Ogni anno pubblico in inglese una relazione che chiamo "diario di bordo" su quanto accade al Congresso, senza ambizioni giornalistiche, ma per dare a chi non può partecipare la sensazione di cosa succede a livello internazionale.
Se avrò tempo, cercherò di farne una traduzione in italiano.
Se avrò tempo, cercherò di farne una traduzione in italiano.
As promised, here you have my day-by-day report from the Lviv Congress I couldn't do because of technical problems.
I
hope it will give you an idea of what was going on in Lviv, even if the real thing
was much more complex and interesting.
SATURDAY 16
I got to get up at 3:00 am to be in Lviv at lunch time:
weather was good. I chose to take a long walk in the city, realizing a small
photographic safari.
Lviv is very beautiful, with a complicated history in
political, linguistic and religious terms. It was an important city of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, with an architecture that reminds seamlessly Vienna
(and therefore Trieste), Prague, Ljubljana and Bucharest.
I absolutely had to stop for a beer in a place whose
name was written in Cyrillic БРУДЕРШАФТ (that’s
Bruderschaft in German, brotherhood in English) and that's saying a lot about Lviv.
A quick dinner and back to the hotel, to discover that
the WiFi was really lousy, and on top on that my tablet lost its Office program
because Microsoft did not remind me of the due date… Hallelujah.
SUNDAY 17
The day was dedicated to the Board meeting. From the
participants list I note that the Centres should be around 65, but very few
from Africa and Latin America.
For the Delegates and Participants there were
possibilities of short excursions dedicated to “Lviv in Literature”. In the
evening, it started raining.
MONDAY 18
The first day of the actual Congress was dedicated to
the Meetings of the standing Committees. The time was organized by slots, so
that there were 2 hours for each Committee dedicated to formalities that may
request the active participation/voting of delegates representing Centres
belonging to more than one Committee.
As a Board Member and a Delegate of Trieste PEN I
visited first the TLRC Committee and participated to the election of Simona
Škrabec. There was a report about the Bangalore meeting and Simona reported
about many other issues and initiatives.
I missed the discussion about “Freedom of Expression
in Post-Euromajdan Ukraine” I was told to have been very interesting with the
participation of Mikola Riabchuck and Andrei Kurkhov among others.
Then I went to the WIPC for a while, hearing Salil
Tripathi’s report about the organization of its works, the new Case List, the
situation in the various parts of the world, Turkey being one of the most
important topics. Also in this case, following the slots, I missed an
intervention of Enoh Meyomesse.
In the afternoon, I attended the WfPC, discussing
various issues about the liaison of this Committee with others, and about the
project of a Peace Award to be conferred every 2 years - preferably to a book of
a writer for his/her contribution to Peace. It’s a very ambitious project, for
which we were looking for a very short motto. I suggested “Peace is made by
books”.
Later on, I attended the WWC, in time to hear the last
opinions about the Women’s Manifesto that is scheduled to be voted in this
Congress. By the way, PEN Trieste is among the supporting Centres.
(I’m not joking affirming that the 6 “internationally
recognized principles” endorsed by PEN International are in substance very similar
to what my grandmother and my mother taught me when I was a boy…).
Then we went to the Opening Ceremony at Ivan Franko National
University, with a speech of Philippe Sands.
Afterwards, there was a poetry reading in the LEM
Station – a reconditioned shed – with a buffet.
TUESDAY 19
The
Main Assembly did begin today and started dedicating the Empty Chair #1 to Liu
Xiao-Bo - and to his wife Liu Xia.
The
proposed change to the Charter of PEN International was approved with a very
large majority. There were many interventions about it.
Followed
the Reports of the President, the International Secretary, the International
Treasurer, the Board and the Executive Director, as well as the Reports of the
Chairs of the standing Committees.
It
is not possible to go into details here, but something you may like to know is
that the Centenary of PEN International in 2021 will be almost surely hosted in
Oxford.
The
dues Centres pay to PEN International not having had any increase for the last ten
years, it was decided with a majority vote to increase them by 15% starting
from 2018.
Much
to my regret, the New Voices Award is momentarily suspended.
The
session ended with a Panel about Women & Publishing, with many interventions.
Always
at the LEM Station, there was an homage to Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian writer and
filmmaker serving 20 years in Russia on terrorism charges. Being this location
quite noisy, I chose to have a quiet dinner downtown.
WEDNESDAY
29
The
Empty Chairs #2 and #3 were respectively Razan Zaitooneh and Tal Al-Mallouhi,
two women activists in Syria.
The
morning was dedicated to elections, so we heard the presentations of
- · Jarkko Tontti (Finnish PEN) for a second mandate as International Treasurer
- · Teresa Cadete (Portugal PEN) and Margie Orford (South Africa PEN) for a second mandate, Iman Humaydan (Lebanon PEN), Ola Larsmo (Swedish PEN), and Philip Slayton (Canadian PEN) for the first time as Members of the Board
- · Simona Škrabec (Catalan PEN) for a second mandate as Chair of the TLRC as recommended by the TLRC itself
- · Eric Lax (USA West PEN) and Judith Rodriguez (Melbourne PEN) as International Vice President
Jarkko
Tontti, Simona Škrabec and Margie Orford were confirmed, Iman Humaydan was
elected to the Board, and both Eric Lax and Judith Rodriguez were elected
International Vice Presidents in the category “for services to PEN
International”.
Four
new Centres were presented to the Congress:
- · Cuba – representative Reinaldo Montero, presented by Alicia Quiñones
- · Gambia – whose representative Musa Sheriff could not be present, presented by Mohamed Sheriff
- · South India – representative Kavitha Muralidharan, presented by Salil Tripathi
- · St. Petersburg, representative Elena Chizova, presented by Eugene Schoulgin
After
discussion, the Congress approved the new Centres, which were welcomed in the
Congress room.
The
OSCE Representative Philippe Désir made a speech on Freedom of the Media.
The
first part of the afternoon was dedicated to public Panels on
- · USA (America’s Reckoning – Threats to the First Amendment),
- · China (China’s Shame – How a Poet Exposed the Soul of the Party)
- · Russia (Putin Power Play – The Decline of Freedom of Expression in Russia)
held
in the Ivan Franko National University Main Hall.
Then
we went to the Potocki Palace for some poetics events.
THURSDAY
21
The
Empty Chair #4 was Pavel Šharamet, a Belorusian-born Russian journalist who died in a car
explosion in Kiev.
The
morning was mainly dedicated to the approval of many resolutions proposed by
Centres about different issues. It has been observed that too many resolutions
are presented as “in-session” without a real need for an urgent discussion.
The
first one to be approved was the Women’s Manifesto, unanimously. It forms now
part of a body of Manifestos and/or fundamental, general resolutions shaping
all PEN International activity.
All
the resolutions were approved unanimously or with a very large majority. The
Resolution on Hate Speech presented by the WfPC, in consideration of the
importance of the subject, was considered a good draft for a Manifesto to be
discussed and finalized by a specific commission ad hoc.
Ench
Meyomesse gave a speech about his personal experience in relation with the Make
Space campaign, and was followed by a report of Elisabeth Dvyik of ICORN.
The
following item being the organization of Congresses, Xabier Castro Martinez of
Galician PEN spoke of Ourense Congress.
Margie
Orford reported about the first steps of the organization of the Centenary and
of the contacts with Oxford University. All Centres will be asked to contribute
with documentation of their specific history to an initiative aiming at writing
our whole history throughout these last 100 years.
Ganesh
Devy of the new South India PEN gave a hearty speech about their will to host
the Congress in 2018 near Mumbai. It seems a very promising Congress – and incidentally
it coincides with the 100th anniversary of Mahatma’s Gandhi death.
For many Centres it will be not exactly barycentric, but that happens for every
Congress.
And
off we go to the closing ceremony, in the Organ Hall, a fantastic ex-church
with a spectacular organ and a little lady who played it (apparently) without
any effort like it was the vertical piano of my grandmother…
Andrei
Kurkov leaded the show like this was his ordinary job, with the opportune
speeches by Jennifer, Mykola Riabchuk, Carles Torner and all the due thanks and
applauses to everybody who helped throughout the Congress.
We
were supposed to join a Farewell party in a location outside the centre of Lviv
that had some characteristics of a disco and I decided to call it a day and
have dinner in town.
FRIDAY
22
In
the morning we had the first batch of the Board’s retreat in Ivan Franko house –
very interesting, but actually too cold. It rained all the afternoon and I
decided to have dinner in a restaurant called Wiener Kaffeehaus, founded in
1829 (where else?). In that Kaffeehaus I wrote the small poem you will find below
Light
rain
on
a melancholy Leopolis
re-thinking
its past
between
imperial experiences
and
small glories
in
the middle of a chessboard
always
more complicated
and
yet always the same
in
the essence
of
national hates.
Lviv,
September 22, 2017
Saturday
23
A
rainy day. Some people did catch a cold yesterday, so the second batch of the
Board Retreat was consummated at the Dnister Hotel, the venue of the Congress,
by the way.
Some
Board members took a small tour on a town I now know as my own pockets. We had
a dinner together in a strange place a bit outside the centre, called “Kumpel”
(also in this case it’s a German word, whose meaning is something between a
friend, a chap you work with and a companion of some queer enterprise…). In fact, it was a nice evening in a typical
environment, a bit too noisy for chatting.
Sunday
24
All
the possible gods being praised, my flight took off at 13.15 and after some
hours I was home. All in all, a good Congress.
