I talk about Mira a lot, and I’m doing so again 🤷🏻♀️
She was a beautiful woman, and a powerful and talented actor and writer, no doubt, but much more importantly, I feel, she was also a woman of vast and deep integrity - she fought against injustice and nationalism/racism all of her life and her principled and public stance against the war and ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia cost her dearly and yet, it was a position she never ever moved away from and believed in profoundly. It is very easy to have principles when they are not being tested, and another thing entirely to stake your very life on those principles.
Even when her stance cost her her home, her career, and her friendships, and the enormous amount of threats against her life forced her to leave her country, she never once backed down from her belief in unity and cooperation.
The anti war essay she wrote and published as she fled is still one of the most powerful pieces of writing I’ve ever read and I am going to post it here in its entirety because it is fierce and amazing:
Letter to my co-citizens
I hereby wish to thank my co-citizens who have joined so unreservedly in this small, marginal, and apparently not particularly significant campaign against me. Although marginal, it will change and mark my whole life. Which is, of course, totally irrelevant in the context of the death, destruction, devastation, and blood-chilling crimes within which our life now goes on.
This is happening, however, to the one and only life I have. It seems that I’ve been chosen for some reason to be the filthy rag everyone uses to wipe the mud off their shoes. I am far too desperate to embark on a series of public polemics in the papers. I do, however, feel that I owe myself and my city at least a few words. Like at the end of some clumsy, painful love story, when you keep wanting, wrongly, to explain something more, even though you know at the bottom of your heart that words are wasted; there is no one left to hear them. It is over.
Listening to my answering machine, to the incredible quantities of indescribably disgusting messages from my co-citizens, I longed to hear at least one message from a friend. Or not even a friend, a mere acquaintance, a colleague. But there was none. Not a single familiar voice, not a single friend. Nevertheless, I am grateful to them, to those noble patriots who kindly promise me a “massacre the Serbian way”; and to those colleagues, friends, and acquaintances who, by remaining silent, are letting me know that I cannot count on them any more.
I am grateful also to all my colleagues in the theatre with whom I played Drzic, Moliere, Turgenev, and Shaw, I am grateful to them for their silence, I am grateful to them for not even trying to understand, let alone attempting to vindicate, my statement concerning my appearance at the BITEF Festival in Belgrade, the statement in which I tried to explain that taking part in that production at that moment was for me a defense of our profession which must not and cannot put itself in the service of any political or national ideas, which must not and cannot be bound by political or national limits because it is simply against its nature, which must, even at the worst of times, establish bridges and ties. In its very essence it is a vocation which knows no boundaries.
I know that all this talk about the cosmopolitanism of art seems inappropriate at a moment like this. I know that it may seem out of place to swear to pacifism, to swear to love and to the brotherhood of all peoples while people are dying, while children are dying, while young men are returning home crippled and mangled forever.
How can I say anything which won’t sound like an ill-fitted nonsense at the moment when, for absolutely unfathomable reasons, Dubrovnik is being threatened, the city where I played my favorite role, Gloria?
But I have no other way of thinking. I cannot accept war as the only solution, I cannot force myself to hate, I cannot believe that weapons, killing, revenge, hatred, that such an accumulation of evil will ever solve anything. Each individual who personally accepts the war is in fact an accessory to the crime; must he not then take a part of the guilt for the war, a part of the responsibility?
In any case, I think, I know and I feel that it is my duty, the duty of our profession, to build bridges. To never give up on cooperation and community. Not the national community. The professional community.
The human community. And even when things are at their very worst, as they are now, we must insist to our last breath on building and sustaining bonds between people. This is how we pledge to the future.
And one day it will come. For my part, until recently I was willing to endure all manner of problems in transportation, communication, and finances to trek the 20 hours across Austria and Hungary between Zagreb and Belgrade. I was willing to use risky, even dangerous modes of travel, just to keep holding my performances in the two warring cities, to appear at precisely 7:30 on stage with my Zagreb or Belgrade colleagues and to alternate Corneille and Turgenev for the sake of professional continuity, for the sake of something that would outlive this war and this hatred which is so foreign to me. Time and time again I was willing to make my life a symbol of a pledge to the future which must be waiting for us, until that day when some ardent patriot finally does slaughter me as so many have promised to do.
I was willing and I would still be willing to undertake all and any efforts, if the hatred hadn’t suddenly overwhelmed me with its horrendous ferocity, hatred welling from the city I was born in. I am appalled by the force and magnitude of that hatred, by its perfect unanimity, by the fact that there was absolutely nobody who could see my gesture as my defense of the integrity of the profession, as my attempt to defend at least one excellent theatre performance. I had no intention of acting further in performances outside the BITEF Festival, as I stated in my letter. BITEF as an international theatre event attended by the English, Russians, French, Belgians, and even one Slovene seemed to me worth participating in, especially because any decision not to participate would have meant betraying a performance I had worked on under the most difficult circumstances during the March 9th Belgrade tanks, daily threats of a military coup, etc., etc.
It is terribly sad when one is forced to justification without having done anything wrong. There is nothing but despair, nausea, and horror.
I no longer have any decisions to make. Others have decided for me.
They have decided I must shut up, give up, vanish; they have abolished my right to do my job the way I feel it should be done, they have abolished my right to come home to my own city, they have abolished my right to return to my theatre and act in my performances. Someone decided that I should be fired from my job. Thank you, Croatian National Theatre; thank you, my colleague Dragan Milivojevic, who signed my dismissal slip. I know that lots of people are losing jobs, that I am just one of many, simply part of a surplus work force. I constantly ask myself whether I have any right, at this moment of communal horror, to make any demands of my own. One thing seems certain: I plan for quite some time (how long?) not to perform on any stage in this crumbling, mangled land. Perhaps they needn’t have hurried so in firing me. Perhaps this would have simply taken care of itself. With more decency. And dignity. Not so crudely. Of course, this is not a moment for tenderness. But won’t someone out there have to be ashamed of this? And will this someone necessarily be me, as my fellow actors try to convince me in their orthodox interviews? Can the horror of war be used as a justification for every single nasty bit of filth we commit against our fellow man? Are we allowed to remain silent in the face of injustice done to a friend or a colleague and justify our silence by the importance of the great bright national objective? I ask my friends in Zagreb, who are now silent, while at the same time they condemn Belgrade for its silence.
It is hard to write without bitterness. I would like to be able to do that, because we should “Love Our Enemy.” I wish we all could. Herein perhaps lies the solution for all of us. But I fear that we are very far from the ways of the Lord. His is the way of love. Not hatred.
To whom am I addressing this letter? Who will read it? Who will even care to read it? Everyone is so caught up by the great cause that small personal fates are not important any more. How many friends do you have to betray to keep from committing the only socially acknowledged betrayal, the betrayal of the nation? How many petty treacheries, how many pathetic little dirty tricks must one do to remain “clean in the eyes of the nation?”
I am sorry, my system of values is different. For me there have always existed, and always will exist, only human beings, individual people, and those human beings (God, how few of them there are !) will always be excepted from generalizations of any kind, regardless of events, however catastrophic. I, unfortunately, shall never be able to “hate all Serbs,” nor even understand what that really means. I shall always, perhaps until the moment the kind threats on the phone are finally carried out, hold my hand out to an anonymous person on the “other side,” a person who is as desperate and lost as I am, who is as sad, bewildered, and frightened. There are such people in this city where I write my letter, the city my love took me to, a feeling it seems almost indecent to mention these days. Nothing can provide an excuse any more, everything that does not directly serve the great objective has been trampled upon and appears despicable, and with it what love, what marriage, what friendship, what theatre performances!
I reject, I refuse to accept such a crippling of myself and my own life. I played those last performances in Belgrade for those anguished people who were not “Serbs”; but human beings, human beings like me, human beings who recoil before this monstrous Grand Guignol farce in which dead heads are flying. It is to these people, both here and there, that I am addressing my words. Perhaps someone will hear me.
The punishment meted me by my city, my only city and my theatre, my only theatre, the only theatre I felt was mine, is a punishment I feel I do not deserve. I was working in the way I have always felt I had to work, believing in people and our vocation which is supposed to bring people together, not tear them apart. I will never “give up my Belgrade friends”; as some of my colleagues have, because I do not feel that these friends have in any way brought about this catastrophe which has afflicted us, just as I will not turn my back on my Zagreb friends, not even those who have turned their backs on me. I will try in every way possible to understand their panic, their fear, their bitterness, even their hatred, but I plead for the same dose of understanding for me, that is, for a story which is different than many others, for a life which has deviated, due to the so-called destiny, from the expected and customary. Why must everything be the same, so frighteningly uniform, leveled, standardized? Haven’t we had enough of that? I know this is the time of uniforms and they are all the same, but I am no soldier and cannot be one. I haven’t got it in me to be a soldier, soldiering just isn’t my calling.
Regardless of whether we will be living in one, or five, or fifty states, let us not forget the people, each individual, regardless of which side of this Wall of ours the person happens to be on. We were born here by accident, we are this or that by accident, so there must be more than that, mustn’t there?
I am sending this letter into a void, into darkness, without an inkling of who will read it and how, or in how many different ways it will be misused or abused. Chances are it will serve as food for the eternally hungry propaganda beast. Perhaps someone with a pure heart will read it after all.
I will be grateful to that someone.
Mira Furlan,
From Belgrade and Zagreb, November 1, 1991.
95 notes
·
View notes
May 19, 1536 - Anne Boleyn is Beheaded
"Good Christian people, I have come here to die. For according to the law, and by the law, I am judged to die and therefore, I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die. But I pray God save the King and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never. And to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord, have mercy on me. To God, I commend my soul.' And then she knelt down, saying, 'To Christ I commend my soul, Jesu receive my soul', divers times, till that her head was stricken off with the sword.” - Anne's execution, as reported in Hall's Chronicle (1548)
""On a scaffold made there for the said execution, the said Queen Anne said thus: 'Masters, I here humbly submit me to the law, as the law hath judged me. And as for mine offenses, I here accuse no man; God knoweth them. I remit them to God, beseeching him to have mercy on my soul. And I beseech Jesu, save my sovereign and master, the King - the most godly, noble, and gentle prince that is, and long to reign over you.' Which words were spoken with a goodly smiling countenance. And this done, she knelt down on her knees and said: "To Jesu Christ, I commend my soul'. And suddenly, the hangman smote off her head at a stroke with a sword." - Anne's execution, as reported in Wriothesley's Chronicle (1559)
"And so she went to the place of her ordeal
To obey the will of justice,
Still showing a serene countenance,
As if she did not grieve for this world in any way;
For her coloring and face were such
That never before did she seem so beautiful ...
There was no one who does not have firm hope
That her spirit will not be in agony,
Given her great faith and wise patience,
Which rose above womanly courage.
Everyone, on the basis of her mightily steady end,
Judges her life to have been prudent
And believes they have committed a great offense
In having thought so ill of her." - Lancelot de Carle's The Story of the Fall of Anne Boleyn (1536, trans. Joann Dellaneva)
"Anne, the late Queen, suffered with sword this day within the Tower upon a new scaffold and died boldly. Jesu take them [i.e. Anne and the five men] to His mercy if it be His will." - John Husee to Lord Lisle, May 19, 1536
85 notes
·
View notes
Second chapter of the jojolands, and we are already entering silly territory. This is pretty standard for a jjba part.
Jodio and Paco trying to "expand" their market at request of Meryl May is really funny. Hell most of the time in these drug schemes the teens at the bottom are the ones who suffer, but I can't stop myself from laughing for seeing both of them use the same strategy that they used at school. It's a "if it's not broken don't fix it" type of thing.
One thing that I am always glab to see is how Araki has been consistent in his "fuck cops" sentiment since part 2. No one should trust cops, and if you run into them you will have to go all the way or else they will commit more harm. These grown ass cops not only "needed" a fucking squad to arrest two teenagers, but also they are acting like they broke out a global trade when in reality all of them are two movements away from beating up two teens for a tiny bag of cocaína. Of course Jodio wouldn't recognize a cop because he has only been selling inside his school so he is quite naive in that part, BUT he has every right to get violent with these trigger happy pigs. On top of that, the slap of reality of how that gross pig from chapter 1 could actually (but will never happen) rape Dragona, and not face any consequences in the eyes of the corrupt law is chilling. Araki knows what is up.
Congratulations to Jodio for being the first joestar with a canonical mental illness! It is quite the delicate subject to introduce, but I hope to see how it gets developed. And I can't talk about it since I'm not familiar with it, so maybe other people who know will explain most of the details of antisocial personality disorder. But I can say that Jodio's feelings of "don't I deserve to be happy?" are very real, sometimes that is the thing one chases, a happiness that includes your diagnosis even if other people see it as something wrong.
The Hotdog guy has finally a name, welcome to the part Usagi! We are only two chapters in, and all of the characters already show so much personality. Usagi seems to be a pretty relaxed guy with an affinity for food, and he also has a speech pattern in which he stretches some wooooooords. This type of speech conveys that he doesn't take himself very seriously since it comes across as something very silly. Paco attributed this to his drug use, but I think it's just part of his personality to be all "no bad vibes just chilling", and it's also very refreshing to finally see some flirting that doesn't come across as creepy.
It seems that Dragona so far is the "leader" of the group, in the sense that they are the one who keeps the dynamics balanced between the other three. From scolding Usagi from being late, telling Jodio to say his information, to Paco waiting for them to stop speaking to deliver more information. I hope that Dragona is on the path to become one of the best jobros we will see.
Matte Kudasai is just a little creacher, and it's so cute. This part seems to be more focused on utility stands rather than punch rushdown stands. It's very cool to see the extend of what stands can do.
And at the end... ROHAN?!? FUCKING ROHAN????? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE YOU COCKROACH. THIS IS NOT YOUR PART GET THE FUCK OUT, THIS IS NOT EVEN YOUR UNIVERSE. But, the introduction of Rohan is the best chance at comedy. He got beat up by teenagers in part 4, he will get beat up again by teenagers in part 9 too. I am waiting for this so bad.
286 notes
·
View notes