By Yuri ANDRUKHOVYCH, The Day
The death sentence seems not to have made Salman Rushdie a worse writer.
We have no choice but to believe Western reviewers and observers that
every new piece of his writing is always high literature: reckless easiness
combined with extraordinary complexity, the virtuoso style of making and
implementing an idea, philosophical horizons and, what is more, truly living
on the edge leaving no doubt about the true nature of things. This is the
way the world sees him - a creator open to the limit in each of his actions,
rather than a violent hell-raiser in search of worldly glory and patronage
from affluent liberal societies. If to some the word, creator, seems too
much, let us use the word, provocateur, terribly close in its implicit
meaning. For creation is always provocation. It is also resistance, a dominant
sign of what is human in a human being.
Meanwhile, being for a decade the center of attention of the "world
literary public," constantly making his way into most diverse top twenties,
tens, even fives, and occasionally being awarded yet another most prestigious
prize in literature, Mr. Rushdie believes (an interview comes to mind)
he is deeply unhappy in human terms. Continuous secrecy, flight from intimate
friends, frequent and often unavoidable changes of residence - all this
does not contribute to the sensation of freedom, the freedom he once chose
so categorically as his literary method. The latter is perhaps even more
than purely literary, for in the case of Rushdie we see a stunning identity
of literature or, to be more exact, the spirit of literature, with life
itself.
I do not know how a person may feel the surrounding reality if the British
government spends two million a year to guard him. I think it unlikely
he would be overwhelmed with pride in and creative satisfaction with it.
And here I would like to say a word about courage.
There is courage to offer resistance to ideological systems, political
regimes, social sentiments, and traditions. There is dissident courage
to counter official courts, propaganda, tortures, life imprisonment, and
death sentences - who can remember all those executions by firing squad
and self-immolations better than we, Ukrainians?
Yet, how can we resist the fear that wraps itself around you in the
dark, that creeping death, those nocturnal street passers-by, letter-bombs,
accidental hoodlums wielding accidental knives, those blows on your head
with blunt objects, all those more technically sophisticated methods of
murder when everything under the moon - food, beverages, gas, smell, virus,
hormone, information, or a beam of light - could be an instrument of death?
How can we resist all the possible snipers, terrorists, or outright crazies?
How can we resist, finally, our own paranoia, those free-flight nightmares
of an author's own wild imagination?
Our profession means that each of us must remember very much, an old
Polish writer in Munich once said. First of all, always remember death,
he declared. Mr. Rushdie surely more than remembers: it's already ten years
that he has been cheek-to-jowl with death, being pregnant with this horrible
fetus that could be born any day. Obviously, one gets use to even this,
being hunted for the rest of one's life, but if that is so, I see everything
as still more cruel.
No doubt, the official cancellation of Mr. Rushdie's death sentence
by the Iranian authorities, which Great Britain bargained after long diplomatic
maneuvers should not remain underrated - there still is a glimmering hope
for understanding and forgiveness against the backdrop of this political
gesture. It is also equally certain that this gesture does not relieve
tension a bit, for what is left is the public initiative of "non-governmental
organizations," political groupings, religious clans, and the masses, after
all. What is still on the agenda is the great clash of civilizations in
which "East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."
And between then stands the lonely figure of a writer torn apart by
love, fear, betrayals, glory, acclaim, and incomprehension - a living target
endowed and endangered with the aspiration to speak out about the world.







