First, an apology. I was asked by English PEN to respond to any line, phrase or word from the 4 articles that make up the PEN Charter—and I’m afraid I’ve taken up this offer in the manner of a guest who has been invited for tea, ends up staying the weekend, and breaks the household china before leaving.
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The household china in this case is Article 2 of the PEN Charter:
In all circumstances, and particularly in time of war, works of art, the patrimony of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political passion.
Of course, the word that particularly stands out there is “patrimony” or “inheritance from the male line.” How odd that a large group of writers saw no contradiction in crafting the phrase: the patrimony of humanity. And yes, PEN was founded by a woman, Catherine Amy Dawson Scott. “Patrimony” stands out because we so rarely hear it anymore; I can’t imagine there’d be much objection if the next PEN congress suggested replacing it with “inheritance,” so I’m going to do no more than make note of it before turning to the rest of the article which demands a more robust critique. Without the patrimony phrase this is what we have:
In all circumstances, and particularly in time of war, works of art should be left untouched by national or political passion.
Let’s start with a question of definition. There are many ways in which we now talk about politics—the politics of gender, the politics of race, the politics of class, the politics of child-raising etc. I am entirely on board with that expanded definition, but for the purpose of this lecture I’m going to engage with Article 2 on its own terms—so, political means, as the OED would have it, “relating to the government or public affairs of a country” or “relating to the ideas or strategies of a particular party or group in politics.”
The PEN Charter dates back to 1948 soon after the end of World War II and at the start of the Cold War, but to understand how and when Article 2 came to be we need to go back further, to the PEN congress in Brussels in 1927. PEN was six years old, and its guiding ethos came out of the recent experience of World War I —a war that was fought because of imperial expansionism and military alliances and resulted in nearly 40 million casualties.
After four years of a war, and four years of hate-filled propaganda on both sides, the founders of PEN wanted to work towards unity among the writers of different nations, particularly formerly warring European nations. Other parts of the world where politics got in the way of writerly unity—for instance, every nation colonised by Europe—was of much less interest.
At the PEN Conference in Berlin in 1926 the German-Jewish anarchist revolutionary playwright Ernst Toller argued the point with the PEN President, John Galsworthy, telling him politics “is everywhere and influences everything.” Galsworthy was in no way convinced.
If unity was the goal for PEN in the 1920s, then everything that got in the way of unity had to be recognised and avoided. Politics was quickly targeted as a primary source of discord. Politics was responsible for war, for propaganda, for division. Not everyone agreed that politics could be understood so narrowly let alone siloed off from literature and life itself. At the PEN Conference in Berlin in 1926 the German-Jewish anarchist revolutionary playwright Ernst Toller argued the point with the PEN President, John Galsworthy, telling him politics “is everywhere and influences everything.” Galsworthy was in no way convinced. The following year, 1927, in Brussels at the annual congress PEN spelled out its three guiding principles, which included this:
In all circumstances, and particularly in time of war, works of art, the patrimony of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political passion.
Six years later, in 1933, the PEN congress was held in Dubrovnik. By this time Galsworthy had died, and PEN had a quite different president: HG Wells. Also by this time the Nazi party had come to power in Germany and Ernst Toller had been exiled. When German PEN refused to answer questions about book burnings, Wells gave the floor to Toller. The German PEN delegation walked out and was subsequently expelled from PEN.
A few years later, in 1940, Wells was one of the many writers to sign a letter from the PEN London centre entitled “Appeal to the Conscience of the World,” which called on all writers, everywhere, to urge the world to join the fight against Nazism. A moral position to be sure, but also very much a political one.
Most of the time PEN can separate Art from Politics; but every now and then, it absolutely cannot.
Despite the letter—and PEN’s embrace of political passions—in 1948 the 3 guiding principles from Brussels 1927, including the one about art untouched by politics, became the first 3 articles of the PEN Charter. A new article, article 4, was added in 1948. This is the article most of us probably think of when we think of PEN because it is the first to talk about free expression. It also contains this sentence: “[PEN] believes that the necessary advance of the world towards a more highly organised political and economic order renders a free criticism of governments, administrations and institutions imperative.” I’m going to repeat that: a free criticism of governments, administrations and institutions is imperative.
How did the PEN leadership imagine that this new article could co-exist with Article 2?
A clue may come from Wells’s address to the PEN congress in Edinburgh, in 1934. In the time between the 1933 and 1934 congress, Germany had moved even further into Nazi totalitarianism. Against that backdrop, Wells told the PEN Congress:
When Politics reaches up and assaults Literature and the liberty of human thought and expression, we have to take notice of Politics. If not, what will the PEN club become? A tourist agency—an organisation for introducing respectable writers to useful scenery—a special branch of the hotel industry?’
Wells is doing something very careful here, it seems to me, though I’ll leave it to Wells scholars to tell me if he was doing it from conviction or to try and prevent schism within the organisation. Wells’s position is not that of Toller. He does not take the view that politics “is everywhere and influences everything.” He argues, rather, that PEN has to take notice of politics in certain exceptional circumstances when Politics reaches up and assaults Literature and liberty. In Wells’s imagery Literature is lofty, Politics is low and violent. In unexceptional times, the two are separate. That is to say, most of the time PEN can separate Art from Politics; but every now and then, it absolutely cannot.
I’m going to take you now to a hairdressers’ on January 16, 2025. The hairdressers’ is in Gaza, the date is one day after the ceasefire was announced, two days before it was due to come into effect, the woman who is writing about it is the playwright, novelist, and short story writer Nahil Mohana. Her words are translated from the Arabic by Resist Crisis Translation and Basma Ghalayini:
The occupation usually intensifies its raids just before a truce comes into effect so I’m surprised by the sight of five brides, each waiting their turn, along with fifteen other women here, to dye their hair in preparation for the truce. . . The main focus of discussion is about the things we will do once the ceasefire comes into effect. The list is long.
The list has 25 points. Because of time constraints, I’m going to skip the first ten and start at number 11. The whole list, and much else that’s extraordinary is in the book Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide published by Comma Press.
11. We will smoke cigarettes and shisha again, and be spared from the the cursing in our streets as a consequence.
12. We will eat meat, chicken, shawarma, maftoul, eggs, fresh vegetables, juices and ice cream.
13. I will kiss my husband, because I miss our moments together.
14. Our children will return to school and to discipline.
15. Families will reunite, the South will join the North, and we will see our loved ones.
16. We will go back to drinking high-quality coffee, sold for 14 shekels instead of 60.
17. We will no longer be devoured by drones, the quadcopter will be out of our lives.
18. We will mourn the martyrs and the missing with honour and dignity.
19. We will go back to walking in the streets without fear of shrapnel or going out and never coming back.
20. We will eat grilled corn on the promenade.
21. We will bathe under a shower.
22. We will light the streets at night.
23. We will stop following the news; in fact, one of the women offers to donate her TV.
24. We will go back to washing machines instead of hand washing.
25. I will bury my son who remains under the rubble of the house.
Imagine telling any of the women in that hairdressers shop that art should be untouched by national and political passion, particularly in time of war. Untouched, how? The war is happening because of politics, the ceasefire has been brokered because of politics, the ceasefire will be broken because of politics. When Article 2 posits an ideal separation between art and national and political passions in times of war it entirely fails to recognise the reality of that hairdressers’ in Gaza in January 2025.
Nahil Mohana’s list reflects the truth of Toller’s assertion: politics is everywhere and influences everything. It doesn’t just influence whether you can bury your son or not, it also influences the price of coffee, the possibility of eating corn on the promenade, the presence of electricity, the soundscape of your neighbourhood—is it the babble of children coming home from school, or is it drones and missiles?
But in times of war is not the root of the problem with Article 2 any more than the word patrimony is. We can whittle away and whittle away the article and it remains not just problematic but nonsensical so long as it continues to view politics as something that can, let alone should, be separate from art.
I’d like to draw your attention more closely to Toller’s phrase “politics is everywhere.” It does’t just mean “everywhere, during times of war.” It doesn’t mean “everywhere, when the far right is on the rise.” It doesn’t mean “everywhere in Gaza.” It means, everywhere.
In March 2020 we were told to go into our homes, avoid contact with anyone who didn’t live with us. We were told to stay away from the bedsides of dying relatives. We were told not to embrace other mourners at funerals. Those of us who had certain kinds of jobs had to stay at home; those who had other kinds of jobs, often the most dangerous kinds of jobs, were told to keep on doing them as before, for a long time without proper protective equipment. The weeks became months became a year, a second year.
Our borders were closed to people entering from certain nations. Other borders were closed to us. We could not enter particular spaces unless we showed a code that confirmed we had followed certain rules laid down for us which many people didn’t want to follow. I don’t say this as someone who is critical of rules having been imposed during a pandemic. I say it to make that point that when all that happened we should have realised, those of us who didn’t already know it, how deeply politics touches every moment of our life. We should have realised that the liberties we took for granted were actually a consequence of the political framework in which we live.
It stands to reason, doesn’t it? If censorship is political so is the absence of censorship. If bombs falling on you happen because of politics then the fear of nothing more violent than weather dropping from the sky is also because of politics. When the weather is more violent, more extreme than at any other point since records began, that also is politics.
Homophobic laws are politics, and so are the lives that people can live as a consequence of those laws being overturned.
Knowing you can be stripped of citizenship in the country where you’ve lived your whole life is politics and so is knowing your continued citizenship is assured no matter what you do.
The ability to safely have an abortion is politics; the ability to sponsor your spouse for citizenship in the country where you live, regardless of your income, is politics.
Travel bans are politics and the ability to travel between countries is politics.
The suspension of civil liberties is politics; being accorded human rights is politics.
Speaking up and taking to the streets against your government when it provides moral and military cover to a genocide is politics, and so is not doing these things.
Taking part in a cultural boycott as an act of solidarity with an oppressed people is politics and saying no, art should be separate from politics is politics.
School fees preventing you from going to university: politics. Leaving university mired in debt: politics. The inability to afford a mortgage despite your university degree and your job: politics. Waiting months for cancer treatment that needs to happen now: politics. Asthma because of the bad quality of the air you breathe: politics. No libraries where once there were libraries: politics. An uptick in racism: politics. Raising or teaching or being any of the 4.5 million children living in poverty in a country with the world’s 6th largest economy: politics
How is our art ever to be free of political passions when everything we have to be passionate about—the people we love, the books we read, the natural world we cherish, the clean air our bodies want us to breath—is so tied up in politics.
Lighting the streets at night, bathing under a shower, eating grilled corn on the promenade, going to school, kissing your husband, burying your loved ones: politics.
Everything I’ve listed is political for everyone, whether in war or in peace, whether it is easy to do it or impossible. There are time when politics suffocates us, there are times it allows us to breathe. It is politics either way.
This is what the feminists who took up the line “the personal is political” understood: we live within a particular political framework which creates a specific political culture. That political culture sets the norms, it names what is permissible and what is transgressive. It says “you can” and “you cannot.”
How is our art ever to be free of political passions when everything we have to be passionate about—the people we love, the books we read, the natural world we cherish, the clean air our bodies want us to breath—is so tied up in politics.
For many of us who grew up in places where politics was more suffocating than not one of the main stories of the 21st century has been the vast swathe of politically progressive ground that has been ceded so easily, in countries where the consequences to political engagement and opposition have been so comparatively low. Too many have chosen the politics of non-engagement, which is at best a hair’s breadth away from acquiescence or complicity. In the lives of writers, the frankly bizarre and incoherent idea that politics and art should be separate has played a key role in fermenting this non-engagement.
And frankly that bizarre idea makes the PEN Charter incoherent too. English PEN’s website tell us that the PEN Charter has “guided, united and inspired its members for over 60 years.” But how can it unite us when we have Article 2 urging art to stand apart from politics, and Article 4 which is absolutely drenched in politics?
Wells’s attempt to hold the two in balance relied on a division between art and politics, but that division is entirely illusory. The illusion has has done us no good and it has done our literature no good. It is an embarrassment to English PEN and all its fine work of political engagement to continue to enshrine such an idea in its Charter. And there are practical implications: any PEN Centre or any member of a PEN board that doesn’t want to engage with politics that need urgently to be engaged with can simply point to article 2 in defence of its position.
I’d like to propose that at the next PEN Congress, Article 2 be struck off the Charter.
No one should have been using that piece of household china, anyway; too many cracks in its surface.
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Kamila Shamsie delivered English PEN’s annual PEN Lecture in Newcastle, UK, on Thursday 19 June 2025, in partnership with New Writing North and the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts.
