Cork 2005: In her poetic cycle "Requiem" Anna Akhmatova describes standing day after day in a line at a St Petersburg prison waiting for news of her son Lev. There a woman asked her in a whisper: "Can you describe this?" Akhmatova answers yes. She did describe it, and suffered for it, with her ration card taken away and no books published from 1923 to 1940.
Akhmatova will be among the banned authors and burned books (not that there aren't a few burned authors as well) which are the focus of The Word Endures at the Cork Central Library in March.
The subject, developed from an early proposal by Tom McCarthy of Cork 2005 and finalised by the city's new City Librarian Liam Ronayne, has a particular relevance here, given that at the time of the burning of Patrick Street and important civic buildings in 1920 the city library was among the immolated.
It was then situated next to the targeted City Hall and was consumed as the flames spread. So when the exhibition opens at the library (rebuilt in 1932 on Grand Parade) the institution will take its place alongside the municipal libraries of Dresden, Coventry, Baghdad, even Alexandria. Sarajevo is included too; its library was deliberately destroyed as a symbol of an ethnic culture (the others qualify more or less under the heading of collateral damage) as recently as 1992.
"We've picked writers who have suffered in different cultures," explains Ronayne, "from Akhmatova to Joyce, from Celan to Pasternak. And part of the event will be a 24-hour reading cycle from books which have been banned - some are still banned - on a world scale, with the readings taking place at branch libraries throughout the city."
* Another resurrected building will be the venue for the international seminar which will accompany the exhibition. Speaking on March 10th to 11th at the Millennium Hall (at the City Hall) will be Taghreed Al-Qudsi of the University of Kuwait, Sue Cole of the Blue Shield organisation (the cultural equivalent of the Red Cross), Alex Byrne, President-elect of the International Federation of Library Associations and Michael D. Higgins, T.D., Ireland's first Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht.
