Pieria View

Below is a draft of a play I wrote back in 2012, but never finished. I have finally got round to finishing it and thought I might share given its theme is the rise of nationalism amid the collapse of the Russian hyper-capitalist experiment in the late 1990s. The 17 references the number of votes by which then Russian President Boris Yeltsin was spared impeachment, a moment at which the country could well have taken another course. The 17 - Final Draft

I came across the (mis-)quote above from the 19 th Century French orientalist Ernest Renan in the most recent Julian Barnes novel Elizabeth Finch. Barnes notes the import of “being” and not “becoming”. Getting history wrong is not just part of the foundation of a nation on these terms but an ongoing process that reinvigorates, replenishes and sustains the thread of nationhood and shared identity. The fact that the collective history is largely myth is not incidental, but part of the initiation into the community – getting history wrong is a condition of entry. In Renan’s essay, the actual quote centres not on the “historical error” though, which is an extension of the thought, but on the importance of forgetting. “It is good,” he goes on to say, “for everyone to know how to forget” such that we don’t fall into an endless spiral of chasing historical grievances that would tear at the delicate fabric of a nation. Yet the frame of forgetting is interesting in its distinctness from the

The quality of summer is its silence Humidity forcing the world to slow So even the flies seem lethargic In their bids to escape Hanging in the air with words, if spoken At all. The quality of summer is that Burnt salinity of an evening where The bricks hold their heat Hold us close till we don't want to Eat and can't face to ask if we've Played this all out before under the watch Of an unblinking sun. If spoken at all, I'd tell you it doesn't Matter that we know the form, as the Quality of summer is that it can't tell If all happiness is alike Your fingers pressed into my palms To draw out a shiver of recognition I would know you in the silence, In the heat, in the light.