Pyramid of Exiled Poets, Kochi, India
Installation

The Pyramid of Exiled Poets

Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016

Some 2400 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato expelled poets from the ideal state. In his famous work, Politeia (The Republic), Plato argues various reasons why poets should be exiled. It seems that Plato’s ideas have been an inspiration for one of the least-known exoduses in human history. Nowadays, historians and archaeologists can only guess at the reasons for the banishment of poets from great parts of the western world. Even more astonishing is that the banishment was not limited to a certain period of time, but was a recurring event throughout history.

Recent findings show that, not only in the Greek and Roman times, but also in the centuries leading to modernity up to present times, there have been recurring cases of the mass expulsion of poets from their cultures and countries. Forced by rulers, wars, ideologies and other multitudinous reasons, poets had to leave their homes and their countrymen, without the prospect of ever returning. We can only imagine how hard it must be for anyone to leave one’s home for good. And it is probably even harder for a poet, since a poet leaves, along with his home, the speakers of the language in which he or she writes, losing the ground on which he might continue with the craft of poetry. A poet in exile is destined to write for no public, no readers, no listeners. He remains in an echoless space. It is as if the poets who were forced to leave their societies were condemned to continue writing in a dead language. In exile, each language not understood becomes a dead one.

Historians agree that, over the centuries, poets migrating from various parts of the European continent always took the same path. It was the path from Europe eastward. It remains a puzzle as to where all these poets were actually going, and what became of them. The usual explanations were simply concluded that poets banished and living far from their languages ceased to continue writing, and simply died, alienated from their craft, in oblivion.

Through different times and cultures pyramids served as a landmark of political power. It was in pyramids where pharaohs,  rulers and dictators were buried in the hope for their timeless glory in posterity.

A completely different pyramid is the one build out of cow dung and dedicated to poets who had to flee their homelands and go into exile. Instead of rich decorations and the remains of deceased rulers we encounter nothing but a plain labyrinth-like passageway through the pyramid. The inside of the pyramid is built in a curved way, so the draft going throughout the pyramid produces sounds. Occasionally this sounds might be described as sights or even voices. They are verses, spoken in many languages, common polyphonic cacophonies, a phonic ambient created by texts of exiled poets from all over the world about their tragic faith.

 

POEMS OF EXILED POETS INSTALLED IN THE PYRAMID, RED BY CONTEMPORARY POETS

  1. Ovid: Tristia Liber TIII.X:1-40 / Book TIII.X:1-40 (Latin Original red by Antonella Anedda)
  2. Czesław Miłosz : I świeciło to miasto/And the City Stood in its Brightness (Polish original red by Krystina Dabrowska)
  3. Mahmoud Darwish: من أنا, دون منفى؟/Who Am I, Without Exile? (Arabic original red by Asmaa’ Azaizeh)
  4. Bertolt Brecht: Gedanken über die Dauer des Exils / On the Term of Exile (German original red by Katharina Hacker)
  5. Joseph Brodsky: …I pri slove / …and when “the future” is uttered (Russian Original red by Anzhelina Polonskaya)
  6. César Vallejo: Fue doming en las claras orejas de mi burro / It was Sunday in the Clear Ears (Spanish original red by Erika Martínez)
  7. Ivan Blatný: Melancholické proházky / Melancholy Walks (Czech original red by Radek Fridrich)
  8. James Joyce: Of That So Sweet Imprisonment (English original red by Brynne Rebele-Henry)
  9. Agam Wispi: Pulang/Going Home (Indonesian original red by Laksmi Pamutniak)
  10. Cai Wenji: 我生之初尚无为 / fragment from »Eighteen Songs« (Chinese original red by Ming Di)

REVIEWS OF THE INSTALLATION IN MEDIA (selection)