{"id":535425,"date":"2010-04-20T12:32:25","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T16:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=43817"},"modified":"2010-04-20T12:32:25","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T16:32:25","slug":"the-living-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/535425","title":{"rendered":"The Living Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the Iran-Iraq War, Shahriar Mandanipour<\/a> wrote short stories under fire. He would compose one line at a time between exploding mortar rounds.<\/p>\n

Back in Tehran after the war, Mandanipour started editing Thursday Evening, a literary journal. He came under fire again, this time from his own government. Censors combed through the essays and poems slated for publication. They feared that one might be a mortar round of another kind that scattered new ideas like shrapnel.<\/p>\n

The journal was banned years ago, after surviving censors for eight-and-a-half years, and Mandanipour, now an acclaimed novelist, is an associate in Harvard\u2019s Department of English<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thursday Evening came briefly to life again last week (April 14) during \u201cThe Living Magazine,\u201d a literary event that featured writing from banned or at-risk publications in Iran, China, and Burma.<\/p>\n

Even Cambridge audiences, like the one 100-strong in the auditorium at Sackler Museum<\/a>, need reminding: In many countries in the thrall of oppressive regimes, writing is still a dangerous pursuit.<\/p>\n

Reading their work were writers who had once suffered arrest and imprisonment. One of them, Chinese poet Bei Ling<\/a>, edited the literary magazine Tendency. In 2000, print copies were seized by the Beijing Office of Public Security, and Ling was arrested.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was guilty of a crime that no civilized country would count as a criminal act,\u201d he said, \u201cthe illegal publication of a literary journal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ling paraphrased what writer Susan Sontag wrote about the incident, \u201cthat my crime should be called: bringing ideas to China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mandanipour avoided arrest but lived in fear for his life, he said, and \u201cfear for my unwritten stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

During those postwar days, editors, writers, and even translators were being killed for their creative work. \u201cGloom and fear seeped into our lives,\u201d said Mandanipour, author of the 2009 novel \u201cCensoring an Iranian Love Story.\u201d \u201cNo one could guess who the next person would be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other glimpses of gloom and fear came up in \u201cThe Living Magazine,\u201d which was conceived by Jane Unrue<\/a>, who teaches in the Harvard College Writing Program<\/a> and who is a member of the Harvard chapter of the Scholars at Risk<\/a> Committee. \u201cThe Living Magazine\u201d is not bound or numbered or even a virtual publication, she said. It is a \u201cdream space\u201d that imagines worldwide freedom for writers.<\/p>\n

Avant-garde poet Meng Lang, a veteran of China\u2019s underground scene since the late \u201970s, put literary print magazines in the tradition of the \u201clittle magazines\u201d of the 1920s and beyond \u2014 as well as in the tradition of furtive samizdat<\/em> literature in the Soviet Union\u2019s Iron Curtain.<\/p>\n

China these days, he said, is no longer the Bamboo Curtain, but a \u201cSilk Curtain \u2026 hiding China\u2019s last brazenness, or cowardice, from the powerful winds of freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is joined now by pressures from the \u201cGold Curtain,\u201d the race for profits not only in China but around the world.<\/p>\n

Lang\u2019s own beleaguered publications started with the 60-copy MN01 in 1981. Now he is managing editor of the online literary journal Freedom to Write. \u201cI will not give up,\u201d said Lang. \u201cWe are the nurturers and protectors of living magazines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Living Magazine\u201d was the second annual literary event in Harvard\u2019s Visiting Writers Series, inaugurated by Unrue last year. It drew back the curtain on poems and essays that were heartfelt and brilliant, with many of them the work of imprisoned authors.<\/p>\n

\u201cHelp keep these voices heard,\u201d said novelist and editor Nicholas Jose<\/a>, visiting chair of Australian studies at Harvard. He was one of the readers \u2014 many of them Harvard undergraduates \u2014 who delivered passages from the imprisoned, the exiled, and the dead.<\/p>\n

Jose read the words of Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights activist in prison for 12 more years. He was a signatory to Charter 08, a 2008 manifesto marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/a> adopted by the United Nations. Xiaobo only twice spoke in a public forum in his native country, said Jose, \u201cand both of those times have been in court.\u201d His crimes, he added, were \u201cboth crimes of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jose read from one of the court statements. \u201cI have no enemies and no hated,\u201d said Xiaobo. \u201cFor hatred is corrosive of a person\u2019s wisdom and conscience. The mentality of enmity can poison a nation\u2019s spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facing prison, the writer remained full of optimism that China would one day embrace human rights and the rule of law. \u201cI hope,\u201d said Xiaobo, \u201cto be the last victim of China\u2019s endless literary inquisition.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a reading from the Burmese poet Yekkha, arrested for his participation in the 1988 democracy movement. He spent 20 years in prison. A fragment, read by Ben Biran \u201913, says:<\/p>\n

I hear the bells from the churches<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t see those<\/em><\/p>\n

They don\u2019t see me. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Young-jun Lee, a fellow at Harvard\u2019s Korea Institute, read from the work of two poets, one from the south and the other from the north. Both felt the sting of a divided country.<\/p>\n

North Korean poet O Yong-jae is known for \u201cOh, My Mother,\u201d written in 1990 when he heard his mother was still alive in South Korea \u2014 40 years after leaving her during the Korean War. \u201cA sun suddenly rises in the middle of a black night,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

In South Korea, the ironic \u201cLong Live Kim Il Sung\u201d could not be published during the lifetime of poet Kim Suyong (1921-1968), a writer so direct about advocating for a free literature that even some of his friends regarded him as dangerous.<\/p>\n

Former Russian journalist Maria Yulikova provided a reminder that members of the press can face the same dangers as poets and novelists for simply writing truths in another way. \u201cYou might want to use your pen name,\u201d she said of journalists in her native Russia, \u201cjust to be safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rumbidzai Mushavi \u201912 read snippets from Chenjerai Hove<\/a>\u2019s \u201cLetter to Mother,\u201d a voice that wove through the event three times.<\/p>\n

Driven from his native Zimbabwe by death threats, Hove, who is a poet, essayist, novelist, and dramatist,\u00a0 has been in exile since 2001.<\/p>\n

It was a reminder that imprisonment can also mean having to live away from home. He wrote, \u201cEvery sunset reminds me: I am in another land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mandanipour, who is also a visiting writer at Boston College, spoke of exile\u2019s pain too. \u201cYou shut the doors and windows of your house to others,\u201d he said. \u201cYou get angry, and anger keeps you on your feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hove cut to the heart of the matter for oppressed writers, struggling in exile or at home. He told his illiterate mother, \u201cYou can\u2019t read, and I \u2014 oh, the hopelessness \u2014 I can\u2019t write.\u201d<\/p>\n

With hopelessness sometimes comes guilt. Ling recalled a trip to the printer in 2000, on a mission to make two deletions from his magazine: the name of a Tiananmen Square activist and the word \u201canti-communist.\u201d (He was arrested anyway.) \u201cI was committing an act of self-censorship,\u201d said Ling, \u201cjust as all editors and writers in China still do today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mandanipour recalled many nights of pacing at his office, wondering which voice to cut out of Thursday Evening.<\/p>\n

On one hand, he said, there was his personal style as a literary editor: \u201cMy role was never to change or delete a single word in a text.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, he ended up snipping out some controversial writers. \u201cI sometimes think I should have published that good poem or story,\u201d said Mandanipour, \u201cand not publishing them remains a shame in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the writers and editors speaking at \u201cThe Living Magazine,\u201d only one worked for a publication still afloat: Burmese writer and Radcliffe Fellow Ma Thida<\/a>, editor of Teen <\/em>magazine in Rangoon. None of the contents are explicitly political.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to lead the next generation,\u201d said Thida of her audience, who live largely outside the grasp of the Internet. \u201cI just want to deal with them, to hear their voices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voices were the point of the session, many of them little-known, all of them strained through pain and guilt. But the dream survives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWaiting for the daytime sun \u2026 I sing and play a deep melody in these bright years,\u201d read Chinese poet Ar Zhong from his \u201cDarkness, the Theme of my Life.\u201d \u201cMorning appears in my dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ling read from his poem \u201cFor Dreams to Linger, and for Time,\u201d a paean to the power that print still has in countries where censors rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cWishes,\u201d one line reads, \u201care pressed into a paper surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

Providing support for \u201cThe Living Magazine\u201d were the Humanities Center at Harvard<\/a>, the Harvard College Writing Program, the Office of Undergraduate Education<\/a>, and the Undergraduate Council<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the Iran-Iraq War, Shahriar Mandanipour wrote short stories under fire. He would compose one line at a time between exploding mortar rounds. Back in Tehran after the war, Mandanipour started editing Thursday Evening, a literary journal. He came under fire again, this time from his own government. Censors combed through the essays and poems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}