Until recently the East used to be the guardian of darkne...

Until recently the East used to be the guardian of darkness. I mean the East farther away geographically, but also Eastern Europe, the home of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Kie��lowski, Cioran, of plaintive poetry, ominous prophecies, and disturbing philosophy. Eastern Europe used to be the keeper of the unknown, of mystery and sorrow, through its culture of intellectuals [...] defying classification and ordering, holders of enormous intellectual courage and of genuine talent, to write in a way that inspires masses of readers but where it is exceedingly difficult to find ���the contribution��� and which flows without a ���clear structure���. The neoliberal revolution of the late 1980s and the early 1990s compelled the East to imitate the West, to try to become even more ���Western��� than their neighbours and to renounce, loudly ��� maybe even more vigorously than the West itself ��� everything that was not strictly linear or lying within the domain of perfect light. The Utopia we have been so busy building since then is, to me, a blinding kind of dystopia, maybe destined for the likes of Fra Angelico���s characters ��� angels and saints ��� but definitely not meant for human eyes. Suffused with a light that is so omni-present, intrusive and disturbing that it, in fact, kills. The West, longing for darkness, seeks it out in a variety of substitutes, of which sarcasm and the cult of irony are perhaps the most popular among intellectuals. And yet they are but a meagre and unfulfilling replacement: they allow the writer and the speaker to flirt with darkness, to caress it, embrace it for a moment ��� but then it compels him or her to forcefully reject it, renounce and repudiate it. He or she is left, once again, in the spotlight. This course is as unsustainable for thought and imagination as relentless devastation and pollution are for the natural environment. 

Monika Kostera