‘If I raise my voice against injustice, it doesn’t mean that I’ll become a party leader’

Public movement ‘Protect Georgia’ is planning to launch actions. Dato Magradze, chairman of the movement who has recently been nominated for a Nobel Prize award, is our guest.
D.M. – It was quite unexpected that three Swiss Institutions (International Association of Culture and Art, one of the Universities and European International Experts’ Council on Art) evaluated my creative work as worthy of Nobel Prize

nomination. By one of the International Associations, my poem was declared the best poem of the year; the collection ‘Salve’ was awarded the Supreme Pontiff’s Medal. It is great joy for me that ‘Salve’ and my whole creative work is nominated for 2011 Nobel Prize in literature.
Q. - Besik Kharanauli, another Georgian poet is also nominated for Nobel Prize from Georgia.
D.M. – The more Georgians are nominated, the better for my motherland. I will be glad for any virtue that will bring fame to Georgia.
Q. - How can poetry and politics go together?
D.M. – A lady told me that she liked my poems and she’d rather keep me away from politics. If I raise my voice against injustice, it doesn’t mean that the next day I’ll become a leader of a political party.
Q. – What are current aims and tasks of ‘Protect Georgia’?
D.M. – The word is our weapon. We’ll try to popularize this idea at the Universities, schools, during meetings at different public organizations. A person mustn’t be satisfied with the existing kind of life; he should strive for the better. The charge is born in eternal craving for the better.
Umberto Eco once said that he didn’t write about those things that people wanted but rather whatever he wished the people should want. If somebody adds his own reflection to this, what can be better?
Q. – While the opposition and part of the public was trying to define rights and wrongs in the torrent of accusations, the authorities insulted the veterans...
D.M. – This terrible tendency started during the Abkhazian war and continues till now. Their heroism is to be valued. If you don’t appreciate veterans and soldiers, you have no country. I didn’t observe the war in Abkhazia from a distance. I used to go there and see the boys who fought. I witnessed devotion of many of them. I’ve been accused of many things just because I supported them. The Government members prefer laying a wrath at the Memorial, at the Statue rather than paying homage to living people. Some of them can’t pardon their own spinelessness to those brave people. Whatever happened at the Heroes’ Memorial was horrible. No festivities can cover up such unbecoming actions.
Is it rally true that more villainous a person is more modern he is? Is it their maxim? But I believe in the part of our people for who dear is what dear should be.