Speech by Prince Constantijn at the Royal Palace Amsterdam
Amsterdam, 11 december 2013
Let's call a spade a spade. This is an event full of contradictions. We want to celebrate life and creativity, while find ourselves mourning our heroes. We are looking for hope, but we are coping with sadness and loss. What a strange party this is!
But as experience shows: what passes leaves its traces. Deep imprints that we carry with us and cherish. Today we pick up the challenge to continue in the legacy of Madiba, Ahmed, Fouad Negm, and my dear brother Friso to draw inspiration from them.
Especially wee celebrate Ahmed Fouad Negm, his work and what he inspired in others.
In reading his poetry and his life history he seems to have obeyed only his moral compass and belonged to no one but the people he inspired, the freedom he craved, and the words he wrote. There he housed in the space between men, religions, ideologies. He sought out what connected and inspired people, and damned what artificially divides us. In this he was brave and bore the consequences:
I shall write on my hand
With my blood as ink,
Oh my resolve don't fail me,
Oh people do join in.
And when we fulfil our promise
We shall rejoice in the names
Of those who died young
In shelled houses and schools
And those workers buried
Under the Factory's rubble.
This is my handwriting,
And these are my words.
He kept standing as new powers arose and came down again; declaiming his verse, which proved more fierce then many weapon. Standing tall during a long life in which many tried to bring him to his knees, but where:
...it be known by all
That the injustice has grown old
That the gates of the prison are weak
That the handles of the gates have disappeared
His arsenal of satire, caricature, double meanings, and irony, never failed to hit its target. As he inspired the masses of three generations; with his message that indeed a future of peace could exist.
And today his words travel the globe, beyond his beloved Egypt. First through samizdat cassette tapes. And now the internet and social media connect us with him and therefore connect him with all those seeking justice and those who search for the beauty of his poetry. Those who create and those who consume, wherever in the world.
The PCF as a pioneering network organisation. It's always strived to connect people from different disciplines, cultures and continents. Connectivity is now a given, enabling random encounters and communities of interest. An organisation like the PCF accelerates this and helps to grow a diverse community. Linking geographically disparate people inhabiting different worlds, cultures and economies, working in different sectors with different media.
The rich selection of award winners - who are with us today for the first time at the ceremony - demonstrates this.
In taking a deeper look at this oustanding group it emerges how connected you really are and how much you have in common. Connecting present and past; local and global; rural and mundane; fiction and reality; art and activism; cultural expression and commercial application. You are all creators excelling in your field of expertise; crossing over to other disciplines and engaging their publics. You are courageous innovators, critically observing your worlds and participating in it to make change possible; providing nuance where polarisation and banality rules; stirring things up where complacency nests.
Along the axes of space and time and across socio-economic dimensions you meet and tell stories about our world; challenging our societies and leaders, questioning our habits and hypocrisies. This growing network of networks has many powerful nodes as pounding hearts that pump the blood of ideas and freedom through our world.
One such big heart that energised large parts of the Arab world, has gone to rest but lives on in his verse and in the people that carry the 'ink of his blood' under their skin. In translation his words now roam free for all to share like he sought freedom for himself and his people.
I ask to pay tribute to the 2013 PCF main laureate Ahmed Fouad Negm.