Paris, May 21 {No.99-114} - Writers Philippe Sollers, Vassilis Vassilikos and Ramakanta Rath discussed the role of literature in tomorrow's world in a debate "What Future for Literature?" - the 7th in the series of "21st Century Talks" - at UNESCO Headquarters on May 20, moderated by Jérôme Bindé, Director of UNESCO's Analysis and Forecasting Office which organises these debates.

Introducing the debate, Mr Bindé declared that literature is facing several challenges: the eternal challenge of tyranny and dictatorship which "practice the censorship of books, word and writing, burn libraries, muzzle, imprison, assassinate writers and journalists." A more recent challenge, posed by the development of the new technologies involves the use of the Internet as a vector for literary creation, and, in due course, the advent of the electronic book. There is also the challenge of the opening of literature to the world in all its wealth and diversity.

But the most decisive challenge, according to Mr Bindé, is to provide future generations with "the four keys to the palace of dreams that is literature: education, without which there can be neither writer nor reader; books, whose development is a priority for UNESCO; language, without which literature would lose its sap; and the new technologies, which give access to new perspectives but which are not available to all."

"What is our present situation?" asked Mr Sollers, the French writer of, notably, Femmes, Portrait du joueur, Les Surprises de Fragonard, La Fête à Venise, and Casanova,who is also Director of the literary review L'Infini. "Literature is a way of being and of doing which draws on language and time. [...] But, are we not experiencing a mutation regarding time?"

Mr Sollers expressed concern over the threat of a possible "alliance between harsh, brutal censorship which leads to the courtroom, to death sentences, to the assassination of writers, and the censorship practised in the so-called developed countries and which strikes not at books but at the alleged absence of readers." The danger is that literature be reduced to communication. "Everybody speaks and produces literature unawares. Everybody could describe him or herself as a writer and, why not, become one. [...] But literature is not communication, it is art."

The Indian poet Ramakanta Rath - author of, among others, Kate Dinara and Shri Radha, and President of the Indian Academy of Letters and Literature - declared that the future of literature "does not bother a writer. [...] "He cannot withdraw from writing. [...] That is the only thing that invests his life with some meaning." But the writer has become totally irrelevant to society, Ramakanta Rath declared, saying that writers no longer caused change or rebellion.

He warned that, particularly damaging to literature, is the fact that language has begun to part company with the way it was traditionally used by the community. He pointed to globalised and standardised language characteristics, notably prevalent in the discourse of politics and journalism, whereby "language is being used to express not what you believe in, but what you would like others to believe in."

He argued that "two alternative ways of using language cannot simultaneously be equally operational, equally effective." If the language of public life, heard day in day out, becomes the current language, he warned, the language of literature must disappear. "The language that is used to express untruth is beginning to replace the language used to express truth," he warned.

He also expressed concern over the declining dissemination of major writers of world literature. In this respect, he proposed an international initiative aiming at rendering more accessible the works of important Indian writers un-translated to date and, simultaneously, to facilitate the access of India to major texts by foreign writers.

And what if the future of literature resided in its past? asked Vassilis Vassilikos, author, notably, of Z, and Rêves diurnes, who is also Greece's Ambassador and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO. He stressed that "the role of literature is independent of the means used to disseminate it. It is linked to myth and to history. What is important is the writer's ability to embody the mythological which remains immutable, as man remains immutable."

Mr Vassilikos considered that our age is still based on the written word, but he contended that the technique of discourse is no longer solely identified with the book. "There is a writers' crisis, not [a crisis] of literature. Its future is intimately linked to that of human kind. As long as human beings will speak, they will want to express themselves through the word. But our technological civilisation is pushing us towards a monosyllabic culture. Everywhere the weight of the word remains intact because language is forever being reborn with the birth of every human being." But, he recalled that speaking of the crisis of literature cannot be relevant to all those who can neither read nor write. "The future of literature still holds many surprises in store."

The next "21st Century Talk" will take place on June 8 at UNESCO Headquarters and will consider the question "What Future for Human Rights?" Speakers taking part in the debate will be the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, Pierre Sané, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, and Mireille Delmas-Marty, Professor at the University of Paris I and member of the Institut Universitaire de France.