Former Serbian-Croat leader and war criminal Radovan Karadzic, who was apprehended at the weekend after 13 years on the run, apparently started life as a working class poet who couldn't get his work published by a sneering middle-class, and despite becoming a psychiatrist to be admitted to their ranks.Thus after a spell in the Green Party he turned his hand to politics, assuming leadership of his country through founding the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), but resorting to less-than-democratic means to attain/maintain power, culminating in the torture and genocide of countless fellow countrymen.
Now the worst I've considered is attending a Quaker Meeting and when it's my turn proclaiming that the Lord has moved me to share my entire works with them and they can't leave until I've finished.
Is that where I'm going wrong? If the pen doesn't prove 'mightier than the sword', should one then give the sword a chance?
And did Karadzic give his victims one last purchasing opportunity to acquire his complete works as an alternative to a bullet-in-the-head?
Which makes you wonder really - if Hitler began his life as an artist who couldn't sell his work, what would have happened if he'd won the German equivalent of the Turner Prize in the early 20th C and had enjoyed a meteoric art career...? And was artistic jealousy behind his hatred of Jews in particular (a demographic known for their high percentage of successful artists)?
An unappreciated artist can be a dangerous creature methinks.
As a poet friend of mine puts it
Best Seller
Poetry doesn't normally sell
But mine might
For I intend to embark
On a series
Of bizarre and
Motiveless murders
On and around
Hampstead Heath.
Poetry doesn't normally sell
But mine might...
© Paul Birtill
*It works, he always sells a lot of books after ending his set with it!
By the by, here is a collection of Mr Karadzic's later work published while on the run;
I Can Look For Myself
PS: Doesn't he look like the long-lost brother of Ted Hughes (below), if he hadn't killed his hairdresser, though?
