeing the abundance of the information that was in those papers and remained there rather unused, almost hidden. We collect in PEN vast amounts of knowledge but do we use it effectively? In this era of information I think our activity shows traits of a secret society. The Writers in Prison Committee is maybe our most active and most respected common organ but even its way of functioning seems pretty silent. It has whispering talks with different governmental bodies and authorities and it has apparently found this way efficient from some standpoint. But from the standpoint of the climate of freedom of expression, from the standpoint of the knowlegde and opinions of people this kind of whispering in a side room is certainly not the best solution.

When I recommend more publicity for PEN somebody can remark that people do not want to hear the truth about the world. It is sufficient for them if they get a juicy or easily consequent picture. This applies to the private life of the film stars as well as to the travels of Mr. Kissinger or the fights in Angola. ‘They do not want to know the truth, what they want is definite opinions’, wrote a Finnish author Samuli Paronen.

I can only answer: the more reluctant people are, the more information they must be offered, the more many- digestible form. If people do not want even to know the truth, the liberty of expression has no chance to be preserved. Nobody needs the word of truth, nobody defends it, nobody cares if the person who said it be executed. If this kind of development may go on, the time of PEN is soon over.

The problem of liberty of expression is a complicated one. And we are certainly not helped by the PEN concept of freedom of expression being - to put it mildly - diffuse. It could be good to define once more what the International PEN means by freedom of expression. The Charter in this respect is as unclear as possible. First PEN sees that the spread of literature is important. Secondly we want to protect the works of art against destruction. For the third the Charter defends the principle of unhampered transmission of thought, opposes any form of suppression of freedom of expression, defends free press and opposes arbitrary censorship in time of war it has nothing to say. Furthermore PEN believes in the free criticism of governments, administrations and institutions. Then again it opposes evils of a free press: mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood and distortion of facts for political and personal ends.

The Charter so wants to safeguard the spread of literature, then to preserve works of art

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and for the third to defend the principle of unhampered expression as a rule. There are several kinds of hamperable expression: there is artistic, there is scientific, there is also outside of them. It is hardly unnecessary to ask as we in the Finnish PEN have been compelled to ask. PEN has classified itself as a literary organisation, but when there is expression in other areas too, have we pledged ourselves to defend in addition to freedom of word also for instance freedom of picture or freedom of tone? There is no need to speak about the difficulties of the sculptor Ernst Nezwestry; we all know them. I'll take another, example: one of the most well known cartoonists in Argentina was arrested in October 1975 after having published a picture with president Isabel Perón as an elephant. Since that - so tells Index on Censorship - nothing was heard of him. As to the notes and melodies I only mention the name of Mikis Theodorakis. Still another example could come from the theatre sector. In Iran a director got a sentence of 11 years in prison for having started in his theatre rehearsals for a play by Maxim Gorki.

We know very well that the arts do not function seperately from each other. We also have seen that when one art is beaten, the others are in danger too. ‘All fetters of the world are of one chain’, wrote Polish Stanislaw Jerzy Lez (or something to that effect, I hope, this is a translation of a translation of a translation). The conclusion is very near: We do not defend even literature in the best possible way if we do not follow the nearby areas and oppose the violations against freedom of expression in those areas too.

When we study the PEN concept of freedom of expression from this standpoint, I think, we are compelled to see it being much wider than only concerning expression in words, in literature. In principle International PEN is defending freedom of expression in all areas of thought- in science too, isn't it? But if PEN is defending freedom of expression of thought in all areas, it follows with logic necessity a question, often made I'm sure: Is it then right to confine International PEN so purely to being literary as we have done? The question must be put. It is an essential part of our problematics of freedom of expression. As is its corollary: if we see it impossible to defend the thought by only defending one sector, literary sector, of its expression, should we accept as members of PEN people from other creative areas too, compositors, picture-makers, stage-managers, actors? To this we usually have answered immediately: no. But then we are facing the problem: how can we make sure that an attack against authors will not be prepared, strengthened, constructed in the neighbouring area? At least we must have close contacts with neighbouring arts. Should we urge their representatives to establish freedom of expression organisations of their own? Clinging jealously to ones special character is anyhow the most foolish thing to do.

The Finnish PEN has pondered over this problem and perhaps have found a solution. We have been developing a scheme of national councils of freedom of expression. The councils would defend the whole area of expression and accept as members organisations from different sectors, besides literature other arts too, press, publishing sector, electromagnetic media. These national councils would be linked together by international council which would help the national organs, co-ordinate the actions, and act on the level of international bodies as a rule. We hope you find this scheme worth thinking over.

Continuing the discussion about using all PEN's possibilities of influencing we also must face the question about the quality and amount of the activities of PEN centres. The problem is neither new nor surprising. I am sure it has been perceived in every PEN centre. In Finland we have talked about it almost every year. Every time we notice freedom of expression violated, no matter how slighly, should we react quickly and visibly? Or is PEN characteristically a body that considers and considers, investigates and investigates, an authoritative body, sort of feudal lord of the castle, that growls seldom but then in deadly earnest.

Both ways of action have their good and bad points. Reacting seldom and after much consideration keeps the authority of PEN up. Our words will be noticed. On the other hand many victims of ‘slighter’ persecution must stay without our help.

And if we react often, fervently and publicly, we can make mistakes, our words can suffer inflation, but on the other hand we then are keeping alive the atmosphere favourable to freedom of expression, remind people continually about the ideal and importance of freedom of expression.

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In that case we can hope to nip the offences in the bud and too bad violations cannot be made - those bad violations which a PEN reacting seldom ought to wait for not to say look forward to. I leave the problem to you as unsolved and look forward to some sort of solution. I only hope nobody offers the golden mean; that usually is the quickest escape from thinking and to deny the whole problem does exist. If the PEN centres would react often and quickly, I should believe they would be regarded as active organisations of freedom of expression. People would wait for their standpoints. People would appeal to them and count upon their help. Rather attractive vision this too, isn't it?

Sometimes it has been impossible to avoid the suspicion whether we really react in the right way in all cases. What if there are in our work biases caused by the very structure of the organisation? I know I am now trotting to the areas where even the angels to tiptoe. Especially after the speech of Ariel Dorfman. I am going to venture. Perhaps you have to consider this being the price for the freedom of expression you have to pay, I am going to speak about the luxury character of International PEN. We are in PEN living rather upper class life, we discuss on the level of the privileged and usually in conditions too good from the standpoint of the world. Sometimes one has to ask oneself whether we are a club organising expensive high society occasions for a well-to-do European-American upper crust bringing about as a result some woolen mittens for the heathen children. What would be our influence in proportion to the amount of money we are annually spending? Could that money be used more effectively? PEN Emergency Fund delivers economic help for those in need. How many per cent of our yearly budget goes into the Fund. Writers in Prison Committee works for the imprisoned authors. How many writers can we estimate to get yearly out of jail? What is the price of one author set free? These are simplified questions about a complicated thing but I have the uneasy feeling that some economist could say our input-output system is not too well balanced.

I know very well that for example some kind of meetings of international executive committee are unavoidable. How else could an international organisation function? I don't say either that PEN would work more effectively if we all were starving. But somehow I don't feel comfortable. We act in safe and secure conditions for oppressed people. For us everything is OK. Quoting Bertolt Brecht slightly altered I say: we are speaking about writers aimed at with cannons, in an arena where we are aimed at only with operaglasses. I know too that among us there are writers who have themselves gone through the persecutions and torture. But is International PEN as a whole capable of comprehending the situation of the oppressed, seeing and feeling what it means to be in their place. To put it as kindly as possible I'm asking: cannot our living standard possibly be too high for this sort of work? Cannot we possibly be too selfsatisfied? This is not sheer theoretical taunting. Sometimes it has looked like the discussions in PEN would have been in danger of slipping to academic disputes where the adversaries have to be beaten with all kinds of sophisms and arguments but the real sufferings and real needs of the real - let's say Chilean - writers can have been forgotten. Can we really afford academic sophistry and absurdities in a time when the people we should help are tortured and persecuted all around the world?

When I now at the end talk a little about the Charter of International PEN I do it in the conviction that it is not an academic problem, not a question on paper only. In the Charter our most significant principles are formulated and the Charter means for PEN both heart and brain - mind, heart and conscience, so to say.

I am not going to speak long any more. But I want to remind you that the Finnish and Dutch PENs have laid down criticism against the formulation of the charter, criticism that has not been proved irrelevant or incorrect - not at the Berlin meeting and not after that.

I have already pointed out some inaccurate and obscure features of the Charter.

Finally I want to stress a contradiction which at least the Finnish PEN considers the main weakness of the Charter and the reflections of which we can see in our everyday activities. According to our holy basic principles PEN has two important tasks that are fatally inadjustable. On the one hand ‘Members of PEN should at all times use what influence they have in favour of good understanding and mutual respect between nations’ and on the other hand PEN as organisation for freedom of expression must yelp as soon as in some country freedom of expression is violated - and so we must usually more or less offend the government or officials of the country and lessen the wish for mutual understanding at least temporarily.

Of course it is quite true that understanding which does not stand reasonable criticism is not much worth. But it is our way of seeing the matter, the governments often are in favour of the opposite opinion. A clear and urging reminder about this has been and is the Soviet Union. We have in accordance with our principles sent our protests concerning the treatment of Soviet authors and thus given birth to now this and now that kind of hard feelings. If we however take in earnest the mutual understanding chapter in the Charter - as I think we must - we have to admit first that PEN is not an international organisation of writers as long as the Soviet Union and China are outside it.

Secondly, we have certainly not ‘at all times used what influence we have in favour of good understanding ...between nations’ if our activities from year to year make one if the two most significant nations get offended and estrange from our organisation.

Couldn't the reaction and order of precedence of these two obligations somehow be made clearer. It would help the decisions of the national PEN-centres. I take again an example from Finland. Our literary organisations have gradually managed in creating rather good relations with the writers' organisation of the Soviet Union. Sometimes it has been for us a very practical problem how long would it be reasonable to risk the existence of these relations by sending the Soviet authorities

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letters the contents of which they feel to be an offence no matter how politely the reproach has been expressed. We have sometimes felt the problem so sharply that some very reasonable PEN members have said that we perhaps had better concentrated in taking care of these in some respect uniquely good relations with the writers' organisations of the Soviet Union, relations which do not only concern some level of apparachnics, politrucs, commisaries, but thanks to which the very best authors of Finland an Soviet Union have had a possibility to meet each other both formally and informally. This way of thinking has implied that if we are concentrating our efforts in nursing these relations, in building a bridge, we have to react to the Soviet violations of freedom of speech as little as possible.

The Finnish PEN has not been ready to accept this way of thinking, that's clear. But the problem has been urging. No matter which one of the main tasks of PEN we are stressing, we are making damage to the other and in both cases we are bound to give up something very valuable.

In this respect the charter is not giving us proper advise. It stresses both aims as equally absolute not to say as alien to reality in this world of relativities. We maybe need the skills of baron von Münchhausen in order to get out and up of this swamp. I'm sure we can manage it. But we must do it as long as we have any hair left.