PAVE PEACE THROUGH LITERATURE AND
CULTURE
ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE
Volume 1 number 1
Founder and
Editor: Ada Aharoni
Technical Editor: Paul Smoker
I
PREFACE
One of the
important decisions of the "Peace Through Literature Commission" - at
the 16th Ipra General Conference at UQLD, Brisbane, Australia (July 7-1, 1996),
on "Building Non Violent Futures" - was to found an electronic
magazine to promote the paving of Global Peace through international literature
and culture.
I have the
pleasure to open the first issue of this newly established magazine, which
covers some of the major subjects discussed at the Founding Board Meeting of
the "Peace Through Literature Commission" and the inauguration of its
magazine, and in the seven ensuing sessions of the commission. The Founding
Board Meeting of the Peace Through Literature Commission was attended by:
Karlheinz Koppe, Ralph Summy, Johan Galtung, John Synott, Sanaa Osserian, Kaz
Okamoto, Teruhisa Horio and myself. After warm and encouraging addresses by the
first four board members mentioned above, and a Keynote Lecture by Johan
Galtung on the importance of establishing this new PTL commission at IPRA,
Karlheinz Koppe read a congratulation message from President
II
MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT KEVIN CLEMENTS
"Owing to the
vagaries of international air travel I very much regret that I am unable to
attend the inaugural meeting of the Peace Through Literature Commission, rest
assured, however, that I will be with you in spirit as you map out the core
problematic that will guide your discussions over the next week and into the
future.
Art and Literature
are powerful determinants of how we see the world and interpret it. These media
can be used for good and ill. It is vital when understanding the deep conflicts
that exist between peoples that we do justice to the underlying
sources/grievances while maintaining a realistic optimism for the future.
Literature is one means of doing this since it involves a sharing of stories,
myths experiences. It also entails a graphic portrayal of the now mediated by
what might be, the resulting tension is what produces the central dilemmas that
lie at the heart of good art and great literature. Once again I very much
regret that I cannot be with you at the inauguration of this Commission, I am
sure that it will prove to be a lively one because of the passion, energy,
intensity and literary wisdom of the people who have joined this commission.
In peace, Kevin P.
Clements, President International Peace Research Association
III
OPENING OF DISCUSSION ON PROGRAM OF THE PTLC
In the following
part of the Board Meeting, as convener of the PTLC, I opened the discussion
concerning the program of the commission and its magazine with the following:
"On September 15, 1995, I was invited to lecture on our research on
"Paving Peace Through Literature and Culture," and to present some
"International Peace Stories and Poems," in a mixed panel of Moslem,
Christian and Jewish scholars and writers - from different countries in the
Middle East - at the UN NGO Conference in New York in celebration of 50 years
to the UN.
The rich cultural
climate diffused by this panel was harmonious and fruitful, and on this
occasion, we realized again, what an important vehicle literature and culture
are, for bridging the ethnic gaps between nations. We also realized as well,
how important it is for scholars, peace researchers, writers and literary
critics, to set up a global Peace Through Literature Commission and an
Electronic Magazine which would research and present the best international
literary and cultural harvest of global and regional artistic works on peace,
and set up an effective infra-structure which would promote, spread and diffuse
such works.
We were glad when
IPRA agreed with the initiative and took up the challenge. Honored members of
the Board, we are gathered today to inaugurate both the founding of the PTLC,
and the founding of its magazine: PAVE PEACE, which we feel assured will indeed
contribute to the crucial effort of building non violent futures. Our general
aim is a very ambitious one: to pave A WORLD BEYOND WAR BY YEAR 2000, through
the building of a global cultural climate of peace, and through the outlawing
of the concept and practice of War - hence the title of the magazine: Pave
Peace.
IV
DECISIONS OF THE BOARD
The following
suggestions and decisions were endorsed by the Board. They were also thoroughly
discussed and endorsed, by the 42 members of the PTL commission in its first
session on Monday July 8.
The program of the
PTLC and the PAVE PEACE electronic magazine will include:
1. International
and regional research on Peace Literature, Art and Culture. Presentation of
such art to the wide public.
2. Research of
electronic media programs that deal with peace and with violence. Presentation
of such research to the wide public, universities, schools, etc.
3. The building of
an infra-structure and institutes to promote the writing and distribution of
peace literature, TV and film scripts, etc. and to discourage violence on TV,
movies, and books.
4. Organize and
diffuse the "Turn Off Violence on TV" Project, which discourages
sponsors of violent programs.
5. We will
establish a PAVE PEACE Literary and Movie Contest to enhance the writing and
publishing of stories, poetry, myths with the theme of peace, and the
production offilm scripts and movies promoting the climate of peace.
6. We will attempt
to establish an International Translation Institute and Fund for the
translation of Peace Literature.
7. We will strive
to promote Peace Education, non-adversial and non-violent culture, for all
ages, including adults - through creativity and creative works.
V
GEMS FROM THE PTLC SESSIONS
During the lively
discussions in the PTLC seven sessions, several important things were said by
the participants, the following gems were among them:
"Ethnic
differences can only be bridged by culture and education and not by
guns..."
"It is our
culture which makes us different, and it is our education which makes us
erroneously believe that our culture is the best there is." "
Exposure to other cultures may show us how wrong we were and make us more
modest, open and tolerant ..."
"I have
always been a lover of literature and a peace activist, but before I came to
the Peace Through Literature Commission, I had never put them together
before!" " I come from a very conservative background, and I know
today that I got most of my liberal ideas from literature - from the stories,
novels and plays I read and absorbed."
VI
ROUNDTABLE AND PAPERS DELIVERED AT THE PTLC COMMISSION
Sixty seven
participants attended the PTL commission, and they participated in lively
discussions after the opening of 5 Roundtables and 7 Papers.
In addition, a
PEACE POETRY READING session hosted by the PTLC, and chaired by John Synott,
drew a lively crowd of participants who enjoyed the poetry of Roberta Sykes and
many other poets, as well as the music and singing of Karl-Eric Paasonen and
his cheerful band. Several people commented that the poetry reading was a
moving experience and a refreshing innovation at the conference. It was
suggested that we should have such peace poetry readings, peace plays, and
peace story telling, as well as international singing and dancing from our
global village, at every Ipra Conference. All the papers and roundtables were
interesting and involving. Among those which drew the liveliest discussions
were the following:
1. The Culture of
the Peace Concept: Thinking, Feeling, Creating and Acting - by Ada Aharoni (A
joint Session with the Peace Theories Commission- Convener Paul Smoker).
2. Building a Non
Violent Cultural Climate Through Peace Marches - by Karl-Eric Paasonen.
3. Stories and
poems from the Middle East written by Khalil Jubran, Naguib Mahfouz and Sofia
Abdullah.
4. Roundtable
Discussion on : "Is Story Telling a Powerful Tool in the Furtherance of
War and Peace?" Opened by Robert Arjet.
5. Conflict
Resolution in Children's Literature - by Wendy Parsons.
6. Japanese Peace
Stories for Children and Adults - by Kazuyo Yamane.
7. "The Peace
Flower: A Nuclear Space Adventure," and the peace play: "The Coming
of Godo," a tragicomedy, by Ada Aharoni.
8. The Andaluz
Project - by Sanaa Osseiran, and the presentation of the first children's book
published by the project.
9. Peace Poetry -
by John Synott.
10. Roundtable
Discussion on: Visions of Nonviolent Futures in Male and Female Authors.
Conclusions
Roundtable
1. Promoting of
Nonviolent Literature and Culture through our research, in our hometowns and
cities by every means possible: contests, letters to the editors of major
journals, letters to editors of violent TV program and their sponsors.
2. Organize and
promote the "Turn off violent TV."
3. Founding the
PAVE PEACE THROUGH LITERATURE ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE, which would allow us to keep
in touch, and to promote the Cyberwave of Peace by the building of an
international peace literature and cultural climate beyond war and violence.
VII
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
Each of the issues
of PTLE Magazine the PAVE PEACE LITERARY ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE will include a
part, or summary, of the papers presented to the PTLC during the 16th IPRA
conference. Participants who read papers in this commission (as Johan Galtung
and John Synott), or opened a roundtable discussion (as Robert Arjet and Sanaa
Osseiran), and/or delivered a Board Meeting address (as Karlheinz Koppe and
Ralph Summy), are kindly requested to send their presentations to the editor of
PTLC, so that they can be included in future issues. This issue will present
part of the paper on the British peace poet Wilfred Owen.
VIII
PEACE POET WILFRED OWEN (1893 - 1918)
"I am the enemy you killed my friend,"
Wilfred Owen
One of my
favourite poets who has greatly influenced my outlook on life and my creative
work, is the British peace poet Wilfred Owen, who died in the trenches in World
War I, at twenty-five. His beautiful poetry is the background of the moving
film "All's Quiet on the Western Front," which has through the years
become a classic.
Wilfred Owen is
thought today to be one of the greatest British poets. He left poems and
sonnets that are reckoned among the most moving peace poems ever written. He
was educated at London University, and was a tutor in France for some time. At
the outbreak of World War I he was mobilized to the front in the rifle corps,
and a month before he was shot, he was awarded the Military Cross for
gallantry. A week before the armistice, Owen was killed in action, November 4,
1918. His work was published only two years after his death. Owen has
influenced some major poets that followed him years later, suc as W.H. Auden
and Stephen Spender. His condemnation of war is well illustrated in poems such
as "STRANGE MEETING," perhaps th most powerfully projected of all
peace poem.
STRANGE MEETING
It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile I knew I stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "save the undone years,
The Hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world ...
I mean the truth untold:
The pity of war, the pity war distilledd
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not at the cost of war.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this death; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now ...."
Through such
moving and authentic universal peace poems, which powerfully condemn war,
Wilfred Owen succeeds to instill in the hearts of his readers that the very
concept and practice of war should be anachronistic. He likewise succeeds to
convince us that poetry is one of the most powerful and effective vehicles to
describe the horrors of war and that it can help in building the cultural
climate of peace, needed for banning war from the earth. His poems such as
"Anthem for Doomed Youth," and "Futility," as so many
others, deal with the delicate nuances of the deepest thoughts, feelings and
truths concerning war and peace, through moving lyrical and graphic concrete human
experience concerning the abomination and senselessnes of wars. He addresses
not only our minds and hearts but also all our senses through the process of
empathic imagination.
His poems are most
relevant and actual nowadays, when more than fifty wars are still ravaging our
world. Even after Peace Treaties or arrangements are signed, as in Israel,
Bosnia, Rwanda, Ireland and South Africa - there are deep layers and levels of
mistrust and residues of hatred and emotions remaining in the hearts of the
people who had been former enemies. These ethnic differences and mistrusts can
mainly be bridged by a vehicle of culture and emotions, and not by guns. They
can be gapped by the understanding and respecting of the "other's"
cultural ethnicity, which leads to tolerance and acceptance. And what could be
more suited for that than poetry and literature that have the ability to delve
deeply into the essences of the cultural ethnicity of both sides of a conflict.
However, we must
remember that good poetry should be authentic, and really express not only some
specific reality but true deep feelings and aspirations, and not as is
sometimes seen in so called "avant-garde" poetry - mawkish and
charlatan outpouring or pseudo self-pitying. We see none of this in Wilfred
Owen. His friend, the peace poet Siegfried Sassoon rightly said of him:
"He pitied others; he did not pity himself."
Some literary
critics have expressed their concern in recent years, at the phenomenon that
poetry does not have the same status and impact nowadays as it did in the past.
One of the main reasons I think, why poetry's status has gone down the drain in
recent years, is the fact that it has not dealt enough or with the same
intensity and depth, as Wilfred Owen for instance, with the main problems
facing our generation. Poetry has ceased to aspire to being at the forefront of
our true and urgent human aspirations. What could be a greater aspiration of
humanity today, than to get rid of the danger of being blown up by the nuclear
arsenals around the world, which as we are told, are more than a hundred times
the amount needed to blow us up! As foremost scientists have often warned us -
when something exists, one day it will be used! Do we want to let it happen,
and just go on discussing "Lyrical Poetry" and "Narrative Poetry",
or should we try to do something through our art, not to let it happen? As
Wilfred Owen through his impressive poetry, and Tolstoy through his monumental
masterpiece "War and Peace."
Wilfred Owen, as
several other peace writers around the world, dedicated his short life to try
to ban and outlaw war. Evelyne Hardy, the wife of the British writer Thomas
Hardy, says of him in her biography covering his life, that he always felt
that, "One day soon, war will come to an end, not because of our growing
humanity - but because of war's growing absurdity...." Every peace
researcher, conscientious writer and human being should take it upon himself or
herself, to persevere in the road Wilfred Owen, Thomas Hardy and Tolstoy have
paved for - us until wars are banished from our earth. In doing so, let us
remember Virginia Woolfe's wise words:
"We cannot use your words and your methods,
and we have to invent new words and new
methods...."
Three Guineas
In the following
issues of the PAVE PEACE LITERARY ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE, more Wilfred Owen poems
will be published and discussed, as well as other peace poems and stories from
around the world.
IX
POEMS READ AT THE CONFERENCE
Two of the peace
poems I read at the PTLC, concerned the conflict in the Middle East. During the
Yom Kippur War (October 1973), letters and biographies were found on the bodies
of two dead soldiers, an Egyptian in the Sinai, and an Israeli in the Golan.
During my research on these documents, I was deeply touched by both. These were
two young men who had just started their adult lives and they were cruelly cut
down by war, before their full leaves and branches had sprouted. The two
expressed more or less the same thoughts and feelings - they did not want to
die, they wanted to live for their beloved, for the accomplishment of their
creative aspirations, and for their families. Yet they were both killed in this
senseless war, which could have ended with the same results - a Peace Treaty
between Egypt and Israel, if the two sides had agreed to sit together and
negotiate an agreement, before killing their children on the battlefield.
The Egyptian
soldier wrote:
REMEMBER ME WHEN THE SUN SHINES OVER THE PYRAMIDS
AND THE MOON OVER THE SPHINX
Dear Leila, I am afraid I am about
To die, for Egypt and Allah,
But this is not what I want -
What I want to do is live for you
My Leila, my love -
Remember me every time the sun shines
Over the Pyramids
And the moon over the Sphinx
And ask Allah WHY?
The Israeli
soldier has a kind of epiphany. He too suddenly knows he is about to die, as he
is encircled by Syrian soldiers on the Golan. He is surprised that he feels no
hate for the Syrian soldier who is about to kill him. He asks himself, how come
I do not hate the Syrian soldier who is about to shoot me? The answer comes
like in a flash of dismal light: "Because we are both toy soldiers of
shopkeepers who want to sell,
SELLING US IN THIS CURSED, CURSED WAR."
THIS CURSED WAR
From an Israeli Soldier's Yom Kippur War Diary
The night creeps long
funeral throng,
darkens. Memories rush
and flood
blood.
Blossoming lists of dead
thumps red.
Every name pins mind
With writhing missiles.
Cursed, cursed war
In a jeep, on Golan Heights
loneliest I have ever been,
I watch skeletons of tanks
Crowned with names of friends.
Sinister row, black graves
fresh bodies - old smell.
Cursed, cursed war
It doesn't look at all like wars in films, this war.
Here we do not get a chance to shoot
Or wave a flag
Shrieking shells, hyena lightning
Pour on us and we run backwards
or forwards
Or to the side
And some are saved
and some are not,
Not all, not always
But always cursing
This cursed, cursed war.
In an English centurion
Holding Belgian guns,
We watch two American-made airplanes
Shot down by Russian-made missiles.
I cannot hate the Syrian on the other side
Who holds a French gun and shoots Soviet SAMs.
AH! Now I have it, now I know -
We are both toy soldiers of shopkeepers
Who want to sell -
Selling us, in this
Cursed, cursed war!
God, let it stop, let it end,
Let the nightmare end!
Cursing is the only womb shelter
We can creep into,
Not to crumble
Before thoughts in the dark.
Cursed are those who force me to be here
In this cursed, cursed war!
CLOSING
CEREMONY POEM
At the closing
ceremony of the IPRA Conference, I was asked to read the poem which appears in
the SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES JOURNAL dedicated to the Conference. At the opening of
the reading of the poem, I suggested: "Let's prove that the pen is not
only stronger than the sword, but even stronger than the nuclear bomb."
Let's tell this belligerent century, that we are -
NOT IN YOUR WAR ANYMORE
War is as anachronistic as cannibalism, slavery and
colonialism.
Rosalie Bertell
I am not in your war anymore,
surely we cannot paint war green
when even the long Cold War has died.
So let's paint it in all its true
foliage colors, to help its fall.
First, flowing flamboyant crimson blood
on throbbing temples and hands,
russet, bronze fiery metal cartridges
stuffing the crevices of young hearts
while golden lazer Napalm dragon tongues
gluttonously lick the sizzling eyes and lips
of our children, under the giant mushrooms
freshened by mustard and acid rain.
Surely, at the close of our
great atomic century
we will soon find the archaic
history tree, where we can dump
our fearful Nuclear bottle legacy
And our grandchildren will ask their parents
What were tanks for, Pa?
What were Nuclear Bombs for Ma?
And with eyes
full of wonder, they will read the story of the
glorious imprisonment of the Nuclear Giant
corked for ever, and will rapturously exclaim:
Well done Pa, well done Ma,
WELL DONE IPRA!1
1. PS: The last
line was added spontaneously while I was reading the poem at the closure of the
Conference, and it came from the heart. The Conference organizers have indeed
accomplished a marvellous enterprise, and I thank them heartily in my name and
in the name of the PTLC. May IPRA's impressive peace efforts be blessed by the
ripest fruit.
Ada Aharoni
Convener of the PTL Commission Editor of Pave Peace Literary Electronic
Magazine
Dr. Ada Aharoni Conflict
Studies,
Technion, 57 Horev, Haifa,
Israel 34343
Tel: 972-4-8243230
Fax: 972-4-8261288
E-Mail: ada33@bezeqint.net
This page last updated October 19, 1997