An Arrow Against the Tank is the title of a conference dedicated to the Sicilian Antigroup, followed by a poetry reading, which was supposed to be held on July 24th in an art institution in Berlin. The event was curated by REPLICA in collaboration with CROSSLUCID. The title of the event draws inspiration from a mimeographed work by Crescenzio Cane, a member of the movement, emphasizing the revolutionary force of small forms of resistance against violent and oppressive entities. In preparing our contribution to the conference, it seemed urgent and necessary to include in the selection of poems for the reading the work A People is a People by Rolando Certa, another member of the Sicilian Antigroup. The poem was read in April 1982 during the second edition of Encounters among People of the Mediterranean, which that year had the theme of “Poets for Peace”. The poem by Certa was dedicated to “Palestinian brothers” and expresses the pain of the condition of a colonized people, deprived of their land. The poet showed solidarity with these tormented “brothers”, hoping that one day they may find peace and achieve the social and political self-determination they deserve.
Born in 1968 and active in Sicily until the 1980s, the thematic core of the Sicilian Antigroup was the idea of poetry as a revolutionary action nurtured by the members’ desire to involve the wider public by inhabiting public squares and using other tools of “poetic struggle” such as recitals, debates, mural poetry, independent publications, and the use of cyclostyled sheets, as well as wearing brightly colored dresses decorated with their own words. For all the members of the Sicilian Antigroup, poetry was about positioning literature as a tool for reconnecting social groups and fighting for a new society where class privilege and exploitation are abolished, and support is available for marginalized and oppressed cultures and peoples, including the Palestinian people. Their Encounters among the Peoples of the Mediterranean, held from 1979 to 1986 in Mazara del Vallo, sought to transform the Mediterranean into a “sea of peace and cooperation”. They believed in the power of cultural exchange and poetic expression to challenge failing capitalist and imperialist ideologies and to foster solidarity beyond borders.
The meetings of the Encounters were structured to build a research itinerary around poetry and its possibilities to create community. Poetry thus became an “expedient” for building relationships and talking about politics, emphasizing the need to come together and focus less on academic formalisms and the technicalities of poetry. Although it was an important meeting in which prominent figures such as Francesco Manacorda and prized poet Rafael Alberti also participated, it was less of a formal and more of a friendly occasion where everyone had the opportunity to express themselves in their languages in the presence of a simultaneous translator.
Each encounter was planned to allow for listening dialectically to the different cultures who are involved in creating a perspective in which the Mediterranean could be considered a sea of peace - even though participants were aware of the historical-cultural crisis they were going through - and a sea that belonged to everyone. The subtitle of the meetings, “Poets for Peace”, made explicit the collective need to give voice to cumbersome historical pasts by turning their gaze towards the attempt to build, by collaborating, a more open and better community. The abstract and totalizing capitalist ideologies they had been affected by, the wars or dictatorships they were subjected to - such as the Colonels' Dictatorship in Greece or the conflict between Israel and Palestine - were just some of the aspects that were discussed at these meetings. In the second edition of Encounters, 18 delegations participated. At that moment the first intifada was ongoing. For this reason, the organizers and the conveners tried to bring together, involving the respective embassies in Italy, a Palestinian poet/writer and an Israeli one. The attempt failed, but certainly not due to the will of the conveners.
The Palestinian intellectual and activist Wassim Dahmash, publisher of Edizioni Q, the only publishing house in a language other than Arabic entirely dedicated to Palestine, who participated to the Encounter, during his speech stated:
[…] The very theme of this Encounter prompts me to reflect: is it enough to know each other for the Mediterranean to truly become a sea of peace? The search for what unites us is certainly an important contribution to achieving peace in the Mediterranean. I hope that from this conference ideas and similar initiatives will emerge in all the riparian countries, contributing to a better understanding between Peoples. […] I do not believe there are peace-loving people and war-mongering people. We all want peace. […] My people, the Palestinian people, are also fighting for peace, fighting for their independence. […] Achieving peace means extinguishing the flames of war, and there can never be peace in the Mediterranean as long as one of its peoples, the Palestinian people, is unable to exercise its legitimate rights: the right to self-determination and national independence. Achieving peace, and greater cooperation between the Peoples of the Mediterranean also requires the Palestinian contribution.
Despite the respectful historical premises, the conference An Arrow Against the Tank in Berlin didn’t happen due to the rising concern from the hosting institution of the conflation of anti-Semitism and Palestine solidarity. This is an instrumentalized debate in Germany; one that keeps halting any generative conversation and has the consequence of polarizing different groups of people. On the date on which the event was supposed to be held, learning the situation from Antigroup, REPLICA decided to organize the reading anyway, this time in the public space of Monbijoupark, Berlin. During the two-hour session, reading poetry from Palestinian and other poets and, we could sense the level of diffidence and fear projected on us by people passing by, which made us reflect on the relevance of the Sicilian Antigroup's mission to the present.
Today, as in earlier years, it is necessary to lay the foundations for a culture that ensures an alliance, and cooperation for emancipation of the oppressed and criticism of dominant ideologies. Poets, writers, intellectuals, scholars, and artists do not necessarily deploy political tools. Nevertheless, they suggest different symbols and approaches with their words and artworks which are necessary to build criticism within society. Such knowledge is also acquired and exercised through a continuous act of love, solidarity, and sisterhood with poetic sentiments.
To conclude, we want to share the poem “A People Is a People” (1982) by Rolando Certa:
To the Palestinian brothers
I have heard your words
that swarmed with pain.
I heard from your voices
The weeping and anguish of mothers
for the children killed and crippled
and for all the sufferings
of your martyred people.
A people without a homeland
asks for its homes and its fields
its cradles and its sky
its flower gardens
its bread and its freedom.
Instead, you are only refugees
in Lebanese camps,
killed in Lebanon as in Rome,
only and solely because you are Palestinians.
Is this the justice of men?
Is this the fruit of an age-old civilization?
I heard, listening to your words,
reading in your gaze,
anxious and troubled,
that you are the victims
of this "civilization" of murderers,
the derelict brothers
who cannot and must not perish.
I am ashamed that still
women, children, old people
and innocent men are killed,
guilty of what?
Of being Palestinians?
When will the slaughter end?
Is there a civil conscience
that says enough to the massacre?
In this situation
it is not enough to weep over your tragedy.
I curse the murderers.
I say that your struggle is holy.
They said: a man is a man.
All the more today we say:
a people is a people.
And you don’t condemn a people to death
or to exile a people.
Only the Nazis consummated genocide.
And those who came after?
I wish that Christian mercy
Western mercy
would show its true face here and now,
Flood this cruel world,
awaken goodness,
be a river of justice
a sea of love
turning this endless night
into a sunny, bright, and profound day.
For if this were not possible
we should think bitterly
that on earth there is no peace
there is no peace among men.
and that Cain in different guises
still kills, again and always.
And Herod tears innocence apart.
Victory will be the day of peace.
Revenge calls for more deaths.
But you who deny life to life
do not even know how to live in this world...
in this world where there is room for everyone
Where everyone has the right to work in peace
To kiss his bride in peace
And to see his children grow and smile.
I therefore send to my Palestinian brothers
a greeting from ancient Trinacria
a fraternal and supportive embrace.
Will just men know how to
put an end to one of the greatest tragedies
of present history?
I believe that justice often delays
but the day comes when it triumphs,
the day comes that opens the abyss
of condemnation for those who have betrayed
the sacred laws of life,
and the day also of reparation
for those who have suffered and always lost.
The Palestinian people will have their homeland
will have their homes and their fields
and their gardens
and they will work and sing and love
like other peoples of the world.
The Palestinian people are our brothers,
our most unhappy brothers today,
but also the most heroic,
the one that awaits their greatest justice:
their homeland and their freedom.
//
- Image Captions
Cover: Antigruppo siciliano, “Incontri fra i popoli del Mediterraneo” (1984). Courtesy of the author
