Mircea Cărtărescu said in a recent interview with a Spanish media outlet that “a writer must be involved in public life because they are a role model for people.” There is no irony in his voice. It is one of those phrases uttered with European solemnity, as if we still lived in times when the pen had the power to guide nations.
However, what we hear most loudly is the hoarse laughter of history. Because if writers are “role models for people,” what kind of people are they modeling? The 20th century—that theme park of political delirium—is full of authors who not only involved themselves in public life, but did so with the blind enthusiasm of those who confuse a utopia with a five-year plan.
Let us remember, for sport: Sartre, who justified the Soviet gulags as if they were Marxist spiritual retreats. Heidegger, the philosopher who found no contradiction between Nazism and the metaphysics of Being. Neruda, who dedicated verses to Stalin with more tenderness than to his lovers. Brecht, willing to sing the praises of revolution while others piled up the corpses. Pound, fan of Mussolini and author of fascist pamphlets. Hamsun, who gave his Nobel Prize to Goebbels as if it were a bouquet of flowers. Diego Rivera, devoted to Stalin even after the Gulag.
And let’s not forget the musicians, that noble caste of geniuses with perfect pitch and relative political judgment: Karajan, member of the Nazi party and favorite conductor of the Third Reich. Shostakovich, trapped in a game of fake applause. Prokofiev, who ended up composing for Stalin as if it were a forced tourism campaign. Carl Orff, whose Carmina Burana was played more at official events than at concerts.
And, of course, the eastern wing of revolutionary enthusiasm: Godard, who found in Mao a redemptive figure as useful as he was filmable. Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, who traveled to China to find revolutionary purity while millions starved to death. Alain Badiou, who justified the Cultural Revolution as a necessary “productive disorder.”
And Cuba: the usual case, the favorite of well-edited revolutions. García Márquez, a personal friend of Fidel, always willing to look the other way when the regime imprisoned writers and censored books. Cortázar, who justified Castro’s excesses while signing statements that today smell like wet paper. Harold Pinter, who described Cuba as “an inspiration,” as if political prisons were a mere detail. Nicolás Guillén, who became the regime’s official poet with the docility of someone who moves from verse to slogan. And Silvio Rodríguez, who tuned his guitar to the exact tone of the party, singing utopias while the state imprisoned dissidents.
The list goes on. It parades with ethical intonation and selective hindsight, as if the entire 20th century had been a comedy of errors in which no one knew what they were signing.
Of course, it should be acknowledged that there are exceptions. Some writers did not kneel before any central committee or allow themselves to be seduced by the glitz of propaganda. Camus, who made his own people uncomfortable. Orwell, who saw totalitarianism for what it was. Havel, who went from writing plays to presiding over a country without disguising himself as a savior. And, in the case of Cuba, Reinaldo Arenas, who wrote against the dictatorship from exile and whose life was a long footnote to freedom, written with rage, desire, and delirium. There were those who did. Just as there are lighthouses amid shipwrecks, even if they cannot save the ship.
But let’s get back to Cărtărescu. When he says that “the writer must say what he thinks and express what, in his opinion, is good or bad for his own country,” one does not know whether one is listening to a novelist or a writer with ambitions to be an oracle. (Plato would have applauded from the stands, just before banning poetry.) Because the history of intellectuals opining on what is good for their country is, more often than we care to remember, the history of how nightmares are constructed with good syntax and moral superiority.
“I have tried to show people the right direction, which is, in my opinion, the direction towards the West, towards Europe,” he says, as if writing novels were a certificate of geopolitical vision.
Of course, Cărtărescu—like any citizen, taxi driver, or brother-in-law at the dinner table—is fully entitled to express his opinion on the fate of his country, Europe, and the Western soul. That goes without saying. Nor am I trying to cast any suspicious shadows on him. But at this point, pretending that literature has a moral compass is like asking a symphony to stop a war. History has buried enough manifestos and indignant signatures to know that the influence of writers on public life tends to range from anecdotal to ornamental. What remains is a graveyard of good intentions in elegant typeface. There is something almost touching about this impulse of the guild to proclaim itself the conscience of humanity. If literary history has shown us anything, it is that writers need no help to make mistakes with style…
Summary. I am not questioning anyone’s rights here, least of all the right to express oneself—from ideological tantrums to occasional revelations—but rather the outdated superstition that a writer is something more than a maker of phrases. When they are nothing more and nothing less than someone whom language, from time to time, barely makes room for in bed.
Should the fact that certain intellectuals now talk about democracy inspire confidence? I prefer a cautious smile. And that they ask to be seen as role models… that belongs to the realm of fantasy: the most dangerous of all, the one that is written believing it to be the truth.
