ADDRESS ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY ROBINSON ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR
We have gathered here in this beautiful city to celebrate the official opening of the 1996 Frankfurt Book Fair. This year the prestigious event facilitates the interface of two very powerful traditions, the literary tradition of Ireland and its diaspora, and the greatest single gathering of the world's publishing industry in one location.
This is a joyful vantage point for Irish people to look out on the world of publishing and writing, secure in our identity as a country which prizes the written and spoken word. We stand here on firm ground, but not - we should remember - on new ground. After all, in the twelfth century there were Irish monasteries in Wurzburg, Nuremberg and Eichshadt as well as Vienna and Prague. From there the wandering scholars brought their learning, their exile songs and scholarly music right through Europe.
But the reverse is also true. If Kuno Meyer had not left his native Hamburg and set up the School of Irish Learning in Dublin we would not have had the Voyage of Bran or those translations and interpretations of our Gaelic literature from which we learned so much about ourselves.
And if Heinrich Böll had not made his Irish home in Achill, a beautiful part of my own County Mayo, we would never have had the illumination of "An Irish Journal".
And so we stand on the ground once travelled by the very best Irish poets and scholars - in both directions. The difference is that we no longer have any need to be exiles on it. The Frankfurt Book Fair reminds us that those who write and read and publish and sell books, and keep their love alive in the school and the home, are not just doing something for a community. They are a community in themselves. This is an occasion where we can see how our long Irish love affair with the written word has ended up, not in enclosure, but in expansion and communication and a renewal of those links the wandering scholars and Kuno Meyer first established. We and Germany, our host country, are now part of a cultural community where these links are further evidence of common values but distinct cultures. And those common values - the cherishing of writing and reading which we see around us today - are the very things which allow us to appreciate the distinctness.
The effects of this Book Fair will last a long time in Ireland. The anxious margins of the small publisher, the lonely enterprise and dedication of the work of committed individuals are all visibly celebrated here. But the effects will go further and last longer than any practical benefit, important as I know that is.
I hope for instance that this Book Fair will make us reflect for a moment, as I think we need to do, on just where we rest our attention and make our priorities. I think we should remember that the individual writer is the source and the focus here, and that the writer's life and experience is not easy, is still not secure and still needs to be honoured and rewarded if we are to be certain of treasuring the energies and self-knowledge in our midst. The book as an object, as a commercial venture, as a cultural opportunity loses all its resonance and meaning if we forget that.
It is writers, for instance, who remind us that national boundaries are important as identities and useless as barriers.
When the great European poet Paul Celan accepted a literature prize in Bremen he spoke of those writers like himself who "carry their existence into language, racked by reality and in search of it". His name and the name of other such exemplary poets like Ingeborg Bachman personify values which we as Europeans hold in common. And we also in Ireland have had such writers. Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, Kate O'Brien, to name but a few.
The difficulty is, of course, that the world of publishing may seem to be infinitely convivial and public and festive. But the life of the writer is solitary and easily overlooked. We need to be careful not to make the first a distraction from the second.
And so I initially focus on the writer and on the word, on language. The power of the word in Irish society has always been valued as a means of effecting change, influencing opinion and transcending the everyday. The Irish literary tradition could be said to descend in part from this long standing appreciation for the spoken and written word.
The designation of Ireland as the focal country for the 1996 Frankfurt Book Fair affords, I believe, a unique opportunity to promote, not only Ireland's literary tradition of which I have just spoken, but also the vibrancy and creativity of our wider culture.
The organisers of the Ireland and its Diaspora Festival have tried to capture the imagination of contemporary Ireland, to convey to the people of Germany a new awareness of our people as dynamic and innovative, looking with confidence to the future. The Festival will portray a sense of Ireland through our contemporary literature and broader culture, an image that may not be so well known generally. I hope it will whet the appetite of those of you who are present this evening to come and visit us and to experience the environment that has nurtured this Festival.
But it is the overall theme, Ireland and its diaspora, which has a particular resonance for the modern Ireland. I have been conscious for some time of the significance of the Irish diaspora in helping to define Irishness, and to renew our sense of Irish identity as we approach a new millennium. As the Irish diaspora takes shape throughout the world it is also shaping a broader sense of Irishness. This shaping occurs in different ways.
At present, and continuing next year, the 150th anniversary of the great Irish potato famine is being commemorated. Commemorative events are taking place and local histories being published not just on the island of Ireland, North and South, but throughout the world where there are Irish communities who cherish their heritage. As those of Irish descent in cities such as Quebec and New York and Sydney recall the arrival of the coffin ships and the struggle to begin a new life, so we on the island of Ireland recognise that their story is our story too - it is family history. The commemoration of this dark period in Irish history, when between 1845 and 1850 more than a million died and some two million emigrated, is an important act of remembrance honouring those who survived such hardship and made a new life. This commemoration also has a moral dimension in linking Irish people and people of Irish descent in a more conscious involvement with those who suffer famine and deprivation in developing countries today.
Another factor which has strengthened the development of the Irish diaspora is the ease of communication available in this information era. The internet, e-mail and the world wide web, have provided accessible links for those who wish to be in touch with Ireland, and have brought home to those living on the island of Ireland the diversity of the array of some seventy million people around the world who treasure their Irish heritage. And so, in turn, this diversity of the diaspora shapes our sense of Irishness by instructing us in the values of openness, tolerance and fairmindedness.
It also brings home to us that Irishness is not simply territorial. It includes the bond with Ireland felt by those who are not Irish born, who are citizens of other countries, but are proud of their Irish roots. This wide spectrum helps those living in Ireland to realise that Irishness as a concept is not exclusive. It is broad enough to reach out to everyone on the island of Ireland, and to show itself capable of honouring and listening to those whose sense of identity and whose cultural values may be more British than Irish. And, if this is done generously, they too - the unionist community - while affirming their Britishness, might find it easier to acknowledge within themselves a component of Irishness, of living on the island of Ireland and of respecting their nationalist neighbours for whom that Irishness is the dominant identity.
As Seamus Heaney put it so well in his last public lecture as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, "there is nothing extraordinary about the challenge to be in two minds".
And so the theme chosen for this 1996 Frankfurt Book Fair is timely and relevant. It focuses on the very heart of modern Irishness: its breadth, its diversity, its openness, its capacity to be two-minded, its potential to reconcile historic conflicts.