The Russians had sent teachers and teachers to the occupied areas to “Russify” them at a great pace, even though they had to hastily call them back home even before the Ukrainian counter-offensive that liberated part of the occupied areas. Ukrainians are doing the opposite: they are summoning European writers and intellectuals and not just to make a plurality of cultures resonate.
The confirmation is recent: even this year, despite the war, Lviv will hold its BookForum, a book fair and literary festival, from 6 to 9 October next. It will be the twenty-ninth edition (it is a long tradition: the Mantua festival, for example, is at the twenty-sixth), with the support, among others – information for the use of conspiracy theorists -, of the USAID, the American agency for international development.
Despite the war and the missile bombings (which only partially spared the Habsburg city, close to the border with Poland and a logistic center for aid and supplies, as well as for welcoming refugees), despite the horror of the Russian massacres, torture, of a bloody nation put to the test by the invaders, a book party is possible; and this is good news.
The event is organized in collaboration with the Hay-on-Wye Festival, the oldest and by now historic to be celebrated in Great Britain, in the Welsh town that has become famous for being a large market for second-hand books, a “city of books” “. From there, the videos of the meetings will be bounced on the web, in English and Ukrainian for the live broadcast, with Spanish subtitles in the following days.
Well-respected names from international literature have joined, from the Nobel, Abdulrazak Gurnah to Margaret Atwood, from Elif Shafak and Jonathan Littel, from Neil Gaiman to Michael Katakis (photographer and great traveler, who manages, among other things, on behalf of the heirs, the editorial rights of Ernest Hemingway) and many others, including of course Ukrainian writers and journalists.
It is, in some way, the world of culture that takes the field (not as a metaphor, but really going to Lviv and basically taking some risks) against the invasion war. Obviously, some homegrown talk show heroes will be missing, but it is unlikely that anyone will
feel the lack in the name of a level playing field, to use the words of Draghi, of more or less hired puppets. Instead, there will be the best of literary culture and beyond.
Cristina Fuentes La Roche, head of the Hay Festival’s international program, underlines with the British press the aspect of “challenge” against those who try to “interfere with freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas”, but also “a catalyst for a big change “. She is echoed by the very young Ukrainian organizer, Sofia Cheliak, who defines the BookForum “a space for writers and readers, to ask questions and tell stories, in a conversation capable of coping with the evil that tries to erase our freedom” .
It is true that literature, books and ideas do not always work miracles (indeed, unfortunately it almost never happens), but it is equally indubitable that a testimony of this kind is a gesture of life against death, against fear, against silence.
As Margaret Atwood writes, “we try to make this festival encourage more and more people to express their opinions, high and strong”. What totalitarian regimes cannot bear.