WRITERS PAVING THE WAY TOWARDS THE NEW ERA
34. International PEN Meeting 2001

Bled, 24 May 2001



Each year this meeting with you is a special pleasure. And today I greet you again most warmly. Conversations with you and a reading of your thoughts on the world which is emerging, and into which you desire through your work to breathe the warm spirit of humanity, something that is being lost in the pragmatism of everyday life, provide a weighty caution to all who produce creative work in the new, human civilisation, including politics – for which they serve as a corrective. Indeed our new technologies and the world market without borders are insufficient for human happiness and for an agreeable human future. Values that are common to all – human dignity and open spiritual horizons – are only now creating a true sense of life and linking people, countries, cultures and civilisations of the increasingly globalised, but still divided world.

We have left the world of the 20th century. Much that is good about it could be written on its memorial stone, including many scientific discoveries, great art and fine literature. Yet for the sake of truth and memory we are duty bound to record also the horrific wars, the millions killed, the concentration camps, destroyed religious shrines, ideological clashes, the division of the world into rich and poor, and an unfeeling attitude to nature. Hatred and intolerance. The generations living today, whose acts are determining the path of humans and humanity in the 21st century, have a duty to act in such a way that this century will not be recorded in human memory as a time of division into those who are suffering and those who do not care, into people with the right only to survival and those with the right to a future, into people with access to knowledge and those condemned to ignorance, into people and nations with the right to an identity and those who are drowned in the sea of globalisation.

The subjects of your discussions at Bled, ladies and gentlemen, including the two this year, have consistently paved the way towards the horizons of the new age. In many respects they define and profess the political philosophy of the 21st century. Life is not merely survival or just a daily grasping for more good things, nor is it just political incidents. Such is my understanding of your thinking. And I also understand you to mean that a good person is not an uninteresting, boring or unsuitable hero for artistic creation, because it hints at some good and pleasant possibility in the life of the individual and humanity. After all, this is not regulated simply by the crude power of the strongest, nor is it determined simply by vested interests.

A long period of time will separate our reckoning with the 20th century and our reckoning with the 21st century. The generations who will enter the 22st century will measure their achievements by comparing them with our actions and with anything of worth that will remain recorded from our time. Perhaps in their archives they will even read through some of our political speeches, but they will for certain read your books. These are and will remain a mirror of our time, beliefs, values and spiritual state.

For this reason, too, and not simply for the spiritual requirements of present generations, I join with those of you who have at this year’s Bled meeting expressed your concern for the future of books. And also because of Slovenia’s own experience. Yet I am an optimist. Technology will undoubtedly change, and we will also read electronic books. But their content will always be human, yours, the content of writers. For as long as humans carry in themselves an awareness of their individual mortality, they will also create and their spirit will thus remain alive in the times of new generations. And for as long as humans are alive, they will think about the purpose of life. The new century enables and calls on humans to start thinking about their responsibility for life and for the fate of our planet, for it is humans that are threatening both the one and the other. For this reason I believe in art, I believe in books and I believe in the work of the writer. The world of the 21st century should more than in previous centuries be a world of spiritual orientations, and a time of fundamental values that are common to all. This will ensure for artistic endeavour a place in the world’s spiritual foundations.

I believe in the sense of your meetings. And for this reason I wish you much creative work and a pleasant stay here in Slovenia.