Unexpected days
We are living in unexpected days, the whole world seized by a primary instinct of self-preservation has locked itself in and is trying to escape death. States are destitute, unprepared and obsessed with winning more and more, they behave without humanity. No cologne to put on our hands or disinfectant, not even simple masks to produce, the glorious states !Are dependent on aid from half-socialist countries that they kept decrying, such as China, Cuba, Korea. The European Union, NATO, forgetting the purpose of their alliance, are reluctant even to help those closest to their neighbors. Hospitals are insufficient in number, patients await death for lack of medical equipment and sufficient drugs. In Las Vegas, the sparkling product of capitalism, the dead spill over onto the sidewalks. The captain of the world, the USA is taken by disease, all its efforts are directed towards the richest. The poor are in hell. In Africa, the dead wait in the streets to be buried. As if the refugees and their children had cast a bad spell, they who are fleeing the quagmire of Syria where forces are fighting for their interests and pushing the people of this country into the cruel arms of barbarism, of horror, them who try to stay alive, but die in the salty waters of the Mediterranean or in the waves of the Aegean. Can we write a story, a novel, paint these events?
Of course. A poet will write two verses, everything we have experienced will strike us straight in the face. Another will write the novel of this shame, yet another a painting. These poems, novels, stories, films will be there to make us relive the drama of humanity battered by the Coronavirus and understand our miserable situation. Let’s not forget that Giovanni Boccace wrote the short stories of the Decameron in 1348 during the plague of Venice. He finished his book in 1353. Seven centuries before, to escape the plague raging in Florence, ten men and women meet in a country house, to pass the time, for ten days (decameron means ten days) they will meet. tell stories, in total 100, this book is the result of a reaction against those days of plague epidemic.
Against despair, all natural aspects of man have been described and the system of exploitation of man by man and religion has been called the real plague. As in La Peste de Camus.
Now is the time to question: is the exploitation of humans by humans the danger or the coronavirus? What consciousness is necessary for the exercise of this exploitation, what belief? It is not even enough to compare the imperialists who cruelly exploit us to the werewolves, vampires and other zombies we see in the movies. They at least do not kill by degrading humans. In my opinion, the capitalist who gives no value to humans is more dangerous than the dangers of the coronavirus, more deadly. How many people in Africa die from disease, despair, hunger? In America, in the larger and more affluent centers, how many people live on the streets? How many people are murdered?
The poet, the writer, the artist, is he just a scrapbook, using his intelligence to invent stories? Or the representative of the language he uses, the conscience of the people he meets? No matter how politically sensitive a writer is, it is the language he writes and the person he works with that engages him. There is something to remember: all writings and above all poetry and the visual arts are the arts of human expression. How could an art be only the material it uses, a game, a scenario? It would be amorphous, shallow and meaningless. We must not forget that even the most abstract art like music is perennial and touches us, makes sense.
Humanity will of course emerge from this epidemic. But the real danger is not to see the plague in us, to submit to the modern Caligulas. In these days of coronavirus, the best for every artist, author, is to tell the human story. Tell us about the human, let’s fight for the human. This world is ours. To humans, animals and plants. The world is in the hands of responsibility and human conscience. Above all, it is possible to create a world in which to live without forgetting our community of destiny with animals and plants and to instill such awareness.
Metin Cengiz
Writer
Turkey
