(56-57)
Example 1 from the author's "Ensuring Fair Play in Inter-Cultural Encounters Do we need a Tertium Comparationis? -- A Translator's Perspective."
(56-57)
The question here is: Why do people point the finger at what Alexander Gedanov did to artists and men of letters in the Stalinist era when he built walls of iron around Socialist Realism and the principle of toeing the party line in art and literature, while they neglect to point the finger at what McCarthy did, in the name of Congress and under the aegis of the F.B.I., to artists, actors, men of letters and university lecturers, especially and in particular in Hollywood circles? Weren't dozens of lives destroyed? Wasn't this an unparalleled example of intellectual, political and economic terrorism? Wasn't a widespread attempt made to brainwash and corrupt people? All this has left its mark to this very day on the artists, men of letters, creative individuals and university lecturers until people who are serious critics, liberal in their thought, their politics and their art became almost totally unknown.
Why don't people point their finger at the economic system, with its long monopolistic tentacles, which is able to promote whoever it wants, and can cast whoever it wants into the shade or into cold isolated corners without a judgement being issued by a law court or a party leadership. It does all this in a crudely arbitrary manner, as happens in countries with dictators. However, the end result is the same, the murder of writers and artistic work by dispossessing them, banning them, ignoring and giving them the cold shoulder, strangling the creator in the same way as it strangles his artistic work. Often this is harsher than prison, because it is longer term and more painful, and because it attacks the soul and the mind, not to mention cutting off the artist's livelihood.
(Example 9 is taken from fi al-hidatha wa al-khitab al-hidathi, published by Al-Markaz al-thiqafi fi al-maghrib in 1999)
Last modified: 7 May 2001