When viewing Taiwan’s political chaos, I often think of several lines from Incantation, a poem by the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature, Czeslaw Milosz: “Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia, and poetry, her ally in the service of the good... Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit, their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.”
Milosz wrote Incantation when he was a professor of Slavic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He firmly believed that Poland would rise again under a restored democracy and liberal order. As one of several self-exiled or expelled poets from former communist bloc countries, his faith in his homeland was quite moving. When the Soviet Union dissolved, Russian-Jewish poet Joseph Brodsky, who received the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature, believed his country was gone forever and that he would never return to what would become the Russian Federation. He chose to be buried in Venice, Italy. After winning the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize in Literature, Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert, as well as Polish 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient and poet Wislawa Szymborska held fast to their national identities. All these writers were poets who did not adhere to communist systems. Milosz’s writings display a unique palette of cultural criticism.
Several Eastern European countries were occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II, and many contemporary resistance forces and partisans were communist party guerillas, as were many of the resistance fighters in France. Communist parties in various countries were just one of many forces of the political left.
A politically right-leaning and conservative Charles de Gaulle became president of France and rebuilt his country after the war. Germany was split between the Allied powers, and Eastern Europe was wholly transformed into communist states that toed the line of the Soviet Union. They would remain as communist countries until the early 1990s when their governments dissolved or were overthrown, making way for democracy.
In what was originally East Germany, the Berlin Wall came down and the country decommunized, reunifying with West Germany. In just one election in each former bloc country, the communist yoke was cast off. Milosz, Seifert and Szymborska’s faith in their nations show the glory of enlightenment and civilization.
Communist systems came about as a political phenomenon formed from Marxism and the addition of Leninism. China hastens toward ethnic nationalism as a means of rebuilding its imperial glory. In the western parts of Eastern Europe, post-war communist governments lasted less than half a century before their dissolution. The cradle of communist states, the Soviet Union, did not even make it to 100 years old.
However, the communist systems in China and North Korea use their entrenched histories of authoritarianism and despotism to consolidate communist systematic control. They cling to power through the ideological consolidation of nationalism. China has further used privatization and the introduction of capital to break through economic barriers, resembling a three-legged marathon runner born from a right-leaning economics approach married to leftist politics.
Following Taiwan’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy in the late 1980s, because of our own syndrome of disunity, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — which formerly ruled Taiwan as a party-state — does not cherish our freedoms born from this transition. Despite a similar democratization timeline, the party’s political trends happen to be the opposite of Eastern Europe’s liberalization, and the party is highly reactionary. Liberal systems sometimes trend toward illiberalism. Democratic systems sometimes trend toward undemocratic systems. The KMT is fighting the tide of world civilization and is going against the flow of human history.
While witnessing the acrimonious party fighting and political chaos in the legislature, the KMT, which used to implement its opposition to communism as a means of imposing authoritarian rule, has decided to put its lot in with the Chinese Communist Party following Taiwan’s transition to democracy to hobble the functioning of our government. In these times, I like to think of Milosz’s faith from Incantation: “Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.”
We Taiwanese, who have long been walking our own road to democracy, must have faith in the power of civilization and enlightenment, and safeguard our shared homeland.
May Taiwan be ever courageous; may our home forever prosper.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Tim Smith
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