Artistas de la supervivencia

The 20th century was a time of flourishing for writers who survived state terror and purges, with all the moral and political ambivalences that this entails. Were they strong enough not to capitulate to power? Did they survive thanks to their clairvoyance or intelligence, or rather to their relationships? Did they escape from prison, the concentration camp and death by luck bordering on a miracle or was it due to strategies that ranged from ingratiation to mimicry? From Gabriele D'Annunzio to Maksim Gorki, from Gertrude Stein to Fernando Pessoa, from Sartre to García Márquez..., Hans Magnus Enzensberger presents a collection of short, caustic and very personal "vignettes" featuring more than sixty authors and authors that the German intellectual mostly knew personally and who, with more or less luck, overcame the obstacles of an extraordinarily complex century, some protected by their fame, others resorting to the art of commitment. In these sharp portraits, Enzensberger banishes many gods of the pen from the literary Olympus, and unceremoniously reveals unknown facets of some of them, leaving in the air a question to which the reader is called to answer: does being a writer imply a commitment moral or a plus of intellectual coherence? Part of the answer is found in these pages that make up an original and entertaining compendium of the history of contemporary literature.