Censorship and the larger questions of the fate of writers imprisoned, tortured, murdered have been the liveliest issue at writers' meetings. I date the current character of international writers' gatherings from an ambitious congress on dissidence organized under the aegis of the Venice Biennale in December 1977, attended by Joseph Brodsky, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Alberto Moravia, George Konrad, Stephen Spender, Francois Bondy and myself, among many others. Remarkably enough, Mr. Moravia was the only Italian writer among the many invited to this meeting held in an Italian city who had the courage to come, for the word had gone out that the Venice conference was essentially an exercise in protest against the cultural policies of the Soviet Union and the oppression of culture in the countries occupied by the Soviet Union. THAT most international writers' conferences ever since have been dominated by the issue of dissidence and human rights is one example of the enormous impact that the presence of writers in exile from the countries in the Soviet camp has had, starting in the mid-1970's. There is a modified agenda, a new sense of cultural relations.
Writers everywhere are more sensitive to related topics, such as self-censorship, than a decade ago.
Context, of course, is all. One reason for cherishing the writers' congress is that it may be one of the last places in our current cultural life where the closed session still has some viability. It is the character of our culture, as exemplified by television, to make all utterances context-less. What is most valuable about these events is that they are, or should be, meetings of writers among themselves. Not talking to the media.