Combat Literature: When attacking power and pursuing freedom can cost you your life

Barcelona"Freedom consists in only one thing: being masters of one's own life," wrote Plato in the 4th century BC. The Greek philosopher knew what he was talking about, because his teacher, Socrates (Athens, 470 BC-399 BC), had paid a high price for refusing to keep silent about his convictions: a court forced him to poison himself with hemlock, accused of corrupting young people both for his atheism and for political reasons. The philosopher's trial was so notorious that Plato wanted to leave a written record of it. Apology of Socrates (Bernat Metge Foundation, 1924; trans. Joan Crexells). This is one of the founding texts of classical Greece that has contributed to consolidating one of the essential impulses of part of the literary and philosophical tradition: the denunciation of injustice, the criticism of power and the yearning for freedom, whether personal or collective.

That dialogue of Plato, written shortly before the year 390 BC, was preceded by the work of another contemporary of Socrates, the playwright Aristophanes (Athens, 445-385 BC). Specializing in writing comedies, he shook the foundations of Greek civilization from the beginning of his career. With his second play, the lost The Babylonians (426 BC), outraged the aristocrat and general Cleon, who tried to prosecute him because he "shamed the city in front of foreigners." The playwright not only did not tone down his opposition to power in his subsequent plays, but he dared to ridicule Cleon The knights (424 BC; in Catalan by the Bernat Metge Foundation, 1970; translated by Manuel Balasch), where he ends up selling donkey and dog sausages.

Finding oneself in the midst of adversity

From Ovid's immorality to Seneca's opposition to slavery

Combat literature offered at least two prominent examples during the Roman Empire. The metamorphoses It was theThe art of falling in love (2 AD; Adesiara, 2011; trans. by Jaume Juan Castelló), an elegiac and didactic work that aims to teach how to seduce. In it, Ovid defended adultery at a time when this practice was considered an attack on the moral legislation of the empire.

Not long after, the emperor Nero accused the philosopher Seneca (Cordoba, 5 BC-Rome, 65 AD) of being involved in the Pisó conspiracy against him. Sentenced to death, the author of Letters in Lucili (64 AD; Fundació Bernat Metge, 1928; trans. by Carles Cardó) did not wait for the punishment to be carried out; he cut his wrists. Like a good Stoic, Seneca had written: "When you find yourself in the midst of adversity, it is too late to act with caution."

Give up all hope

The first feminist outcry came at the beginning of the 15th century

One of the great poems of universal literature, the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Florence, 1265-Ravenna, 1321), grew up while the author was in exile. Published in 1320, the writer reflects on justice, redemption and free will once he had charged against the political and religious power of the time that had condemned him to never again set foot in the city where he grew up and lived until the Black Guelphs drove it away. "Let all hope be left to those who have entered!" is the message that can be read at the entrance to Hell in the Catalan version of Josep Maria de Sagarra (1947-1951; republished by Quaderns Crema in 2019). Christine de Pizan (1364-1431) published one of the first feminist treatises in history, The city of ladies (1405; in Catalan, in Cal Carré, 2022; translation by Mercè Otero). Standing up to the prevailing misogyny, she recreates a space only for "illustrious women of good renown," from brave rulers to biblical or mythological figures worthy of admiration. Despite coming from a good family and having married the notary of Charles V of France, Christine de Pizan was widowed very young and raised her three children, her mother, and a niece without any help. In addition to the transformative content of The city of ladies, the author's true revolution was becoming the first professional female writer in France: she lived for decades from her prolific literary creation.

The danger of confronting the king or the Church

The cases of Thomas More, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Giordano Bruno

Although in the case of Ramon Llull (Palma, 1232-Tunis, 1316), the first exponent of Catalan literature, whose fierce defense of Christianity put his life in danger on several occasions, raising his voice against the Church has had a very long list of authors harmed throughout history. In Thomas More (London, 1478-1535), English jurist, writer and statesman, imagine a perfect society in Utopia (1516) did not spare him from being condemned to death. The book, available in Catalan from Ela Geminada (2022; trans. by Juan Manuel del Pozo), imagined an island where private property and money did not exist, houses had no locks, and men and women performed the same tasks. King Henry VIII had him tried for opposing the separation between the Anglican and Catholic churches. Before being beheaded, he addressed those present with these words: "I will die a good servant of the king, but God will always pass him by."

In the same 16th century, Erasmus of Rotterdam (Rotterdam, 1466-Basel, 1536) stood up to the educational, political and religious institutions of the time through works such as Adagis (1500; the anthology is in Catalan I can't not talk In Ela Geminata; "Laughing at everything is characteristic of fools, but laughing at nothing is characteristic of idiots," he claimed, and was persecuted by both Catholics and Protestants. Erasmus dared to respond.

A philosopher and astronomer who ended up burned at the stake for blasphemy and heresy was Giordano Bruno (Nola, 1548-Rome, 1600). The Ash Wednesday Dinner (1584; Catalan edition in Edicions de 1984, 2014; trans. Anna Casassas) is one of his most important treatises, where he made two highly controversial statements at the time: that the Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun—and not the other way around—and that, given that all bodies are alive, there is nothing. From the 19th century onwards, Bruno's ideas were re-promoted by anarchist figures such as Mikhail Bakunin and Emma Goldman.

The price of writing what you think

From Jonathan Swift, the king of satire, to the persecution of many Russian authors during communism

Already in the Age of Enlightenment, authors such as Voltaire (Paris, 1694-1778) fought religious fanaticism and confronted power. His ideas landed him in prison and forced him into exile. "I don't agree with what you say, but I would fight so you could say it," he claimed. In Jonathan Swift (Dublin, 1667-1745), another 18th-century classic, it was his gift for satire that eventually landed him in Ireland. From there he wrote Gulliver's Travels (1726; Catalan edition in Adesiara, 2015; translation by Victoria Gual), where he exposes, in the key of fantastic allegory, all the political disappointments experienced in England: in London he had to publish the novel anonymously.

In the 19th century, the young and promising Russian writer Fyodor M. Dostoevsky (Moscow, 1821-Saint Petersburg, 1881) was nearly shot for having been part of a group of intellectuals with utopian ideas. The experience of spending a few years in prison, narrated in the harrowing way Notes from the House of the Dead (1862; Catalan edition in Adesiara; translation by Jaume Creus), ended up leading him to defend salvation through Christianity, as he sets out in Crime and Punishment (1866; Catalan edition in La Casa dels Clàssics; translation by Miquel Cabal Guarro). Later, communism would persecute numerous authors due to the ideas they conveyed in their literature: there are poets like Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetàieva and Anna Akhmatova and storytellers like Varlam Shalamov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsin, Vassili Grossman and Mikhail Bulgakov. The work of many of them had to circulate clandestinely for decades in Soviet Russia. "And whoever starts a conversation / collides with the shadow of the man in the Kremlin," Mandelstam wrote in one of his poems written in exile.

Commitment and harassment

"Language can be a kind of knife," says Salman Rushdie

"A novelist who avoids the most important public events of his time is by definition someone who wastes his time or is short of hooligans," he opined. George Orwell (Motihari, 1903-London, 1950), which with The Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) –both in Catalan, in La Magrana, translated by Albert Nolla– became a standard-bearer of committed literature and a scourge of authoritarian regimes. During the 20th century, numerous authors denounced discrimination in their books: novelists such as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker railed against racism; essayists such as Frantz Fanon, Eduardo Galeano, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Edward Said analyzed colonialism, and novelists such as Jamaica Kincaid, Maryse Condé, Chinua Achebe and Abdulrazak Gurnah They recreated him through powerful fictions, preceded by the Joseph Conrad ofHeart of Darkness (1899). Catalan literature was also harshly repressed during the long Franco regime. Authors such as Salvador Espriu They managed to publish very critical books, but they were written in code to avoid censorship, such as The bull's skin (1960). Others, like the first version ofUncertain glory, of Joan Sales –from 1956–, appeared mutilated. Act of violence, by Manuel de Pedrolo, dated 1953 but unpublished until 1997.

Social injustice motivated many of Bertolt Brecht's poems and plays – who had to go into exile in 1933, shortly after the National Socialists organized a public burning of his books – The Grape of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (1939; available in Catalan in Edicions 62, 1993; trans. by Mercè López Arnabat). Feminism has been the workhorse of authors such as Doris Lessing, Annie Ernaux, Maya Angelou and Nawal el SaadawiThe author was imprisoned by the Egyptian government shortly after publishing Woman at ground zero (1977, in Catalan by Angle editorial, 2017; trans. Anna Turró) and was later persecuted by radical Islam.

Salman Rushdie had to live in hiding for years because ofThe Satanic Verses (1988), a novel inspired by the life of the Prophet Muhammad against whom the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa. Decades later, when he had already narrated the persecution of the impressive Joseph Anton (2012), Rushdie was stabbed several times before giving a lecture. It was the summer of 2022. Despite suffering several after-effects from the attack, including the loss of vision in one eye, Rushdie survived to leave a witness to Knife (2024). "Language can be a kind of knife, if what is cut is the truth," he writes.