MARTA HALPERT
451
vention, "Place and Destiny," was especially chosen for the city of
Dubrovnik, which only twenty days prior to the congress had been
shelled again by Serbian artillery. The Croatians did not want to miss the
chance of presenting the cause of their newly born country in its post–
Communist development: hundreds of opinion leaders from all over the
world could take the message home.
Konrad was in a dilemma. According to the PEN statutes, there was
no way out of having to hold the event in Croatia, so he officially trans–
ferred it from Dubrovnik to the safe and idyllic island of Hvar, and he
referred to it as a "literary encounter" rather than as a congress. Still, it
was naive to believe that a country at war would relinquish the opportu–
nity for propagandistic rhetoric. Konrad was not only misled by the orga–
nizers - who still provided that participants spend two days and one night
in Dubrovnik - but his own clumsy efforts to stay equidistant from all
parties involved in the Balkan war, in all his speeches, made him appear
very pale, to say the least. The hardships Konrad himself experienced for
many long years under the Communist regime in Hungary may be the
only excuse for his weak performance. Perhaps this was the only reaction
he could offer to an ill-timed and ill-placed event.
The Croatians did not mind at all. Hosting the congress gave them
the green light for all their nationalistic rhetoric. Croatia has had no time
yet - due to the war - to get acquainted with Western democratic rules,
and the first three days of the congress were crammed with formalities
that reminded everyone of former Communist times. Participants were
scheduled tightly between long feeding sessions and tiring addresses given
by
all
the dignitaries present. As soon as "Dichter und Denker" from
Slovenia, France, Scotland, or Switzerland tried to tum the lame
pro forma
panels into real and open discussions, the Croatian organizers stopped
them with the next sightseeing event on their agenda. At long last, when
unbearable frustration finally got hold of those participants who had come
here despite their skepticism, a small revolution erupted. Drago Jancar and
Boris A. Nowak, two Slovenian writers, finally demanded an open and
unlimited discussion. "This is becoming an historical farce," said Jancar,
and Nowak assented, "We did not come here for a vacation. The orga–
nizers have turned us into abstract humanists."
The main argument of those who attended was that they had come in
good faith to help tackle the problems here, where the people responsible
for the situation could be confronted face-to-face, and they wanted the
opportunity to do so. As one German member of PEN, Elisabeth Endres
(who came to Dubrovnik despite her compatriots' refusal to attend),
pointed out, "To sit in Berlin or London and criticize is more than easy."
The outspoken revolt helped. Some Croatian colleagues spoke up in
