Author: Anna Pytlowany. Source: www.dziennik.com. Date of publication: 2002.

Since 11 September every meeting about literature, music, or painting inevitably comes down to politics — Ryszard Kapuściński says with irritation, hearing a question about the effects of globalisation.

— What an astonishing dominance! Recently, over four months, I was in the USA, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. Every time, after a few minutes, the problem of the contemporary world and politics appeared. These questions turn everyone into a crowd that sits quietly and listens: will there be a war or not? Can we really not talk about anything else?

— And what do you write about?! You talk as if we had gone mad — retorts the moderator, Jacek Żakowski.

On a cold November evening the small hall of Warsaw’s Czytelnik publishing house is packed to the rafters. Cameras, microphones, photojournalists, and above all a crowd of admirers of the most famous Polish writer and reporter. The occasion is the launch of the fifth part of Lapidarium.

— Today it is impossible to write a synthetic book about the world — the dynamics and pace of change are too great — says Ryszard Kapuściński. — We cannot take it all in; our imagination was shaped for a small dimension, not a global world. In the second half of the twentieth century an electronic revolution took place abruptly, which overturned the history of the world. It demolished two pillars on which imagination rested: time and space. Now in a single second one can be in contact with the whole world. So two strategies have appeared: the first is the attempt to encompass this world, a new way of defining it — but the class of people who think globally is small. The second strategy is hiding in corners, in niches, in the circle of family, acquaintances, work; an attempt not to see the other world. These are people unformed for their own era. In literature we have two types of texts: non-fiction, e.g. family histories, and a second type closer to Americans: the attempt to synthesise, to present a coherent image of reality. Our language, our style is not suited to that, but if we do not try — we become defenceless, marginalised, and the world incomprehensible. The essence of the world in which we live and will live is a sharp, relentless dynamic of selection — generous to those who join in, but mercilessly rejecting those who do not participate.

The rescue for writing today is the poetics of the fragment. Seeing the world in fragments is the foundation of Lapidarium. We as poachers; we poach various quarry: a quotation, a reflection. Lapidarium means fragment; in every larger museum there is a courtyard with the remnants of ancient sculptures that cannot be displayed in showcases: a hand, a piece of a sandal. My Lapidarium consists of fragments that did not grow. And many quotations — because in the contemporary world the quotation is an important literary genre. The enormous production of the printed word, the flooding with book production — these are a great affliction. Television, radio, the media in general — they were supposed to finish off literature. Meanwhile literature will finish itself off, because it will grow so enormous that no one will be able to follow it, no one will be able to say what is good. But sometimes in 400 pages of tedium there is a flash, a brilliant thought. To extract it, to illuminate it — that is to give it new life. To extract it lest it perish — that too is creative work.

So first I write in notebooks, then I transcribe, transcribe, cut, paste… The selection is substantial. In addition, translators into other languages also choose, rejecting fragments about Polish reality that they do not understand and that would require too many footnotes and explanations.

— Does anything of what you write gain weight, new value, over time?

— I tend to forget. That is my type of mentality.

— But you do not write the same thing twice?

— I don’t remember. Recently in Mexico television made a selection of my texts, which were shown on screen. Whose quotation is that? I asked. That’s you! — And that one? Then they were already answering: Octavio Paz, Petrarch. One thinks about what is ahead, what one has yet to write — what is past is unimportant.

— Has the traditional way of describing the world been exhausted? Does the reader expect a global approach?

— Practising classical reportage: going, talking, meeting — that is very close to me. Heban is conceived as a trilogy: Africa, Latin America, Asia. Reflections are the second strand; they are noted aside, because there is no place for them in that kind of book. The impossibility of describing the world — that is my personal philosophy.

— What recording method do you use? Dictaphone, computer, or handwriting?

— Always by hand, little transcribing, because I do the editing in my head before writing; sentences are already practically ready, I rarely change anything. That is why I write slowly. A very good day is a page and a half. In laborious writing there is no need for technology; a pencil and a notebook, or even the clear margin of a newspaper, suffice. Everything else would be a waste of money and electricity.

— The French traveller Pierre Loti, asked what he thought of some book, replied: “I don’t read books, I write them.” And you?

— I read a great deal. In fact the most pleasant thing in writing is reading others. Today every topic has become so overgrown with literature that acquainting oneself with all of it has become impossible. But one needs to know it more or less. Herodotus, for instance [the subject of his next planned book]: for decades people have written on the subject, so natural humility requires at least touching on it, getting oriented in that enormity. If one takes writing seriously, one realises that one is at the end. Because writing is a collective work. Today signing a book with one’s name and surname is an excess. There is no longer a boundary between what was read; our vision is unconsciously shaped by dozens of authors. The same is true of music and painting — these are increasingly collective works.

— And when you stand before a shelf on Herodotus and see 1869 items, do you not ask yourself: what am I doing?!

— Yes, but writing and all creation is a polemic with what exists. When it seems to us that we are ready to look a fraction differently, even half a degree, we can try to enrich the image. Every generation retranslates Herodotus anew — and completely different books emerge from it.

— How do you evaluate the role of the Internet and the possibility of instant reader responses through chat?

— I participated in one chat on Gazeta Wyborcza. It is fascinating, interesting — but secondary to what one has to write oneself. The reader chooses — buys the book or does not.

— And so, what about this globalisation?

— A dozen or more books on globalisation come out each month. The very concept is young; Robertson used it in 1985. It gained notoriety after the end of the Cold War. Most broadly it concerns the movement of financial capital. Another aspect is the privatisation of crime, because until now violence was a state monopoly (army, police, customs, arms trade). But globalisation is a bag into which everything is thrown. There is a positive and a negative aspect — one must specify what kind of globalisation one is asking about.

Noted by: Anna Pytlowany

source: kapuscinski.info