
Artistic inspiration and inspiration in general is one of those topics that is very difficult to define.  People can be inspired to do virtually anything. However, what that inspiration will inspire them to do is rather varied and unpredictable.  The two texts Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi and The Lives of Others by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck share a relation in their depiction of how writers are monitored and controlled in an overbearing government system.  I make the claim artists who are not allowed to have creative freedom are inspired to make their work mean something and worth the risk of death.

Pereira Declares, taking place in the summer of 1938 in Portugal, follows Pereira as he faces life changing experiences.  He is an overweight, widowed, journalist for a local bottom shelf newspaper (Pitol,213).  His obsession with death has caused him to create a section of the newspaper devoted to obituaries for writers who have yet to pass, yet “he refuses to be the one who writes them” (Pitol,213).  While he is looking for a writer for the obituaries, Pereira comes into contact with Francisco Monteiro Rossi, a young philosopher, and Rossi’s girlfriend Marta.  These two are later found to be members of the international brigades send to help fight in the Spanish civil war.  I delve much deeper into the character of Rossi and Marta in my previous work The Internationalist, but to summarize they are rebellious, outspoken, and not afraid to get in trouble for their cause.  It is this couple that cause Pereira to take action and change his life.  You see, Pereira is a writer in a time and place where saying the wrong thing could end up getting you killed, which was the unfortunate case for Rossi.  It was this incident in particular that inspired Pereira to write Rossi’s obituary.  However, this obituary was also a call to action.  In Rossi’s obituary Pereira states the 3 men who claimed to be the police were actually “gangsters acting with the complicity of persons in higher places” (Tabucchi,132).  Portugal at the time was under the control of a dictator named Salazar. 

The Lives of Others, taking place in 1984 in a totalitarianistic East Germany, follows Gerd Wiesler, a Stasi Officer, and Georg Dreyman, the loyal playwright.  In this film Wiesler is leading a surveillance operation on Dreyman for suspected disloyalty to the state.  This involves a full tap and 24 hour surveillance of Dreyman’s home.  The main aspect of this film I would like to focus on is the article Dreyman writes and his motives behind writing it.  The article at face value is about the West German government covering up the large suicide rate, but beyond that the article is a call for help as to the state of cruelty from the government.

These two texts hold strong similarities in their depiction of a suppressed artist. Both texts revolve around an artist trying to be their creative self and a government or authoritative figure trying to prevent or control that creative freedom. In Pereira Declares Pereira is the artist and his suppressor is not entirely an authoritative figure but rather a fear of that figure.  Conversely to The Lives of Other where Dreyman is the artist and his suppressor is a direct government.  However, Dreyman does not fear his oppressor like Pereira.  He believes he is out of the Stasi’s reach until they show up at his door step. Verses Pereira’s situation where he has yet to do anything of suspicion and already feels uneasy around figure of power. But they both do come to fear their oppressor, and it is this fear that ends up inspiring them to write what could be considered calls to action.  Both writers attempt to expose the political corruption they are suffering under with their art.  

During further research I discovered that not only are the text themselves dealing with government control, but the writers and actors of the of the respected pieces are as well.  Antonio Tabucchi lived in the political climate depicted in his book, and Ulrich Muehe, who plays Wiesler, has an ex-wife who was allegedly an informant for the Stasi.  I find it best stated by Sergio Pitol “in order to be considered worthy of the genre of the novel, the character must breathe on his own and must adopt these virtues or defects as an expression of his individuality, otherwise his words will inevitably emit a propagandistic stench” (Pitol, 212). What Pitol means in this quote is that these pieces of literature have to seem as if they are depicting a situation with propaganda and not making the whole of the story propaganda. 

In closing, government suppressing artists inspires them to make their art matter.  I have drawn the conclusion that when suppressed artists are driven and almost inspired to make their work mean something. They have to go to such great lengths to create, so their work has to be worth it.
