Not Their Hands

- By Erri De Luca

To die with a pencil in your hand, a box of colors, as you sketch a pratfall for some tyrant or other, using the unrivaled instrument of the smile. From the page before them they must have raised their eyes toward the hooded assassins—the ones who didn’t dare show their faces. They raised their eyes, not their hands. Today once again we learn with fierce precision that irony is the greatest enemy of fanaticism. I come from the land of raspberries, so I hold back wrath and tears, put tongue and lips together, and trumpet forth a sound fit for anyone who believes irony can be killed.

Slaughter doesn’t limit itself to threatening the freedom of critics. Its aim is to injure freedom itself, taken as immoral by the assassins. Europe was born against fascisms, out of tyrannies and their wars of conquest. For the Parisian assassins, the citizens of Europe will be the toughest nut to crack. 

Erri De Luca is an Italian novelist, essayist, poet, and translator.