György Konrád, honorary chairman of the forum, opened the gathering with a reading of his essay on the relationship between fiction and reality, the theme of the event. Konrád began by presenting the two prevalent views regarding reality and the autobiographical novel – one holding that such books are by nature true, the other that they are pure constructions, as all work of prose is fiction – and engaged with the question of truth in autobiography.

 

Eszter Babarczy, the moderator of the morning session of the plenary roundtable discussion, began the discussion by posing a question to the participants: “Whose life would you write about?” Adriana Babeti (Romanian writer and lecturer at the Western Univeristy of Timisoara) argued that the title of the forum itself provides an answer to the question. To Babeti, memory is the crucial “in between” of fiction and reality. More precisely, memory in one of its forms is fiction, while in the other, it is reality. All three participants agreed that it is difficult to separate those writers who only write about themselves and those who are sensitive to social issues. In any case, the books that garner the most excitement in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Romania are those which combine both fictional and realistic elements. Babeti addressed this phenomenon in the context of the current divisions in Romanian literature. Two major schools of literary thought exist in Romania: on the one hand, the modernists reject the idea of great works of art and metaphysical perspectives. On the other, a group of writers nostalgic for the 19th-century novel write large-scale social tableaus. The real value, argues Babeti, comes in bridging these two approaches.

 

Babeti called attention to a noteworthy finding from her comparative literary studies: Central European literary texts bear great resemblance to each other from a technical standpoint. Barring a few exceptions, the younger generation is not interested in the grand, Balzacian novel. Instead, their influences come from overseas, and in a surprising fashion: today’s Central European writers learned their craft in American creative writing courses. At the same time, a number of American authors have achieved great success and garnered tremendous reputations by imitating the styles of their Central European colleagues on the one hand, while simultaneously writing in a long-winded narrative style. (Here we think of Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer, among others.)

 

Following the opening questions, each speaker gave a short talk dealing with the forum’s theme. Teodora Dimova (Bulgarian playwright and novelist – picture) likened the beginning of a writing project to the sensation of love at first sight. Dimova spoke on the relationship between fiction and reality in the case of her novel Mothers (2004), an international success that was awarded the Razvitie Prize in literature, as well as the Austrian KulturKontakt prize in 2004, and was named the best novel from Eastern Europe at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2006. According to Dimova, in Bulgaria’s current troubled climate, writers cannot ignore social issues. For example, childhood agression, which has reached enormous proportions in the country, is both an individual and a social problem. Dimova mentioned the 2004 case of two fourteen year-old girls who killed one of their classmates as emblematic of the current troubles. She initially wanted to formulate a response to this problem, and had no idea that a novel would develop from her investigations. Dimova insists that it is not possible to blame the girls for the crime; both were born in 1990, the year the Communist regime gave way. The girls are members of a transitional generation who grew up in the company of troubled and increasingly disillusioned adults, and in an evermore depressing and suffocating environment. “We abandoned these children,” said Dimova. “We neglected to involve ourselves in their lives, we failed to show them love. They became vulnerable. We sold them out as we harbored our own bitterness. We never taught them about joy, goodness, laughter... the truth is that we didn’t raise them to be free. Communism is still alive; we aren’t determined or enthusiastic as a people. Everyone still carries the old energies. We were the ones to make these girls this way.” The audience – consisting primarily of Central Europeans – greeted Dimova’s words with resounding applause.

 

Joanna Derdowska (Czech sociologist, literary translator and journalist) structured her talk around variations on the saying, “Everywhere is good, but home is best.” She began with a Polish and Czech advertisement that read: “Everywhere’s good, but beer – not home – is best.” The beer advertised here, Derdowska noted, is not of a high quality. Therefore, the message can be interpreted as: the consumer can find joy everywhere, but when he returns home, he must drink swill. Home is where one always wishes to return, although it may often be unpleasant. Derdowska quoted Kundera’s conception of Central Europe in the 1980s: “the stage for the tragedies of small nations, suffocated by the Soviet Union.” While a certain mythical belief surrounds this definition, many find themselves wondering whether Central Europe exists at all. The events of the past few decades have proven that Central Europe is indeed a reality. At stake are small countries and languages, which Kundera insisted need to receive the same amount of attention as their larger counterparts. Derdowska noted that Kundera undermined this image of utopia when he began to write in French. (“Everywhere is good, but home is very small.”) The imaginative world of the novel guarantees the balance between fiction and reality. (“Everywhere is good, but home is the novel I’m reading.”) At the same time, the novel cannot remove itself from reality as far as readers might wish. (“Everywhere is good, but home is where you kick off your shoes and put on your slippers.”) While there is no doubt that the myths of the past are still with us, and our “post-colonial” pessimism also has a worldwide reputation, the original version remains the best: “Everywhere is good, but home is best.”

 

Adriana Babeti read several quotes from Danilo Kiš’ “Advice to a Young Novelist” to demonstrate that not only the literature of Central Europe, but also the very notion of “Central Europeanness” is a dilemma. A Central European recognizes himself upon hearing Kiš’ advice: “believe that the language in which you write is the best in the world, because you have no other / know that the language in which you write is the world’s worst, but you know no other way.” “You should have an opinion about everything / never express your opinion about anything.” “Be aware that you can trust nothing you see with your eyes – fiction is reality.” “Fiction is the sibling of lies – that is to say, it is dangerous.” “Anyone who says that what happened in Kolima was different from Auschwitz should be sent to hell.”

 

(The forum took place at the Central European University in Budapest on 26 September, 2008.)