The day of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, I was in Berlin, standing at what’s left of the Berlin Wall. I was at the East Side Gallery, which is a series of murals painted on the east-facing side of a 4,300 foot remnant of the wall. It was created in 1990 by 118 artists from twenty-one countries.
I was happy to be far away from my own country, in a self-imposed news blackout. On a gray winter morning, it’s easy to imagine the no-man’s-land of the border, with concrete walls and barbed wire fences. Now there are new hotels and shops. Streetcars run nearby, passing through what had once been a border and the symbol of the Cold War.
What does it take for a government to embrace repression so wholeheartedly, that it would build a wall to keep its own citizens in and shoot them for trying to leave? The murals are celebratory and also cautionary. One that stood out for me was a painting of Russian nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy for human rights. This particular mural, approximately 30-by-12 feet, was painted by the husband and wife team of Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel and Ukrainian artist Viktoria Timofeeva. It was the least colorful of all the ones I saw—a battleship-gray background, with Sakharov’s image in black and white. Underneath, written in German, it says, “Thank you, Andrei Sakharov.” The solitary and stark portrait was fitting. A man who stood up for human rights, putting himself at great peril in his own country, where he lived in internal exile.
Being in Berlin on that winter morning, in a country that in the last century had systematically undertaken the most horrific genocide that the world has ever seen, that was devastated by a war it had started, then divided into two countries, I was aware of the power of dictators and repressive governments. Perhaps we’re always left with trying to understand how it happens, how hate blossoms and neighbors kill neighbors. At the wall, it’s palpable.
Standing there, I also recalled that at the same time the wall was keeping people from fleeing East Germany, in Romania the government of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu had people register their typewriters. Imagine a poet’s words being so powerful that dictators would fear them. It’s a heartening thought. I’d like to think that our words could make that kind of difference. Because words are powerful.
Today we’re witnessing the power of words, not through poetry, but in the lies and propaganda that inundate us. Slogans and chants make it easy for everyone to know what they believe. Poetry can be powerful, but it’s a power that’s more complex than the words of the demagogue. The demagogue is a monoculture and the poet is part of an ecosystem, where connections are complex and in the end all parts of the system benefit. The poet appreciates ambiguity and the words that are just out of reach. The poet is on a journey with an unknown end and the demagogue is on a fast trip to only one place, one idea.
We’ve only had a month of our new autocratic, vengeful government, and the speed of change is staggering. What can a citizen do? What can an artist do? I must confess to waking in the middle of the night, not with the usual worries about my own soul, but contemplating the soul of my country. I have never lived in a time when the stakes are so high and the risk is so great. To do nothing is not an option, and today I’m feeling that despair is not an option either. It’s time to put one word next to another and speak with a full heart.
I remember being in elementary school and watching Robert Frost read “The Gift Outright” at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, the beginning of a tradition of inaugural poets. I also remember four years ago Amanda Gorman reading “The Hill We Climb” on the bright cold January day, a bold young voice in the middle of a global pandemic. How appropriate that Donald Trump had no poetry at his inauguration, since it’s the poem that can take us to a place of compassion where we might see what we have in common.
Dmitri Vrubel and Viktoria Timofeeva, Thank You, Andrei Sakharov, approximately 30 x 12 ft., 1990.