544
PAl'l...TISAN REVIEW
or she wishes to become. And in doing so the individual moves toward
his conception of the ideal. Therefore I think that this concept of
freedom will make for a bit of confusion in the newly-freed countries of
Europe. It's something to remember because ultimately the health of a
democratic society depends upon
YOIl,
the individual. It can't be left to
intellectuals any more than it can be left to advertisers. We're all involved
and personally responsible.
Question:
Mr. Brodsky, I read a newspaper article, the details of which I
offer for your refutation or confirmation, whichever is the case, reporting
that you were at a town called Struga, in what was formerly Yugoslavia,
last summer, at a poetry festival. I would like to know if you could give
us a characterization of some of the writing and the poetry coming out
of that part of the world.
Joseph Brodsky: I
was invited to the Struga festival, which was going
to be telecast all over Europe and at which I was to be given an award,
but I refused to attend, for one simple reason. I had suggested that the
festival be moved from Struga, a relatively out-of-the-way and peaceful
place, to Macedonia, Serbia, or Croatia, where the bloodshed was
occurring, in order to draw the world's attention to what was going on
there. But they didn't move the festival, and so I did not attend. There–
fore, [ really can't comment on what kind of poetry was read there.
QlIestioll:
I would like to know whether you as intellectuals feel threat–
ened by the revisionist history that is emergin g more and more, and
whether you feel you have to take a stand?
Ralph Ellison:
Revisionist history in this country has all owed us to face
some of the complexities of the past, especially things that occurred
during slavery. I grew up in a family that talked about my grandfather
having been a minor public official in South Carolina, during the
Reconstruction, but I was never able to find anything about that kind
of occurrence in some of the best of American histories. Now we are
telling some of the complexities of the truth . I've just received a reissued
edition of a book by W . E . B. Du Bois which caused a lot of
controversy when it was first published in 1935,
Black
Recollstrllctioll ,
and
it will cause a lot of controversy today for those concerned with Du
Bois's politics. The information, the data presented in that book is
important to all of us because it tells us how the South became the
South and how the North became what we are in the North. People
pass a statue of Samuel
J.
Tilden on Riverside Drive every day, and they
