When There is Talk of War, by Ryszard Kapuscinski
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Artikel erschienen am Sa, 3. Dezember 2005
Herodot und Er
Wer den großen Reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski ein Leben lang begleitete und wie man ein Staunender bleibt
von Andrea Seibel
Ryszard Kapuscinski: Meine Reisen mit Herodot. A. d. Poln. v. Martin Pollack. Eichborn, Frankfurt/M. 364 S., 28,50 EUR.
Ryszard Kapuscinski sei ein freier Mensch, sagt der polnische Regisseur Andrzej Wajda, der ihm einen Film widmete. "Er ist in der ganzen Welt zuhause." Seit jungen Jahren bereist Kapuscinski die Kontinente dieser Welt, eine Sucht, der nur wenige erliegen, weil sie einsam macht, und, als Gegenrede zu Wajda, heimatlos. Kapuscinski spricht vom Sog der "neuen Menschen, neuen Wege, neuen Himmel".
Er ist ein Süchtiger geworden, obwohl er wahrscheinlich ein ängstlicher Mensch war und ist. Und wenn er nicht mehr ängstlich sein sollte, so liebt er die Anonymität, das Aufgehen im Fremden und Anderen, manchmal auch das Untergehen. Er ist ein unscheinbarer Mann geblieben. So kann das Auge mehr sehen, das Ohr mehr hören. Durch Zufall kam er nach Indien, aus dem entbeinten Nachkriegspolen katapultiert in eine neue Welt der unverständlichen Sprachen, der buntgewandeten, lärmenden Menschenmassen, der fremden Zeichen und Rituale. Danach schickte man ihn nach China, noch so ein rätselhaftes Land mit einem ewig monologisierenden Vorsitzenden, freudlosen, verschlossenen Menschen und einer riesigen Mauer. Er las viel, begriff wenig, war traurig abzureisen und doch froh zu entkommen. Asien hatte ihn eingeschüchtert.
"Ja, die Welt lehrt einen Demut ... und daß uns eine andere Kultur ihre Geheimnisse nicht auf ein Fingerschnippen hin enthüllt." Damals nannte er sich Journalist, schrieb in den folgenden Jahren Depeschen, Nachrichten, Neuigkeiten, Fakten, die er dann von den entlegensten Orten in Afrika und Lateinamerika aus nach Polen sandte. Doch berühmt geworden ist er durch seine Reportagen, die sich im Laufe der Zeit zu Poesie verdichteten. Er selbst spricht demütig von "Texten".
Nun, im Alter von 73 Jahren, den Körper geschwächt von Malaria-Schüben, TBC, und mit sechs Bypässen geschlagen, rastlos wie eh, die knappe Zeit als Luxus begreifend, offenbart er das Geheimnis seines Lebens: Kapuscinski hatte einen Reisebegleiter namens Herodot. Dessen Buch "Historien", vor zweieinhalbtausend Jahren geschrieben, das ihm die Chefin, Frau Tarlowska ("Das ist von mir, für unterwegs", welch kluge Vorgesetzte!) schenkte, begann er schon in Indien zu lesen. Dort "wurde er mir zunehmend sympathisch", denn Herodot, der erste Chronist der Antike, war den Menschen "wohlgesinnt, stand der Welt neugierig gegenüber, hatte immer viele Fragen und war bereit, Tausende von Kilometern zurückzulegen", um Antworten auf seine Fragen zu finden.
Dies gibt in kurzen Worten auch Kapuscinskis Motivation wieder: hingehen, schauen, begreifen, zuhören, eintauchen, nachforschen, einprägen, aufschreiben.
Herodots Welt war die der Griechen und Nicht-Griechen, jener Barbaren und "Anderen", die er bereisen und erforschen wollte, weil sie miteinander in kriegerische Auseinandersetzungen gerieten und dann den Heereszug gegen die Griechen wagten. Der erste Globalist in einer prämedialen Welt ohne Karten, ohne Archive und Bibliotheken ist Erfinder der Reportage. Wer begreifen will, muß kennenlernen. Muß auch andersartige Bräuche beschreiben, soll sich nicht empören, sondern bemühen.
Herodot wird Lehrmeister Kapuscinskis. Er wird zum geistigen Bruder, zum Freund, zur Tankstelle. Kapuscinski imaginiert sich den Menschen Herodot, dessen Lebensgefühl, fühlt sich mit dem Werk "verwachsen". Ihre Welten berühren sich, Zeit und Raum lassen sich transzendieren, denn teilweise ödet ihn sein Beruf an, die "Gegenwart ermüdete. Alles wiederholte sich ständig: die Politik - ein niederträchtiges, unsauberes Spiel, eine Lüge; das Leben der Durchschnittsmenschen - Armut und Hoffnungslosigkeit." Also geht er mit bis an die Ränder der Welt Herodots, zu den Ägyptern, den Massageten, den Skythen und Äthiopiern. Er folgt den von Herodot beschriebenen Spuren der Perser Dareios und Xerxes (Herrscher sind Jäger und Sammler, sie wollen sich die Nachbarländer unterwerfen, begehen Fehler, laden Schuld auf sich, töten Tausende, und entkommen doch nicht ihrem Schicksal) und endet in der Gegenwart: im Iran inmitten der letzten Tage des Schah, wo er in Gesichter von Khomeini-Anhängern schaut, die "nichts mehr ausdrücken". Wieder ein Menschenfresser am Werk.
Bei Kapuscinski werden Begegnungen durchaus zur Bedrohung. In Kairo will Ahmed ihm etwas zeigen. "Mißtrauen ist nicht Zeichen der Vernunft, sondern Charakterschwäche", glaubt der Autor. Sie besteigen ein baufälliges Minarett. Er wird die Treppen hochgejagt von dem Fremden, der "up, up" ruft, immer aggressiver. Ganz oben, wo nur noch der Absturz droht, muß er sein Geld hergeben. Er wird Ahmed wiedersehen. Sein Geld nicht. Keine Wut kommt auf. Kapuscinski ist eben kein System- oder Gesellschaftskritiker, sondern Sammler: von Bildern, Eindrücken, Situationen, die zu Allegorien und Parabeln werden.
Im Kongo erlebt er "Anarchie ohne Ethik und Ordnung..., es herrscht unvorstellbare Niedertracht, Verrohung und Bestialität". Ein Blick kann tödlich sein. Er begegnet in einer Gasse Soldaten und verspürt Todesangst. "Das sind die einzigen Momente, in denen ich mich wirklich einsam fühle: wenn ich allein einer sich straflos fühlenden Gewalt gegenüberstehe. In so einem Moment wird die Welt öde, sie verstummt und verschwindet."
Die Soldaten bitten ihn höflich und auf Französisch um eine Zigarette. Kapuscinski, der Spieler, der Ironiker. Dies sind die Ränder seiner Welt, die Abgründe, in die er blickte. Oder auf das Menetekel Algier, Stadt der zwei Gesichter. Ungewöhnlich für einen Versöhner, einen, der das Fremde geradezu vergöttert, diese Beschreibung: Algier, die offene Stadt am Meer mit dem Rücken zur Wüste, dann treppauf die enge arabische Kasbah, voller starrer Blicke, die man abstreifen will. Hier begreift er, daß nicht die spektakulären Bilder entscheidend sind, nicht Flammen und Schüsse und Tote, um dramatische Momente zu verstehen. In Algier kreuzen sich nicht nur Christentum und Islam, sondern auch innerislamische Linien: der offene, mediterrane Islam und jener der wüstengeprägten Fundamentalisten, der dem Westen so viel Sorge bereitet.
Jahrelang war Kapuscinski zusammen mit Herodot unterwegs. Gemeinsam einsam. "Es gibt der Welten viele. Und jede ist anders. Jede ist wichtig", schreibt er am Ende des Buches. Beide sind Rebellen gegen die Provinzialität von Zeit und Raum, die "Weisheit mit Wissen und Wissen mit Informiertheit" (T. S. Eliot) verwechselt. Sie tragen die Karten der Welt mit sich herum und baden im ununterbrochenen Fluß der Geschichte. Sie lieben die Menschen.
Am Ende des Buches fährt Kapuscinski in die Geburtsstadt seines Freundes, Halikarnassos, heute das türkische Bodrum. Er imaginiert sich Herodot als Kind. Und will nun ein Buch über seine eigene Kindheit zu schreiben, die untergegangene Welt in den Wäldern und Sümpfen von Ostpolen, das heute zu Weißrußland gehört, wo man sich von Beeren und Pilzen ernährte und Schuhe aus Baumrinde flocht. Ryszard Kapuscinski ist Staunender geblieben. Denn der, der nicht staunt, "hat ein ausgebranntes Herz".
Donnerstag, 22. Dezember 2005
Der Charme der Fragezeichen
Ryszard Kapuscinskis Reisen durch die wunderbare Welt mit Herodot im Tornister
Sabine Vogel
Er war der erste Reporter der Welt. Der Grieche Herodot von Halikarnassos, das heute Bodrum heißt, bereiste vor rund 2 500 Jahren die ganze ihm bekannte Welt. Die war schon ziemlich groß, und hinter den Riesenreichen der um die Weltherrschaft intrigierenden, metzelnden und massakrierenden Griechen und Perser wusste er von einer weiteren, anderen Welt, in denen die "Barbaros" lebten. Herodot schrieb auf, was er sah, erlebte und vor allem hörte, damit "die von Menschen vollbrachten Taten nicht mit der Zeit in Vergessenheit geraten". Die Obsession des Erinnerns - und dies ist für Ryszard Kapuscinski die wichtigste Botschaft Herodots - geht einher mit dem Bewusstsein, wie flüchtig und brüchig die erinnerten Tatsachen sind, wie abhängig von den Menschen, die uns davon erzählen. Wie relativ also unsere Welterfahrung und die Überlieferung der Geschichte selbst ist. "Meines Wissens", "wie sie sagen", "wie ich gehört habe", "ich schließe daraus", heißt es bei Herodot immer wieder die Objektivität seiner Quellen einschränkend.
Herodots "Historien" haben ihren Stammplatz im Tornister des polnischen Reiseschriftstellers Kapuscinski seit seiner ersten Reise nach Indien, über das er "rein gar nichts" wusste. Also liest er Bücher, guckt sich um, redet mit Leuten, versteht noch weniger, auch weil er noch kaum englisch spricht, er ist verunsichert, zweifelt, aber er will es wissen. "Wie entsteht ein Alphabet? Warum beschreiben Menschen ein und denselben Gegenstand völlig unterschiedlich? Warum? Warum macht das allererste Wesen in einer Kultur, wenn es eine Blume beschreiben möchte, einen senkrechten Strich, andere hingegen malen einen Kreis und wieder andere zwei Striche und einen Kegel? Werden diese Entscheidungen vorher einzeln besprochen? Beim Lagerfeuer diskutiert? Werden sie vom Familienrat abgesegnet? In einer Versammlung des Stammes? Beraten die Ältesten? Die Schamanen? Die Seher?"
Von Herodot, dem von Neugier getriebenen, dem rastlosen, sich selbst zurücknehmenden Beobachter hat er alles gelernt: Was war das? Fragen zu stellen? Welche? An wen? Dass der Weg wichtiger ist als das Ziel? Und ist das nicht etwas trivial?
Aber die philosophische Vereinfachung hat ihren Charme: Konfuzius etwa lehrte, die Etikette der bestehenden Ordnung einzuhalten. "Wenn du brav bist, wirst du überleben." Der Erfinder des Daoismus hingegen, Laozi - "falls er lebte" -, empfahl, dass man sich am besten aus allem raushalten muss. "Nichts ist von Dauer, also binde dich an nichts. Mach dich entbehrlich, wenn du überleben willst."
Kapuscinskis Strategie besteht darin, die Monstrositäten und Tragödien der Welt auf Kinderfragen herunterzubrechen und sie somit dem respektlosen Staunen preiszugeben. "Woher stammen die Schiffe am Horizont? Von wo kommen sie gefahren? Es gibt also noch andere Welten? Welche?" Mit dieser Haltung hat Kapuscinski die entlegensten Ecken der sich von alten Herrschern befreienden Welt in Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika bereist und in seiner wunderbaren Weise aus Demut, Wissbegier und Erfahrung beschrieben.
philosophisch aufzumanteln, gescheitert? Hat er sich überhoben? Warum musste er penetrant die Worte "Grenzen überschreiten" unterstreichen? Wurde er von Enzensberger darum gebeten? Brauchte er Geld? Sucht er die letzte Antwort?
N Z Z Online
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 27. Dezember 2005, Ressort Feuilleton
Nico Bleutge
Ryszard Kapuscinski: Meine Reisen mit Herodot. Aus dem Polnischen von Martin Pollack. Eichborn-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005. 363 S., Fr. 52.–.
Das erste Zeichen ist eine Art innerer Unruhe. Wenig später ergreift eine fast lähmende Trägheit den Körper. Alles beginnt zu stören. Das Licht und die anderen Menschen, ihre Stimmen, ihr Geruch, ihre harte Berührung. Doch für Abscheu und Ekel bleibt kaum Zeit. Denn ohne jede Vorwarnung kommt der Anfall. Eine grausame Attacke von Kälte, von subpolarem, arktischem Eis. «Da hat uns jemand, nackt und eben noch in der Hölle des Sahels oder der Sahara schmorend, gepackt und mit einem Mal in die eisigen Höhen Grönlands und Spitzbergens geschleudert, mitten in den Schnee hinein. Was für ein Schlag! Was für ein Schock!» Und während die rhythmischen Wellen der Malaria-Krämpfe den Menschen schütteln, spürt er, dass diese Kälte nicht von aussen stammt, sondern dass er sie in seinem Inneren hat, dass all die Eistafeln und Eisberge durch seinen Körper driften, durch seine Adern, Muskeln und Knochen.
Ryszard Kapuscinski war gerade in Uganda unterwegs, als er zum ersten Mal von der Malaria gepackt wurde. Ein junger polnischer Korrespondent, der über den Zerfall des kolonialen Systems berichten sollte. Das war 1962, und die meisten seiner grossen Reisen lagen noch vor ihm. Gut vierzig Jahre später hat er davon in seinem «Afrikanischen Fieber» erzählt, in einer Sprache, die so gar nichts von einem entspannten Rückblick hat, die den Leser vielmehr mitten hineinzieht in die Schocks und Eiswellen der Malaria. Doch wie hart auch immer diese Anfälle beschrieben sein mögen, Kapuscinskis Sätze machen zugleich etwas spürbar von seiner Faszination. Die Malaria ist ihm eine Urszene für die Besessenheit: «Wenn wir an Geister glauben, wissen wir, was das ist: Ein böser Dämon ist in uns gefahren, weil jemand einen Zauber gegen uns gesprochen hat. Dieser Dämon hat uns überwältigt und gefesselt.»
In einem Buch, das viel ruhiger ist als die afrikanischen Szenen, hat Kapuscinski nun wieder über einen solchen Dämon geschrieben. Es ist kein böser Geist, der von ihm Besitz ergriffen hat, sondern ein ganz und gar menschenfreundlicher Nomade. Einer, der rastlos ist, ständig in Bewegung, ein früher Don Quijote vielleicht, und einer der aufschreibt, was er sieht und hört und spürt. Seinen Herodot hat Kapuscinski immer dabei. Er liest ihn als Reporter in China ebenso wie in seinem Hotelzimmer in Kalkutta, während draussen auf der Strasse die Sirenen heulen. Diese Lektüre vereinzelt nicht, sie erzeugt keinen Ekel vor der Welt wie die Fieberschübe der Malaria. Sie zeigt dem jungen Ryszard Kapuscinski einen Menschen, der ihn einnimmt durch seine Offenheit für andere, durch seine Bereitschaft, sich etwas sagen zu lassen, nicht zu verurteilen, sondern zu verstehen und zu beschreiben. Und sie führt ihn mitten hinein in jenes erzählerische Niemandsland, das Hans Christoph Buch einmal den «Grenzbereich von Fiktion und Realität» genannt hat.
Herodot lebte zu einer Zeit, die noch weitgehend von der mündlichen Überlieferung bestimmt war. Im fünften Jahrhundert vor Christus galt ein Buch als Seltenheit. Es gab die Menschen und was sie einander zu erzählen hatten, im unermüdlichen Austausch von Geschichten. Herodot will alle diese Geschichten sammeln, er kämpft an gegen das Vergessen, einmal bekennt er sogar, an einer «Obsession der Erinnerung» zu leiden. Deshalb bereist er die halbe Welt, befragt Menschen und Bücher. Deshalb hält er Augen und Ohren stets offen und zeichnet das Gesammelte in seinen «Historien» kunstvoll auf.
Bei alledem weiss er genau, wie schwach und flüchtig die Erinnerung ist. Die Erzählungen der anderen sind immer schon zugeschliffen, eingepasst in die eigenen Bedürfnisse und Absichten, hier ist etwas vergessen, dort etwas verdreht oder erfunden worden. Das gilt erst recht für die Geschichtenerzähler und ihre Lust, vom ungewöhnlichsten Ereignis zu berichten. So vermischen sich Fakten mit Phantasie, entstehen Legenden, Gerüchte und kleine Mythen. Ryszard Kapuscinski zeigt sehr schön, wie Herodot diesen Tücken der Erinnerung zu begegnen sucht. Immer wieder weist der reisende Grieche auf blosse Meinungen hin, diskutiert seine Quellen, gesteht Lücken in der Recherche ein oder erklärt sich. Manchmal dichtet er auch einfach etwas hinzu.
Wenn Kapuscinski seinen Herodot als einen «Vollblutreporter» beschreibt, spricht er natürlich immer auch von sich selbst. Die Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen den beiden sind zweifellos gross, eine Grenze jedoch lässt sich niemals überwinden. Es ist die Fixierung auf die Sprache, die der Übergang zur Schriftkultur mit sich gebracht hat. Kapuscinski ist besessen von allen sprachlichen Momenten, sie bestimmen seine Wahrnehmung und sind ihm geradezu körperlich spürbar. Als er einmal Kongo bereist, kann er nur staunen über die zahllosen kleinen Stämme, von denen jeder seine eigene Sprache hat. In China und Indien wird ihm diese Manie beinahe zum Verhängnis. Hätte er sich dort keine Bücher besorgt, vielleicht wäre er zwischen all den unverständlichen Zeitungen und Plakaten untergegangen.
In seinem Inneren pulst gleichwohl eine Sehnsucht nach einer umfassenderen Sprache. So beginnt er zu schwärmen, wenn er über das Zusammenleben zu Herodots Zeiten schreibt: «Um wie viel reicher war doch diese uralte, antike Sprache des direkten, sokratischen Kontaktes! In dieser Sprache zählen nicht nur die Worte. Wichtig war oft das, was ohne Worte kommuniziert wurde, durch einen Ausdruck des Gesichts, eine Geste der Hände, eine Bewegung des Körpers.» Diese winzigen Regungen versucht Kapuscinski in seinen Reportagen einzuholen. Und sie sind es auch, die sein Schreiben über Herodot bestimmen. Er spricht nicht nur über seine Nähe zu ihm oder darüber, wie sich der Graben der Zeit für Momente aufzuheben scheint, er vollzieht es zugleich in der Form seiner Texte. Indem er die Schreibtechniken Herodots anwendet oder seine historischen Gesetze ein wenig dreht. Indem er Erzählungen von antiken Kriegen mit den Konflikten der Gegenwart überblendet. Und indem er die Erinnerung stets genau prüft.
An einigen wenigen Stellen fällt Ryszard Kapuscinski seinem Lehrer ins Wort. Das geschieht meist dann, wenn Herodot eine Grausamkeit unkommentiert stehen lässt. Zu den genauen Beobachtungen und der Sachlichkeit von Kapuscinskis Sätzen mag das Moralisieren nicht recht passen, doch es zeugt von seinem umfassenden Respekt vor allem Menschlichen. Es ist dieser Einsatz für das Humanum, der seine «Reisen mit Herodot» zu einem wirklich grossen Buch macht.
PÚBLICO, Mil Folhas, 21 de Janeiro de 2006
O Império reúne relatos de viagem do repórter polaco Ryszard Kapuscinski a várias regiões da antiga União Soviética entre 1989 e 1991. Jornalismo feito literatura de um mestre no género. O Mestre.
Paulo Moura
O carvalho que na sua juventude tenha sido alvejado por uma metralhadora não dará bom conhaque, conta Kapuscinski. A viagem, desta vez, é pelas repúblicas do Sul do Império. Três ou quatro dias para cada uma. “Um ritmo mortal”. Das três páginas dedicadas á Geórgia, uma e meia descrevem o processo de fabrico do conhaque. O álcool obtido da fermentação da uva deita-se em barris de carvalho, conta Kapuscinski. Não um qualquer. ‘o segredo do carvalho esconde-se nos nós da madeira. Enquanto cresce, o carvalho acumula sol. O sol penetra e fica nos nós, como o âmbar se deposita no fundo do mar”. Os melhores carvalhos são os solitários, que apanham mais sol. ‘Tanto quanto mel há num favo”. O processo dura dezenas de anos e precisa de paz. Porque depois de transformado num barril por um tanoeiro com o pulso de um construtor de instrumentos de corda, transmitirá ao conhaque, em sabor e aroma, tudo o que viveu. “O álcool penetra na madeira e então o carvalho devolve tudo o que acumulou: sol, aroma e calor”. Um bom barril dura cem, duzentos anos. Um bom conhaque pode levar cem anos a maturar. Mas há que adicionar-lhes os da idade do próprio carvalho, cuja vida já pertence á vida do conhaque. “Actualmente trabalha-se com carvalhos que nasceram durante a revolução francesa.
A idade do conhaque conhece-se pelo sabor. “O velho entra puro e suave. Só mais tarde começa a irradiar”. Pelo sabor se conhece a História de uma região, a sua paz, a sua guerra. Pelo sabor, nenhuma indignidade ficará impune. O sabor do conhaque não mente, conta Kapuscinski.
Na Turcoménia, o repórter conta a história de uma guerra. Como começou e porquê. Deserto de Karakum. Ninguém. A paz, o silêncio. De súbito, há uns cinco mil anos, surge um rio. Caudaloso e azul, um rio no deserto, nascido não se sabe de onde. O Uzboi. Nas suas margens brotaram oásis, árvores, terras férteis, animais. Pássaros. A seguir veio o homem. As tribos aliili, kchyrz e tivedji chegaram á região, atraídas pela possibilidade de vida. “Um buliçoso enxame de gente instalou-se no coração do deserto”, conta Kapuscinski.
Eram povos que representavam a água como três linhas onduladas com um peixe em cima. O peixe era o símbolo da felicidade. E adoravam pedras que encontravam no leito do rio e consideravam sagradas. Beijavam as pedras. “Ao beijar a pedra, os lábios têm uma sensação de doçura tão grande que se deseja continuar o beijo até ao infinito’ registou Ibn Batuta, um escritor da época, conta Kapuscinski.
As três tribos dividiram o Uzboi em três partes, dividindo a água entre si. E em cada tribo as famílias construíram canais, chamados aryks. Havia aryks muito largos e outros estreitos, consoante a família era rica ou pobre. “O pobre tentava, ás escondidas, abrir o dique para entrar mais água no seu aryk. O rico combatia estas práticas. Assim se configurava a luta de classes”. A água era a medida de todas as coisas, o terna e o símbolo da vida e da sociedade. “A água era objecto de especulação, uma mercadoria de mercado negro. Existia a bolsa de água, o boom de água, o erack de água. Especulando com ela, as pessoas ganhavam grandes fortunas ou arruinavam-se”.
Há cerca de 400 anos, o rio entrou em agonia. Como surgiu, assim desapareceu. “Estava a ser sepultado pela areia. A sua energia fraquejava e a sua corrente perdia força. Desconhece-se quem primeiro se apercebeu disto. Os aliili, os kchyrz e os tivedji reuniram-se nas margens para olharem como o rio, a fonte da vida desaparecia, sentavam-se e contemplavam, pois os homens gostam de contemplar a desgraça, conta Kapuscinski. “As pessoas corriam á procura dos mullahs, dos ishanes, abraçavam toda a pedra que encontravam no seu caminho. De nada serviu. Estiolavam os campos e secavam as árvores”.
Segundo um arqueólogo que fez escavações na região, as pessoas abandonaram-na a toda a pressa, com “grande pânico, histeria e medo”, a julgar pela desordem em que foram encontrados os vestígios. As três tribos partiram para o Sul, onde, ouviram dizer, havia oásis férteis.
Mas o grande êxodo das “tribos do rio morto” não correu bem. Nos oásis existe uma proporção perfeita entre a quantidade de água e de pessoas. Por isso um oásis não pode receber uma nova tribo, sob pena de o equilíbrio ser quebrado e ninguém sobreviver. A chegada das novas tribos provocou a guerra. Durante séculos, até á época moderna, durante e depois da revolução russa.
Aqui, conta Kapuscinski, “as causas das guerras são mais profundas e, dá vontade de dizer; mais humanas do que na Europa, cuja história conhece, guerras desencadeadas por motivos tão fúteis como seja o ultraje pessoal, um conflito dinástico ou a mania persecutória do poder. No deserto, a guerra é originada pela ânsia de viver; contradição inerente ao homem, e na qual consiste o seu drama. Por isso os turcomenos nunca conheceram a união: dividia-os o aryk vazio.”
Outono de 1812. Para agradecer a vitória sobre os exércitos de Napoleão, o czar Alexandre I decide mandar construir em Moscovo um gigantesco templo em honra de “Cristo Salvador”. Demorou 70 anos a erguer, durante os reinados de quatro czares. Foi inaugurado por Alexandre III, em 1883, com a sua altura de mais de 30 andares, as paredes com 3,2 metros de espessura cobertas de mármore do Altai e de Pondole e granito da Finlândia. A cúpula estava coberta por uma placa de cobre com 176 toneladas. O sino principal pesava 24 toneladas e o interior, iluminado por velas colocadas em três mil candelabros, albergava vinte mil fiéis.
Mas tão sumptuoso tempo viveria apenas 48 anos, menos do que os que levou a construir: Estaline decidiu demoli-lo. No seu lugar, seria erguido o Palácio dos Sovietes, concebido para ser, em tudo, maior e mais pesado (seis vezes mais, que o Empire State Building em Nova lorque. Ao lado, seria construída uma estátua de Lenine, três vezes mais alta do que a Estátua da Liberdade. Só um dedo de Vladimir teria seis metros, um pé, 14. Peso total do monumento: seis mil toneladas.
“Demos, por momentos, gás à nossa imaginação. Corre o ano de 1931. Imaginemos Mussolini, que naquela época governa a Itália, manda derrubar a Basílica de S. Pedro em Roma. Imaginemos que Paul Doumer, na altura Presidente da França, manda derrubar a catedral de Notre-Dame de Paris. Conseguimos imaginar semelhantes coisas? Não.” Conta Kapuscinski.
Mas Estaline fê-lo e, em Moscovo, não se ouviu uma voz protesto. A tarefa revelou-se difícil, dada a grandiosidade do templo de Cristo Salvador. Pôs-se a hipótese de bombardeá-lo, mas era perigoso, dada a proximidade do Kremlin.
Começou então um longo e penoso processo de demolição, por tentativas. Kapuscinski conta-o com todos os pormenores, ao longo de várias páginas. As mesmas em que conta os outros dois grandes empreendimentos de Estaline da mesma época: a acção de matar á fome dez milhões de pessoas na Ucránia e as obras de construção da ambiciosamente idealizada rede de lagers, campos de concentracão, uma enorme tarefa num pais tão grande”.
Na Ucrânia, Estaline queria colectivizar a agricultura, através do sistema dos Kolkozes. Como se tivesse encontrado alguma resistência dos pequenos camponeses independentes (kulaks), pensou primeiro em puni-los. Como eram muitos, optou pelo genocídio. “Tendo em conta o avanço da técnica não era tarefa fácil matar dez milhões de pessoas naquela altura. Ainda não se conheciam as câmaras de gás nem as armas de destruição maciça”.
Por isso se escolheu a fome. Junho de 1933 é a data em que se assinou o projecto de construção do Palácio dos Sovietes sobre as ruínas do Templo de Cristo Salvador e “um desses meses em que os campos e os caminhos da Ucrânia aparecem cobertos por dezenas de milhares de corpos mortos pela fome e em que não são raros os casos de mulheres, enlouquecidas e sem consciência dos seus actos, que comem os seus próprios filhos”. Conta Kapuscinski.
Kolyma, Sibéria. Um centro mineiro e dos maiores e mais terríveis focos de lagers, os campos de trabalho” para prisioneiros políticos, os milhões de condenados das “purgas” de Estaline. Kapuscinski conta as conversas, infiltradas de inconsciente violência, com os habitantes da Kolyma actual, mas também as histórias de quem viveu os lagers. De testemunhas significativamente diferentes. Como Varlam Shalamov, o russo anti-comunista cuja experiência de 20 anos de encarceramento descreveu em “Contos de Kolyma”. E a do austríaco comunista Alexander Weissberg-Cybulski, também preso em Kolyma e que escreveu “A Grande Purga”.
“O lager tem tudo o que Homem devia desconhecer”, diz o russo. Mas o pior não é ver a parte mais negativa da vida, O pior é quando este fundo mau entra na pessoa, quando a medida da sua moral é a que tirou da experiência do lager quando se usa na vida a moral dos criminosos. Quando a razão da pessoa tenta não só justificar os sentimentos próprios do lager, como também servi-los”.
O austríaco, “um homem do Ocidente, educado no espírito do racionalismo cartesiano”, está convencido de que foi parar a um manicómio. “Num mundo de pesadelo fantasmagórico e de paranóia surrelista”, de “insulto a qualquer tentativa de interpretação racional”, Weissberg nunca renuncia às suas convicções comunistas.
Já para Shalamov, “tudo quanto o rodeia fiz parte do mundo natural. Os lagers não pertencem à ordem humana mas à natural. Acaso pode o homem revoltar-se contra uma onda de frio ou uma inundação? Se o fizer dirão que está louco, que escapou do manicómio”. Conta Kapuscinski.
P.S. Algumas das transcrições aqui publicadas foram corrigidas no seu português pois a tradução deste livro é francamente má.
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Der erste Globalist
Der große polnische Reporter und Reiseschriftsteller Ryszard Kapuscinski ist seit jeher mit Herodot unterwegs. Jetzt hat er erklärt, warum
VON JAN
WAGNER
Ryszard Kapuscinski: "Meine Reisen mit Herodot". Aus dem Polnischen von Martin Pollack. Die andere Bibliothek, Band 252. Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2005, 340 Seiten, 28,50 Euro.
Cicero
bezeichnete ihn als Vater der Geschichte, für Thomas de Quincey waren seine neun
Bücher, die er der Nachwelt hinterließ, ein wahrer "Thesaurus fabularum", und
Jorge Luis Borges wollte ihn in seiner persönlichen Bibliothek keinesfalls
missen. Herodot aus Halikarnassos, dessen Historien das geschichtliche und
mythische Wissen der alten Welt bündelten, die Ursachen der Kriege zwischen
Persern und Griechen erkundeten und so die Geschichtsschreibung begründeten.
Als weiterer illustrer Verehrer gesellt sich Ryszard Kapuscinski hinzu, der erst
unlängst zum polnischen Journalisten des Jahrhunderts gewählt wurde und der nun
seinem großen Ahn- und Lehrherrn seine Reverenz erweist. Denn für Kapuscinski
ist Herodot nicht nur Visionär und Schöpfer, gar "der erste Globalist", er
erblickt in ihm den ersten aller Reporter, den - in Abwandlung von Ciceros
rühmender Formel - Vater der Reportage schlechthin.
"In der Welt Herodots", schreibt Kapuscinski, "ist der Mensch beinahe der
einzige Bewahrer der Erinnerung. Um zu erfahren, was erinnert wurde, muss man
daher zu einem Menschen gehen, und wenn er weit weg wohnt, müssen wir zu ihm
wandern, uns auf den Weg machen, und wenn wir ihn treffen, müssen wir uns mit
ihm hinsetzen und hören, was er uns zu sagen hat, zuhören, es uns einprägen,
vielleicht aufschreiben. So beginnt die Reportage, aus einer solchen Situation
wird sie geboren."
Kapuscinski erzählt, wie er Herodot kennen und lieben lernte - nicht etwa in der
Schule, da die Historien erst nach Stalins Tod erscheinen durften, sondern dank
seiner ersten Chefredakteurin, die ihm Herodot anlässlich seiner ersten
Auslandsfahrt nach Indien schenkte und derart hellsichtig den Grundstein für
eine lebenslange griechisch-polnische Freundschaft über Jahrhunderte hinweg
legte. Denn wohin es Kapuscinski während seiner Arbeit auch verschlagen mochte,
Herodot war, ob in Buchform oder in Gedanken, stets dabei. Kapuscinski lässt den
Leser an beidem teilhaben: An seiner von Mal zu Mal profunderen Lesart der
Historien und der durch Liebe und Wahlverwandtschaft geschärften Kenntnis des
Werkes wie auch an den eigenen Reisen, die Hintergrund und Kontrast der Lektüre
bilden. So folgt man Kapuscinski nach Indien und China, schwitzt mit ihm bei dem
absurden Versuch, in Nassers Ägypten eine Bierflasche zu entsorgen, und erlebt
einen Raubüberfall auf der Spitze eines altersschwachen Minaretts in Kairo -
eine wahrhaft schwindelerregende Szene. Man reist mit ihm nach Teheran, zu einem
Armstrong-Konzert nach Khartum, wird Zeuge des Militärputsches in Algerien und
des von Léopold Sédar Senghor initiierten "Premier Festival Mondial des Arts
Nègres" in Senegal.
Kapuscinski setzt auf das Zeugnis derer, die dabei waren
Wie Herodot
vertraut Kapuscinski dabei auf das Wort des Einzelnen, um zu erfahren, was den
geschichtlichen Ereignissen, den spektakulären Eruptionen zugrunde liegt, er
setzt auf das Zeugnis derer, die dabei oder immerhin in der Nähe waren - anfangs
schon aus purer Not, weil er sich als einziger polnischer Journalist in Afrika
weder auf ein Netzwerk noch auf technisches Kommunikationsgerät stützen konnte.
Die "Neugierde auf die Welt", die er dem Verfasser der Historien attestiert,
zeichnet auch ihn selbst aus, bringt ihn oft genug in riskante Situationen und
macht Kapuscinski zum legitimen Urenkel Herodots.
Und dieser ist oft genug und mehr noch als die moderne Welt Objekt und Adressat
dieser Neugierde: Was brachte die Babylonier vor der Belagerung ihrer Stadt
durch die Perser dazu, fast alle ihre Frauen zu erwürgen, und wie hat man sich
das mit allen seinen Folgen vorzustellen? Wie konnte eine Traumgestalt zum
Auslöser des Kriegszuges werden, den Xerxes gegen die Athener unternahm, wie
hinderte ein Hase die Skythen daran, das gewaltige Heer des Dareios zu
vernichten? All das sind Fragen, die Kapuscinski Herodot am liebsten stellen
würde und stattdessen mit Leidenschaft selbst zu beantworten sucht. Er richtet
die eigenen Reiseschilderungen und zeithistorischen Betrachtungen an den
Historien aus, stellt sie in einen größeren, weltgeschichtlichen Rahmen und
versteht es, diese beiden Ebenen, die Reisen durch Schrift und Welt immer wieder
miteinander zu verknüpfen und den grundlegenden historischen Gesetzen Herodots
im aktuellen Geschehen nachzuspüren. Ihre Gültigkeit hat etwas Beruhigendes -
und muss doch ernüchternd wirken, vergegenwärtigt man sich etwa die
Zeitlosigkeit der schon im Altertum bemühten Kriegsgründe der Notwehr, der
Verpflichtung Dritten gegenüber und des göttlichen Willens. Am besten, fügt
Kapuscinski an, sei eine Mischung aller drei Motive - und wem fiele dabei kein
aktuelles politisches Verhängnis ein.
Herodot wird zum Gegenentwurf nationaler Verbohrtheit
So wird Herodot,
der den Barbaren nicht nur eine eigene Kultur zugestand, sondern die
Notwendigkeit des kulturellen Austauschs betonte, zum Gegenentwurf nationaler
Verbohrtheit und aller hegemonialen Bestrebungen. Wieviel Hybris verflöge wohl,
wenn jener Einsicht, die Herodot seinem Geschichtswerk voranstellte, mehr
Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt würde: "Viele Städte, die einst mächtig waren",
schreibt er, "sind klein geworden, und die zu meiner Zeit mächtig waren, sind
früher klein gewesen. Ich weiß, dass menschliche Größe und Herrlichkeit nicht
von Bestand ist, und darum will ich der Schicksale beider in gleicher Weise
gedenken."
OBITUARIES
War Correspondent, Author Ryszard Kapuscinski
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 25, 2007; B07
Ryszard Kapuscinski, 74, a danger-courting Polish journalist and widely translated author who covered 27 revolutions and was among the most celebrated war correspondents of his generation, died Jan. 23 at Banacha Hospital in Warsaw after a heart attack. He also had cancer.
With prose that was punchy and lyrical, and in which he was often a central figure amid the action, he became a foremost chronicler of the developing world in his books. Likened to a modern-day nomad, he carried only a camera, a clean shirt and money. "The less you have the better for you," he said, "because to have is to be killed."
He met the guerrilla fighter Che Guevara in Cuba, political leaders such as Salvador Allende of Chile and prime minister Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and strongmen such as Idi Amin of Uganda.
Famously, he interviewed a former employee of the deposed Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, a man whose sole duty for 10 years was to use a satin cloth and wipe the shoes of dignitaries soiled by the urine of the emperor's Japanese dog, Lulu.
Mr. Kapuscinski admitted he could embellish scenes for effect and use composites. His many fans, including John Updike, tended to classify him with Truman Capote as a master of literary nonfiction. One of Mr. Kapuscinski's book editors linked his atmospheric writing to a tradition of "magical realism" found in Latin American novels that were subjective and blended absurdities with blunt truths.
"Everything is a metaphor," Mr. Kapuscinski once said. "My ambition is to find the universal."
During his extensive travels, he could be daring to the point of reckless. This characteristic prompted Salman Rushdie to praise his writing -- "an astonishing blend of reportage and artistry'' -- and to question his friend's sanity.
At the outbreak of the 1967 Biafran secessionist war in Nigeria, Mr. Kapuscinski heard of a road that was blocked by burning roadblocks and from which "no white man can come back alive."
Testing the rumor, he passed the first roadblock but was assaulted at a second by machete-wielding thugs who supported the United Progressive Grand Alliance political party. They took his money and doused him with the flammable liquid benzene.
"The boss of the operation stuffed my money into his pocket and shouted at me, blasted me with his beery breath: 'Power! UPGA must get power! We want power! UPGA is power!'" Mr. Kapuscinski later wrote. "His face was flooding sweat, the veins on his forehead were bulging and his eyes were shot with blood and madness. He was happy and he began to laugh in joy. They all started laughing. That laughter saved me.
"They ordered me to drive on."
For years, he was little known outside Poland, but his increasing prestige brought him freelance work for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Granta and other English-language publications. He began writing books in his off-hours, "second versions" of the brief, dreary and highly official dispatches he filed for his day jobs writing for the Polish press.
His books included "The Emperor," about Selassie's last days; "The Soccer Wars," covering military tensions in Latin America and some of his years in Africa; "Another Day of Life," about Angolan independence from Portugal; "The Shah of Shahs," about the Iranian revolution; and "Imperium," about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He told the Scotsman newspaper after the 1994 publication of "Imperium": "More philosophically speaking, it's a book about the uselessness of human sacrifice, in which I'm saying that during the communist time almost 100 million people have been slaughtered and to me this situation, these sufferings and deprivation turn out to be for nothing.
"Nobody is seen to be responsible . . . that human suffering turns out to be useless."
Mr. Kapuscinski was born March 4, 1932, in Pinsk, an industrial city then in eastern Poland and now in southwestern Belarus. Pinsk was a polyglot of ethnicities, all living side by side and most in desperate poverty. He said life in Pinsk helped him assimilate easily when abroad.
After the Soviet invasion of 1939, the Kapuscinski family moved to a neighborhood near the Warsaw ghetto. He often saw mass executions of Jews. Meanwhile, his father, a schoolteacher, served in the Polish underground.
Ryszard Kapuscinski received a history degree from the University of Warsaw in 1955 and found a reporting job at a Communist journal.
He wrote a highly critical article about a steel factory near Cracow that was officially viewed as a beacon of the Communist ideal. He was fired but then reinstated and decorated by the state when a federal task force exonerated his findings.
Now a star, he persuaded his editors to send him abroad, and for years, he was Poland's only foreign correspondent. He went to India, then to Ghana to cover its independence from the United Kingdom, then to the Democratic Republic of Congo in time for the coup against Lumumba. He also spent time in Latin America and the Middle East.
Of the Iranian revolution in 1979 that deposed the repressive shah, he wrote: "Revolutions precisely begin when the man has stopped being afraid. He gets rid of his fear and feels free, without that there would be no revolution." His affiliation with the Solidarity anti-Communist trade union movement in Poland led his government to revoke his press credentials in 1981. Yet he worked regularly from abroad and published many more books, including a praised collection of his African reportage called "The Shadow of the Sun."
Survivors include his wife of more than 50 years, Alicja Mielczarek, a pediatrician; and a daughter.
For a man of adventure, he was reputed to be surprisingly humble. He shunned bluster when discussing his career. "Empathy is perhaps the most important quality for a foreign correspondent," he told the New York Times in 1987. "If you have it, other deficiencies are forgivable. If you don't, nothing much can help."
Ryszard Kapuscinski, Polish Writer of Shimmering Allegories and News, Dies at 74
By MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN
Published: January 24, 2007
Ryszard Kapuscinski, a globe-trotting journalist from Poland whose writing, often tinged with magical realism, brought him critical acclaim and a wide international readership, died yesterday in Warsaw. He was 74.
His death, at a hospital, was reported by PAP, the Polish news agency for which he had worked. No cause was given, but he was known to have had cancer.
Mr. Kapuscinski (pronounced ka-poos-CHIN-ski) spent some four decades observing and writing about conflict throughout the developing world. He witnessed 27 coups and revolutions. He spent his working days gathering information for the terse dispatches he sent to PAP, often from places like Ougadougou or Zanzibar.
At night, he worked on longer, descriptive essays with phantasmagoric touches that went far beyond the details of the day’s events, using allegory and metaphors to convey what was happening.
“It’s not that the story is not getting expressed” in ordinary news reports, he said in an interview. “It’s what surrounds the story. The climate, the atmosphere of the street, the feeling of the people, the gossip of the town; the smell; the thousands and thousands of elements that are part of the events you read about in 600 words of your morning paper.”
From the 1970s on, these articles appeared in a series of books that quickly made Mr. Kapuscinski Poland’s best-known foreign correspondent. They later drew international attention in translation. The books included “The Soccer War,” which dealt with Latin American conflicts; “Another Day of Life,” about Angola’s civil war; “Shah of Shahs,” about the rise and fall of Iran’s last monarch; and “Imperium,” an account of his travels through Russia and its neighbors after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The book that introduced Mr. Kapuscinski to readers and critics beyond Poland was a slim one, ostensibly about Ethiopia, which he wrote in 1978 and which appeared in English five years later under the title “The Emperor.”
Subtitled “Downfall of an Autocrat” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), the book on one level portrayed the lapsed life of Haile Selassie’s imperial court by citing the recollections of palace servants, like the man responsible for cleaning the shoes of visiting dignitaries.
A number of critics noted that despite the book’s documentary form, it provided an allegory of absolutist power everywhere. Writing in The New Yorker, John Updike said the book emphasized “the inevitable tendency of a despot, be he king, ward boss, or dictator, to prefer loyalty to ability in his subordinates, and to seek safety in stagnation.”
His fame growing, Mr. Kapuscinski began writing for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and the British journal Granta.
Though each of Mr. Kapuscinski’s books was distinct, they all shared a sense of shimmering reality. There was, for instance, his account of the departure of Portuguese settlers from Angola as independence and civil war settled on the country. He described how everything of value, from cars to refrigerators, was leaping into boxes and floating off to Europe.
In preparing these articles he never took notes and used memory to stimulate his poetic imagination. In “Imperium,” he evoked the wintry cold of the old Soviet penal colonies by quoting a schoolgirl who said she could tell who had passed by her house by the shape of the tunnels they had left in the crystallized air.
Mr. Kapuscinski, the son of schoolteachers, was born March 4, 1932, in Pinsk, a city now in Belarus. In an interview in Granta in 1987, he remembered Pinsk as a polyglot city of Jews, Poles, Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians and Armenians, all of whom were called Poleshuks.
“They were a people without a nation and without, therefore, a national identity,” he said. That quality, along with the poverty of Pinsk, inspired his empathy for the third world.
“I have always rediscovered my home, rediscovered Pinsk, in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America,” he said.
Mr. Kapuscinski was in elementary school when the Nazis marched into western Poland and the Soviets took the eastern part in 1939 at the outset of World War II. His family eventually made its way to Warsaw, where Mr. Kapuscinski’s father fought with resistance groups.
Mr. Kapuscinski received a master’s degree in history from the University of Warsaw. On graduation he joined the journal Sztandar Mlodych, The Flag of Youth, a Communist publication, and quickly became embroiled in the upheavals of 1956, when hard-line Stalinists were being challenged within the party.
Mr. Kapuscinski wrote an article describing the misery and despair of steel workers at a new steel plant outside of Krakow that the party bosses had extolled as a showpiece of proletarian culture.
The article provoked such an attack from the hard-liners that Mr. Kapuscinski was fired and forced into hiding. After party reformers later prevailed, however, the young journalist’s findings were confirmed by a blue-ribbon task force, and he was awarded Poland’s Golden Cross of Merit for the same article that had gotten him into trouble.
In 1962, PAP, the news agency, appointed him its only correspondent in the third world. He came to know Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Ben Bella in Algeria, Che Guevara in Cuba and Idi Amin in Uganda. He covered the bloody uprising on Zanzibar in 1964 and the war between El Salvador and Honduras in 1970. He was in southern Angola in 1975 when South African forces invaded.
He would travel for months at a time and then return to the two-room apartment in Warsaw that he shared with his wife, Alicja Mielczarek, a pediatrician. His daughter, Zofia, emigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia, in the 1970s. There was no immediate information on his survivors.
In 1981, after he had committed himself to the Solidarity trade union movement, the government of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski stripped him of his journalistic credentials. He then began working with underground publishers, contributing poems and supporting the dissident culture.
Eventually, as his reputation abroad grew, foreign royalties and commissions enabled him to move to his own house in central Warsaw.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, he traveled to Moscow, Siberia, Georgia and Armenia, observing life there and recording the ravages of the Soviet era. Those travels yielded “Imperium,” published in the United States by Knopf in 1994.
“There is, I admit, a certain egoism, in what I write,” he once said, “always complaining about the heat or the hunger or the pain I feel. But it is terribly important to have what I write authenticated by its being lived. You could call it, I suppose, personal reportage, because the author is always present. I sometimes call it literature by foot.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Last Updated: 2:09am GMT 25/01/2007
Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died on Tuesday aged 74, was Poland's most renowned foreign correspondent and a witness to much of the turbulent birth of the Third World; he later translated his experiences into a series of books which also brought him acclaim in the West.
In 1962 Kapuscinski was appointed the Polish Press Agency's sole correspondent for the Third World, with responsibility for more than 50 countries. By the time the Polish government stripped him of his press credentials in 1981, for his involvement with the Solidarity movement, he had covered 27 revolutions and coups.
Kapuscinski's hallmark was his determination to venture into what he called "the bush". There he met and befriended some of the prime movers of independence, including Che Guevara in Bolivia and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. "Empathy," he said later, "is perhaps the most important quality for a foreign correspondent. If you have it, other deficiencies are forgivable; if you don't, nothing much can help." This understanding, combined with reckless daring, often enabled Kapuscinski to outstrip his better-resourced Western colleagues.
In 1960 he was one of only three journalists to reach the site of the Lumumba government, Stanleyville, during the civil war. Nine years later he broke the news of El Salvador's attack on Honduras in retaliation for a lost World Cup qualifying match, the so-called "Soccer War". In 1975 he was the first to report South Africa's invasion of Angola.
His way of life and slim means took him close to the edge. He fell prey to tuberculosis and cerebral malaria. Short of food to appease the worms in his stomach, he took to smoking them out. "After 40 cigarettes a night, the worm would just finally die," he recalled. Those who knew him protested that he was no Hemingway, chasing danger for its own sake, but a quiet pragmatist. His friend Salman Rushdie conceded, however, that Kapuscinski was "not entirely sane", a view supported by one moment of bravado from the beginning of the Biafran war in 1966.
Kapuscinski chose to drive down a road from which it was said no white man could come back alive. At one roadblock he was stopped and soaked in Benzene. Narrowly escaping immolation, but now without money for bribes, he had little choice but to crash through the next burning blockade at 90mph. He emerged relatively unscathed.
From 1962 Kapuscinski began writing books, convinced that his necessarily brief reports could not adequately convey the true nature and resonance of the events he witnessed. The first to be translated into English was The Emperor, a portrait of the final years of the reign of Haile Selassie. Ostensibly told through interviews with former courtiers, the uniform tone of irony and lapidary style show it to be a work as much of fiction as fact.
This pursuit of literary rather than literal truth disturbed some critics. Others praised it as black comedy, with the corrupt and paranoid autocrat an allegory of the Communist regime. It was adapted for the stage by Jonathan Miller and Michael Hastings.
Ryszard Kapuscinski was born on March 4 1932 at Pinsk, a town in eastern Poland. Both his parents were teachers, and, like most of the townsfolk, so poor that young Ryszard wore tree bark instead of shoes.
After the Soviet invasion in 1939 the family escaped to Warsaw. From their flat bordering the ghetto, Ryszard watched the daily execution of Jews by the Nazis.
After reading History at Warsaw University he rejected an offer to become a lecturer, preferring to join a youth newspaper, Sztandar Mlodych. An exposé of the conditions endured by workers at the prestigious Nowa Huta steel factory forced him to go into hiding and saw him dismissed. Then a government report confirmed his findings and he was reinstated. His editor promptly sent him to India as the paper's first foreign correspondent. Later Kapuscinski worked for the principal Polish weekly journals, Kultura and Polityka.
Among his other books were a collection of his memoirs of the frontline, The Soccer War; an examination of the Khomeini revolution, Shah of Shahs; and a journey through the disintegrating Soviet Union, Imperium.
Like his writing, Kapuscinski was spare, learned and thoughtful. He was occasionally criticised for his lack of formal involvement in Poland's reconstruction, but preferred to remain on the outside, abiding by his three rules of "no functions, no titles, no organisations".
He married, in 1952, Alicija Mielczarek. They had a daughter.
By Andrew Nagorski
Newsweek
Updated: 5:58 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2007
Jan. 24, 2007 - In 1966 at the height of the Nigerian civil war, an unassuming-looking Polish journalist by the name of Ryszard Kapuscinski set out on a seemingly insane journey. He left the relative safety of Lagos and drove straight into the region of the fiercest fighting, on a road where any traveler could be summarily executed by trigger-happy, machete-wielding guards at any number of improvised roadblocks set up by roaming gangs of both warring parties. “I was driving along a road where they say no white man can come back alive,” Kapuscinski wrote later in his book "The Soccer War." “I was driving to see if a white man could, because I had to experience everything for myself.”
The former journalist turned literary superstar who died Tuesday at the age of 74 lived by that credo of experiencing everything for himself. He spent most of his life exploring many of the most dangerous places in the world, never hesitating to jump into the next flashpoint. Wasn’t he terrified at times, I asked him after getting to know him well. “All the time, but I just can’t stop,” he replied with his typically disarming smile. And he couldn’t stop churning out books that were breathtaking in their imagery, poignant in their evocation of mood, and electrifying in their sense of danger and dread.
It’s hard to imagine a more improbable career for someone who began his life as a reporter in communist Poland, where journalism was a claustrophobic profession crippled by censorship and chronic political intrigue. But the young Kapuscinski caused a huge stir with a gritty description of the woes of steel workers in southern Poland, which won him the applause of the “reform communists” of 1956. Rewarded with the rare chance to travel abroad, he was asked where he wanted to go. “Czechoslovakia,” he blurted out. “It was such a dream come true that I couldn’t think of a more distant country,” he told me.
Soon he had no such problems. Free to travel to report for the Polish Press Agency on “countries which people did not know or care about,” he felt liberated from his homeland, where the hopes for reform had quickly faded. He covered coups, wars of liberation, civil wars, famines and droughts—often disappearing for weeks and months into remote regions, seemingly oblivious to the risks. Aside from dodging bullets and bombs, he had a nearly fatal case of cerebral malaria and a bad bout with tuberculosis in Africa. He could be moody, even depressed, but also drew inspiration from a sunrise in the desert or the slow rhythms of a remote village still relatively untouched by modern civilization.
Soon he left ordinary journalism behind altogether. His books, he explained, were “literary collages.” “More than straight reporting is necessary,” he said. “The other important element is reflection. The pure account does not satisfy. The pure account is provided by television.” He’d read voraciously before and during his travels, and then allow himself to reflect on his own feelings and sensations wherever he was. As he admitted over dinner one night, he preferred not even to take notes during his journeys. He would write later, offering his readers the memories of his experiences rather than transcribing them directly.
The result was often deliberately impressionistic and unabashedly allegorical. That was no accident. When he wrote about dictators like Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie in "The Emperor" or the Shah of Iran in "Shah of Shahs," he was describing a system that felt all too familiar to his compatriots back home in communist Poland. Even after the collapse of communism, he continued his journeys far from home, losing himself for long stretches in his old stomping grounds of Africa or Latin America, where he had operated as a young journalist. The frequently petty politics of the new Poland felt trivial by comparison, with none of the magical allure that he always craved—and always found. He’d write in Warsaw, but his world was wherever his imagination, and any means of transportation, could take him.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Journalist as Metaphysician
Ryszard Kapuscinski was a risk taker par excellence.
BY ANDREW
NAGORSKI
Thursday, January 25, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
Whenever we met in Warsaw for dinner on one of my recent trips there, the drill was the same. Ryszard Kapuscinski--world traveler to the most dangerous hotspots in the Third World, the risk taker par excellence--wanted to meet at his favorite Italian restaurant in the city, order the same insalata mista, pasta pesto and bottle of Montepulciano that he always did. This writer of literary "collages" as he called them, nearly two-dozen books, treated Warsaw as his refuge, his island of normalcy and familiar routine in a life that overflowed with the extraordinary and the unpredictable.
Kapuscinski's death on Tuesday at age 74 marked the passage not just of a gifted writer who mesmerized readers with his tales of far-flung travels and near mystical powers of observation of mood and place. It also symbolizes a troubling transformation in the world of journalism, which was a subject he fretted about over one of our dinners last year. During a talk with a group of young Italian journalists, he recounted, he urged them to go out to see the world. Afterward, a couple of them came up to him and complained that they were never allowed to leave their desks and their computers. He was profoundly saddened by that encounter: "When I was starting out, my editor would get angry if he caught anyone at his desk. He wanted to know why you weren't out reporting."
It's unlikely that Kapuscinski's editor ever had to admonish him on that score. As a reporter for the Polish news agency PAP in communist times, he quickly discovered that he could go off and report from strife-torn regions of Africa or Latin America and he rarely had to worry about censors back home. As he only partly joked, most of those assigned to policing reporters couldn't have cared less about the obscure civil wars, riots, famines and other tragedies that he wrote about. Indeed, they often had no idea where he really was. By his own account, Kapuscinski covered 27 coups and revolutions, narrowly escaping death again and again. "When they tell me it's dangerous somewhere, that's where I go," he once said, admitting that he was not immune to fear. But, he added, "the attraction is too strong."
He was drawn, in particular, to Africa, which he called his second home. He began taking his long journeys there in the colonial period and kept going back to observe its painful transition to chaotic independence. He described the violence and suffering in harrowing detail, but his books like "The Soccer War" and "The Shadow of the Sun" also radiated a near romantic fascination with the continent and its people. He bemoaned the disintegration of traditional tribal structures, and expressed admiration for the tight sense of community that allowed people to cope with the continent's unforgiving climate and geography.
But it was his books about authoritarianism--"The Emperor" about Ethiopia's Haile Selassie, "Shah of Shahs" about the last monarch of Iran--that resonated the most with his readers at home and abroad. Because dictatorship is always based on contempt for the governed and accompanied by a deep sense of insecurity, he wrote in the latter book, "it spares no pains to demonstrate to itself and others the popular approval it enjoys. Even if this support is a mere charade, it feels satisfying. So what if it's only an appearance? The world of dictatorship is full of appearances." Any inhabitant of Warsaw, Bucharest or Moscow in those days knew exactly what he was talking about.
Born in Pinsk in 1932, then a part of Eastern Poland, he remembered the Soviet takeover of the town in 1939 and the ensuing mass deportations of Poles by their new rulers. Today Pinsk is in Belarus, and Kapuscinski always fondly recalled the economically desolate but culturally rich town that he knew as a boy, with a mix of Poles, Russians, Jews, Belarussians, Ukrainians and others. He also liked to talk about how its fate, switching hands between different countries, was a parable for the turbulence of the times--and provided him with automatic empathy for other peoples caught up in similar conflicts, no matter on what continent.
Kapuscinski's writing career didn't bypass his homeland completely. When Poland experienced its brief first liberalization in 1956, he wrote a daring article about the grim life of workers at a steel mill near Krakow that was supposed to be the shining star of the communist state. Denounced by the authorities but later hailed by reformers, he nonetheless jumped at the opportunity to begin his peripatetic life abroad a few years later. When the Solidarity movement rose up in Poland to challenge the communist regime, he joined that struggle, publishing in the underground press. But he left no doubt that his first love was writing about more distant peoples and struggles, free from the internal battles of Polish politics, both in the pre- and post-communist era.
In the 1990s, however, he decided to focus on a subject closer to home: the vanished Soviet Union. Drawing upon his memories of trips there in the 1950s and 1960s, along with more current observations, he served up his typical "collage" in his book "Imperium": a mixture of history, reflection and, above all, vivid scenes. The climate was different than in Africa, he noted, but there was a similar sense of danger. "When you are in Kolyma or Vorkuta," he said, referring to regions in Russia, "and can't find any shelter for half an hour in -40 degree temperatures, you'll die." The climate, along with the murderous Soviet system, instilled a sense of fatalism that accounts for the lack of rejoicing after the old system collapsed. "The so-called Soviet man is first and foremost an utterly exhausted man," he argued.
Kapuscinski never looked exhausted. During our last dinner three months ago when speculation was rife that he might win the Nobel Prize for literature, he discounted the hoopla. He accurately predicted that the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk would win, which he dubbed an understandable political choice, whatever the literary arguments. Besides, he said with a grin, he was in the ideal situation. As someone who always figured in speculation about the prize, he received enough publicity to sell his books but not the avalanche of publicity that often kills the productivity of actual prizewinners.
And he had so much more he wanted to do: another book on Latin America, perhaps, a book about his hometown of Pinsk. He went on and on. While his health was failing, he had every intention of traveling more. It was the only way he could write, he insisted: by seeing for himself. That he always did--even as so many younger journalists were trapped behind their computer screens.
Mr. Nagorski is a former Warsaw bureau chief for Newsweek and now a senior editor at Newsweek International. His latest book, "The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II," will be published by Simon & Schuster in September.