On this segment of First Friday, MPR’s Beth Friend interviews American poet Christopher Merrill, who shares his frustration on the lack of concern in arts community of the Bosnian War tragedy. Segment also includes Merrill reading Bosnian poetry.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) I traveled to the Venice film festival in early September of 1992 this took place about a week after the London conference on the war in the Balkans where the great Powers gathered with the hopes of trying to find some solution to the terrible atrocities occurring then in Bosnia. There was a large political gathering at the Venice Film Festival. The organizers had brought together an incredible list of luminaries from the Literary world and from the film world including people like Gabriel Garcia Marquez Vin vendors Lena. We're at Miller Peter hunt caucus gravis. It was one of those great events at which I presumed we would be looking at the burning issue of the day after all Sarajevo was really only about a hundred miles away. We were right on the Adriatic Sea if we were to take a speedboat across the Adriatic we could be on our way to Sarajevo in a matter of hours. It seemed to me that that this was a chance for artists to stand up and talk about what seemed to be the most important event of our time. However, the occasion was much different. It was a great exercise in America bashing because we had not signed on to the burn treaty honoring an artist's moral rights, which essentially comes down to this who owns the copyright to a commercially made film the film maker or the studio for which he or she works now, that's an important issue. But if you're going to bring spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring together such important people to talk about a burning political issue. It seems to me that they missed the real story of the day.
(00:01:45) Which how is that possible? How is that possible people who are considered gifted people who consider themselves to be sensitive people who consider themselves to be highly politicized people Garcia Marquez right many others who consider their work to be so much about About politics and about issues around the
(00:02:03) globe. Well, I think of the great essay that the French surrealist Benjamin tarae wrote after World War II called the dishonor of the poet's I suspect that in certain ways. This is another one of those times where we have the dishonor of certain artists of a certain age who have not been keeping their eyes open as to what's really going on during the Sarajevo Film Festival. There was a remarkable event the war Congress of the writers. Ation of Bosnia-Herzegovina at which the president of the war Congress said except for Susan Sontag. Why haven't the world's poets and writers spoken out on this issue. It's something that I think about all the time. I can't I can't understand why that is I have given any number of talks around the country and what I'm routinely Amazed by is our feeling that what's going on in the center of Europe doesn't concern us. The fact is if people are being slaughtered. Leave for their ethnic or religious identity in the center of Europe that has to concern
(00:03:05) all of us. But why doesn't it I mean people people think about why it didn't concern the world that that Slaughter was occurring to Jews during World War Two and the the same question does apply. Why won't people see the depth of brutality that is occurring in the world today.
(00:03:23) What's remarkable about this and I agree with you completely is that we have complete documentation about the nature and the extent of this tragedy in this case. We've had two administrations in a row that have tried In every possible way to put to keep the story on the back burner and what that does on some level even on a subconscious level I think is make is leaves us feeling very very nervous because the fact is we know something terrible is going on over there. We've been watching it on TV. We've read the news accounts and yet we have not had the political will to step in and try to stop it. It's to our Everlasting shame as many commentators have noted how ironic it is that and as we were opening the Holocaust museum in Washington DC last winter saying in every possible way never again, we were letting it happen yet again and the net effect I believe is to further numb us to further dead in our spirit and that can only lead to more tragedy.
(00:04:25) Let's talk about who you met with in Sarajevo specifically artists and writers
(00:04:31) the longest journey. I made to Sarajevo was in conjunction with the Sarajevo film. Of a which took place in late October early November of 1993 over the course of ten days more than a hundred films were shown in this war-torn city. And while I was there I had the chance to meet with and talk with various artists filmmakers writers and Poets who have managed to stay or have decided to stay in Sarajevo for the duration of the war as a way of bearing witness to this awful tragedy. One who stood who sticks in mind was the poet for eated erakovic a young poet who had been featured on a Phil Robinson Nightline special. He did a film called Sarajevo one woman's Odyssey. And when I walked into the writers association of Sarajevo, there were eight old men and one young woman and I looked at farida and I said, well, I recognize you because I had seen the film that Phil Robinson did and we hit it off immediately and I recall her saying to me. One night that she could talk about the atrocities with any journalist. But that with me as a poet what she really wanted to talk about was poetry and life.
(00:05:45) Can you read some of those poems now? Can we hear at least one poem?
(00:05:49) I read a poem called Beauty and the Beast this is a poem by 32 do erakovic poet whose 37 years old and she is the author of three collections of poetry to children's books and a number of newspaper articles. Which she has written during the war the poem Beauty and the Beast refers to the old cocteau film and the difference here. Is that the Homeland the Bosnian Homeland plays a prominent role. Beauty and the Beast by Frida do erakovic the dishonest Beauty slammed the door finally as the Homeland did then vanished into history the beauty there for the dishonest wand and the Homeland have something in common both leave behind the boys who will die for them. Do you wanna hear the poem by garance image? Yes, I do. Grunts image is a Bosnian Serb poet living in Sarajevo married to a Muslim woman. What's remarkable remarkable about his story is that his brother is up in the hills outside of Sarajevo. He's one of those firing shells into the city. Well, Goran stays behind and writes poetry his friend. Farida. Daddy erakovic said that She didn't like his poetry very much before the war. She felt it was too hermetic to mysterious and but since the War Began, he has become a very clear and direct poet somebody who writes only about what is most important to him and it seems to me that his poem The Apprentice addresses that change in his thinking about poetry The Apprentice by goren see Mitch. I have spent half of my life looking for a vocabulary. Of beauty which will exceed the Strangelove of stupid paper and a smart pencil. I have acquired knowledge From Shadows. I have learned from monuments. I have associated with ghosts. Now when I spend more time at funerals than at my desk, I notice how the covers of my books of fairy tales burned quite appropriately. Well on the Frozen stove I try to warm up the tea for my sick child and how Beauty returns to me. Me through the Ruddy cheeks of my boy and the linden flower. I could have never supposed to be more beautiful than a rose.
(00:08:26) What is the role of poetry in the world of Sarajevo? I
(00:08:31) think of the story of Anna akhmatova the great Russian poet who when her son was imprisoned during the stalinist era found herself standing outside the prison with a long line of women desperate to have the chance to say a word to their husbands their sons their fathers and someone called out in the cold air who will tell this story. And on akhmatova said I will and it seems to me that during a war one of the ways in which we get the texture of the daily life is through the long-lasting news of poetry. So for eated erakovic currants image and so many others give us that part of the story that we won't get from the newspaper or from the TV or radio. They give us something of the texture of life.
(00:09:26) So are you suggesting that it's the responsibility of the artist to be chronicler of history as opposed to Peacemaker as opposed to activist.
(00:09:35) I don't know that the artist really can be a peacemaker or an activist the artists role in my view is to try to Bear witness to what goes on in history and to be the repository of the cultural values. If only by preserving The Language by using the language well by finding ways to tell the truth through the language That's the most I think an artist can hope for and of course that's an awful lot to ask
(00:10:01) tell me. Is there any poem of yours that you would like to read in the context of what we've been talking about today?
(00:10:09) Well three dead erakovic and I have been working on a poem together for some time. We do it through these satellite phones and satellite
(00:10:17) faxes when you guys are actually on the phone creating a poet upon
(00:10:22) through the faxes. Yes. There's a remarkable development in this war. And that is that George Soros set up a phone Bank in Pittsburgh so that I can call the Pittsburgh the were facts to Pittsburgh and that Signal gets beamed up to a satellite and then down into a an office in Sarajevo. And on one trip to Sarajevo free to give me a poem of hers called Morning Glory Sarajevo. The last section of the poem was the only section which had not been translated and she said why don't you write the last section I wrote that and by then she had gotten that last section translated for me and sent me her last section and when she saw what I had done with her Last section which proposed a different kind of ending she said why don't we continue trying to write this poem together and so back and forth. We've been sending drafts of poems trying to see what we can do with them. Hmm and this is the the little section that I wrote called Morning Glory Sarajevo. Let us stand in the spray from the waterfall adding subtracting. It is all the same the Morning Glory like a guardrail whines along the riverbank dividing us among the carriers of Water and Light the ruins multiply like lovers restless and divine our homeland dust a city Rising like words or mirrors from a waterfall a hand releasing song. Birds blossoms breath
(00:12:01) It's hard to imagine that there's a woman in the midst of Sarajevo with all that that means around, you know, daily life and sniper bullets and no electricity and little food, etc. Etc. Who's on the phone to you writing a poem its net incredible it is
(00:12:18) I remember walking with Goran and farida through the streets of Sarajevo and shots were wringing out all around us and I was absolutely terrified and at one point I looked at Goran and farida. Her and wondered why it was that they didn't even Flinch when the shots rang out and go around looked at me and very soberly said if you hear the shot, you're still alive and I realized that kind of Sarah even humor was what kept them alive as artists and as human beings, they still have a kind of lightness of spirit and that is what I've always loved in my travels through that through that war-torn country is encountering people with a sense of humor a way to make it through the day away, too. Find a bottle of brandy and talk about the Poetry of says love me low Shore Rainer Maria rilke and imagine that someday this tragedy will be over and they will get on with their lives and write a different kind of poem.