Each time the Ukrainian president appears on our screens, I feel that that ordinary man, who shows before the world without any scenery, with a simple T-shirt and the incipient beard of one who has not had time to shave amidst the bombardments that hit his country, the figure of this man, I say, cornered by the unstoppable advance of his neighbouring superpower, from which he did not want to flee when he had the chance, grows every day as an example of unpretentious integrity in contrast to the thrust of that who has the undeniable power to crush him, but who will never be able to break him. Neither him nor his people who, destroyed, with their families decimated and homeless, and before the almost certainty of imminent defeat, have chosen to resist while they have the strength ― which in many cases may mean, literally to the death. A civilian population guided not by the bombastic rhetoric of a politician who, seeking to maintain his prestige and power, pushes the masses to follow his own personal project (which, unfortunately, the world is more accustomed to seeing), but by the determination of each of those men and women of all ages, volunteer fighters, many of whom left behind a peaceful existence outside their country to face the formidable army that vastly outnumbers them but not in courage or dignity.
Opposite this image, there is the invader: the so-called "president" of a country subjected to his will, who rigged the law (as dictators are wont to do) to give himself a semblance of legality that fools no one. His studied appearances, his well-kept look, and his polite style contrast with his twisted personality, his dark past and the cruelty of his intentions, which his evil eyes cannot hide. With the same neatness and elegance as the Nazis, he accuses the current target of his paranoia of Nazism, without realising (such is his lack of intelligence) that Zelensky is Jewish, the son and grandson of Jews, that his grandfather fought in the Red Army during the Second World War, and that some of his relatives were victims of the Nazis. Tell me what you accuse of, and I will tell you what you are. The lies Putin fabricates to try to justify his outrages bring to mind Unamuno's famous phrase in the face of another unstoppable and brutal advance: "Venceréis, pero no convenceréis" (You will win, but you will not convince). Proof that his lies do not convince outside his country, where he cannot suppress dissent, is the historic fact that the United Nations has condemned his invasion (a word he has forbidden to use in Russia) by a large majority ― more than three quarters of the voting countries ― while only four other countries, also dictatorships, backed it.
Just as Zelensky is already a beacon of the will and courage of the Ukrainian people, Putin's every appearance before the cameras, with his false polish and pomp, his twisted interpretation of history and his presumptuous and threatening rhetoric aimed at anyone who opposes his interests, contributes more and more to exposing the tyrant. In his Portrait of Dorian Grey, Wilde was able to portray very well the iniquity that can hide under the most refined appearances.
I cannot resist copying here a short story from the Annals of the Warring States, an anonymous historical account of troubled times in ancient China (incidentally, present-day China has not endorsed Putin in the United Nations vote, much to his regret) between the distant years of 481 and 221 B.C. Even then there were despots like Putin and men of integrity like Zelensky. I am including the excellent prologue written to this text in 1967 by the Argentine journalist Rodolfo Walsh, murdered by his country's dictatorship (yes, another one yet) ten years later, partly because of its unexpected relevance, but also because of its undeniable literary value and because it could hardly be expressed better:
Surely there are more important stories than this one. I choose it, first, because I have a bias in favour of short literature. I am talking about economy: the proportion between what is expressed and the material used to express it. My second reason is a prejudice in favour of useful literature. The Anger of a Common Man perfectly sets forth the relations between arbitrary power and the individual; between that power and the sum of individuals who form a people. It gives the beginning and the solution of the conflict. [...] In ever closer parts of the world, mere individuals have been "forced to rage" like T'ang Tsu and to propose themselves as corpses rather than mediocre men. The rhetoric of arbitrary power has not changed much in twenty-four centuries. The king of T'sin spoke of rivers of blood and millions of dead. In 1967, in Vietnam, waves of B-29 bombers and rains of napalm exercised that kind of thinking daily.
It is terrible, no doubt. But in the field of individual decisions, T'ang Tsu's epigram still shines with compulsive brilliance: "Corpses here are only two".
―Rodolfo Walsh
The king of T'sin sent word to the prince of Ngan-ling: "In exchange for your land I want to give you another land ten times as large. I beg you to accept my demand". The prince replied: "The king does me a great honour and an advantageous offer. But I have received my land from my princely ancestors and I would like to keep it as long as I live. I am sorry, but I cannot accept such a change".
The king was very angry, so the prince sent T'ang Tsu as his ambassador. The king said to him: "Your prince did not want to exchange his land for a land ten times bigger. If your master has kept his little fief, when I have destroyed great countries, it is because I have hitherto regarded him as a venerable man and have not cared about him. But if he continues to refuse his own convenience, then he is making a mockery of me."
T'ang Tsu replied, "It is not that, sir. The prince wants to keep his grandfathers' inheritance. Even if you were to offer him a territory twenty times, and not ten times as large, he would still refuse".
The king enraged and said to T'ang Tsu: "Do you know what a king's anger is?" "...No," replied T'ang Tsu. "A king's anger is millions of corpses and blood flowing like a river for a thousand leagues around," said the king. T'ang Tsu then asked, "Does your majesty know what the anger of a common man is?" The king replied, laughing, "The anger of a common man?... It is to lose his dignity and walk away barefoot, beating the ground with his head." "No," said the loyal T'ang Tsu: "That is the anger of a mediocre man. When a man of courage is forced to rage, corpses here are only two, blood runs just five paces away... But every corner of the kingdom is dressed in mourning. Today is that day." And with these words, T'ang Tsu stood up, drawing his sword.
The king paled, saluted again humbly and said: "Master, sit down again. Why should we come to this? I have understood." *
Even as reality sometimes surpasses fiction, we know that, outside the literary space, T'ang Tsu would not have come out of that encounter alive. The frequent cowardice of power does not always reveal itself in such evidence, and the king would have had henchmen ready to kill the emissary as soon as he turned his back, which probably happened in reality. Although by doing so, the ignominious monarch would only have succeeded in highlighting the moral abyss between the two men... Which may have been the origin of the story, as it is apparently inspired by real events. Much as the moral stature of Zelensky and the Ukrainians he represents stands out against the Putins of all ages who, lacking human values too high for them, only know how to lash out with brute force.
* I have relied mainly on the version of the Anthologie Raisonnée de la Littérature Chinoise, by G. Margoulies, which is the one prefaced by Walsh, and which I have compared with the direct translation from Chinese published by La Liebre Libre Publishers in Estategias de los Estados Combatientes, of lower literary quality.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario