Mith war there is no time for literature. However, after wars and before them, in times of upheaval, uncertainties and insecurities, the constitution of new and old values, the need to tell and read a story arises. How was it, and how could it once have been? In literature we experience where the truth of a story lies between inspiration and arbitrariness, our own experience and that of others. When a story reaches beyond the experience of the individual into the universal, we can find ourselves in it. May you live in interesting times, goes an old Chinese proverb, the polite formulation of which carries more of a curse than a blessing.
As important as political literature may seem at the moment of its creation, its half-life is short. The writer as enlightener and provocateur, as admonisher and moral authority, her immediate political relevance flares up and in the next moment seems slightly dislocated or dusty.
#writer #Klara #Blum #rediscovered