526
PARTISAN REVIEW
Europe badly needs a massive, protective fortress. Now it is replacing
the Berlin Wall with entrance-visa barriers, border hurdles, terrorist
pogroms against the newcomers, nationalist hysteria - measures alien to
its democratic essence. Is it possible that democracy flourished thanks to
the Wall?
Freedom creates unlimited opportunities for all of us. This conceals
big risks. The most noble impulses are defenseless. Fierce rapacity is un–
stoppable. How could tenderness fight cruelty? Tenderness doesn't lack
courage and selflessness, but will it not fall victim to its own weakness?
Who will rush to help the people armed only with love?
In
Sometime,
the wonderful book by the Bulgarian poet Dora Gabe,
a little girl shouts at night, "The walls are so nice!" thinking of the walls
of her home, which protect her in the dark. The adults on both sides of
the Berlin Wall shouted, "Horrible wall, the disgrace of the century, the
dinosaur-back of despotism!" And now no one wants to admit it. Not
even we, the people of the Balkans, want to admit that we ourselves
keep building walls - brick by brick, slur by slur, fear by fear, hostility by
hostility. Our last elections show a blind return to the habit of bending
our heads in the presence of the Wall. Or the memory of the Wall.
Until when? Until the time when we two-legged creatures learn to stand
upright, to be our own support, to keep our balance in the swaying
world, to move forward without mutual threats and without losing our
landmark - the open spaces facing us. Until we become people worthy
of the freedom and spaciousness of the future.
Yet in spite of everything, even at this very difficult time for Bul–
garia, an unavoidable hope ripens. The children are now growing up
without the Wall's ghost. They ask, "Where is this Berlin Wall?" the
way they ask their mothers heading for the market in Sophia, "Where is
the Roman Wall?" Slowly and inexorably, time destroys the fortified
walls of slavery in people's consciousness. Let's applaud it.
