Edward Said: que é preciso saber

e também sobre Arafat (que é preciso saber): carta aberta de alguns escritores ligados ao PEN a Arafat:

Letter to Yasser Arafat
It has been widely reported that security services responsible to you have seized books written by Edward W. Said and carried them off from all bookstores in the Palestinian Autonomous Zones in Gaza and the West Bank. Furthermore, that the sale of his books has been forbidden in these same areas and in Palestinian bookstores in East Jerusalem.

This news is especially alarming at a time when those around the world who support the aspirations of the Palestinian people are looking to your Administration for evidence that any emerging Palestinian entity will try to found itself on basic democratic principles and most specifically on the principle of freedom of expression and dissent. This freedom necessarily includes Edward Said’s expressions of difference with some of your current policies.

Edward Said is one of the most prominent, influential and admired of cultural critics. In particular, his writings about the Palestinian experience have been an essential instrument in shaping opinions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East that are favourably informed about the Palestinian cause. We therefore urge you in your own interests as well as in the interests of people everywhere to reaffirm his right to be heard in the areas where an effort has been made to silence him.

Ronald Harwood, President of International PEN
Anne Hollander, President of PEN American Center
Karen Kennerly, Exectutive Director of PEN American Center

Adonis
K. Anthony Appiah
Paul Auster
Niels Barfoed
Mahmoud Darwish
Jacques Derrida
Gamal al-Ghitani
Allen Ginsberg
Gunter Grass
David Grossman
Naguib Mahfouz
Kenzaburo Oe
Orhan Pamuk
Richard Poirier
Anton Shammas
Susan Sontag
Jean Stein
William Styron
Gore Vidal
Torsten Wiesel
Saadi Youssef

Ronald Harwood and 23 others

sobre espólio literário e as guerras financeiras

The papers of Portuguese author José Saramago have found a permanent home in Lisbon without the sort of purchasing battle that might accompany the acquisition of the papers of a similarly accomplished writer working in English, French or Spanish.  Examples like this one suggest that there is a correlation between the financial value of literary archives, and by extension their final resting place, and the language in which they are written.  In this light, the article considers the likely destinies of the papers of authors including Doris Lessing, Naguib Mahfouz, Gabriel García Márquez  and Orhan Pamuk.

interessantíssimo artigo, aqui.


"The purchase by Princeton University of the Carlos Fuentes Archive provoked front-page outrage in Mexico. Similarly the proposed Sotheby’s sale of Naguib Mahfouz’s papers in December 2011 caused controversy in Egypt, and the sale was abandoned. It seems that at least some of the family now want these papers to go to the American University in Cairo, or to another Cairo library. Meanwhile the archive of Margaret Atwood is arriving in regular instalments at the University of Toronto, and Elfriede Jelinek seems to have the same sort of arrangement with the University of Vienna. Samuel Beckett’s papers present a classic example of a “split collection” – being divided between the Universities of Reading and Texas and Trinity College Dublin. Similarly, although some Doris Lessing papers have recently gone to the University of East Anglia, the bulk are divided between the Universities of Texas and Tulsa.

 Given that there is almost no interest in Turkish language and literature in the four big purchasing countries, there is every chance that the Orhan Pamuk Archive will stay in Istanbul, where it so obviously belongs. It could be said that Pamuk is to Istanbul what Saramago is to Lisbon and Mahfouz to Cairo. In 2012 Pamuk established a museum in Istanbul displaying his own novel ‘The Museum of Innocence’. You can read the amazing story at http://yazkam.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/review-istanbuls-museum-of-innocence."

comecei Pamuk com o racismo literário que lhe dedicam os críticos anglófilos, posso bem continuar: "given that there is no interest in Turkish language and literature"... é preciso dizer mais alguma coisa?

aliás, dizer que Marquez é um "highly marketable author-commodity" diz quase tudo sobre a sociedade contemporânea de língua inglesa.

enfim, um artigo interessante a acrescentar uma perspectiva aos nossos clichés romantizados sobre a importância da língua.

(a propósito, a lusofonia de Alexandre Pomar)