In a world full of injustice, surrounded by aggressive situations, I ask myself again and again: What can literature do to make us better? Is being immersed in the literature not hiding in the liver of blind walls and acting only with imagination, rather than working so disgruntingly and specifically against cruelty? A powerful literature? Are we empowered?

In the dominant or dominant European cultural spaces, it was thought, in the romantic era, that literature corresponded to power and that it could have an immediate impact on society. In France, in particular, Lamartine or Hugo believed that the most advanced socio-political ideas would be guaranteed through literature, both in their country and around the world. Later, surrealists thought literature could revolutionize the world.

But the 20th century questioned faith in literary efficacy. Absurd current authors showed that literature is ineffective literature. For some critics, the literature continues to influence, at least, the adaptation of collective representations, both to the best and the worst. V. Researcher Berthelier, for example, demonstrates that literature has contributed to building a myth of flood of immigrants that intimidates nationalists around the world: R. Camus (inventor of the term “le grand remplacement” or “grand substitution”), Y. Gandon, L.F. Céline, J. Raspail, E. Cioran R. Writers such as Millet have enabled, thanks to their works, a strong presence of racism in France, according to Berthelie. On the contrary, Kafka said that writers have unique weapons to fight intolerance and injustice.

And at the marginal level, at the loser level, what? Of course, literature has more social, political and symbolic importance than in the large cultural spheres, as it can be a place of strong counter-power. For example, we have performative literature: One of the functions of Bersolarism taught by Antton Lukuk is precisely to stand against the dominant power. I also recall the literary battle “wrestling book” that has been created in Peru, based on the catch model: two writers must improvise a text before the public judge under the orders of a game guide. Performatives have to seduce listeners to gain permission to publish. In Peru, says Christopher Heaney, most warriors are young and women, who use the literary spectacle to express their voices.

In our case, the literature also serves to console, says Xabier Lete. It serves to remember, to feed the memory, to capture the past. It serves to build our myths. It serves to reflect our present, to denounce it and to dream our future.

It serves, in the end, to establish links beyond political, ideological, linguistic borders, as passers (P. Jaccottet said that his job was to be a “passer”). That is the goal of writers who give the same prominence to analogy, metaphor or translation. See, in the narrative field, P. Zubizarreta's pigeon, flying girl, zointan Kasai, adopted boy, compared to migratory bird; or A. In Miña de Arzallus, text written in Basque from the French account of an African who thinks of pular.

Let's see if we could still make our literature more powerful and empowering to build a smarter world.