Pandemic-Literature and Empathy
Prof. Dr. Metin Karadağ, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from Cyprus International University (CIU) expressed that the transmission revealed some unpredictable new forms of production and lifestyles along with the many difficulties and problems experienced during the pandemic process.
Karadağ underlined that the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused deaths all over the world, disrupted economies and led to the emergence of new lifestyles and behavioral patterns via reversing the stereotyped processes accompanied by the radical changes and transformations in the fields of academia/education, culture, and art.
“Reading has become a way of life”
Stating that they observed important developments in student-centered academic productivity with the distance education method and digital environment coming to the fore, Karadağ also said that “reading” has become a lifestyle for everyone in the way of life embodied by the slogan “stay at home, stay safe”.
Two novels dealing with similar situations
Prof. Dr. Karadağ stated that literature produced gigantic works dealing with universally infected destructions and reminded Albert Camus' famous Plague. Also Karadağ stressed the importance of reading the Blindness which he read during the coronavirus days written by a Portuguese writer Jose Saramago who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and expressed that the book can open up many different courses in terms of understanding the process and looking ahead.
Prof. Dr. Karadağ emphasized that he believes that the suffering caused by the pandemic and the consequent losses will create a distinct functionality in the formation of environmental and universal empathy, and added the following about Blindness: “there is an old and widespread belief; some values become meaningful when they are lost. Every day we watch the news of death, economic breakdowns, individual and mass suffering. In the magnificent literary masterpiece called Blindness, Saramago directs the loss of the ability of vision of the healthy people as a result of a kind of epidemic, and the tragic formations experienced afterward in people, who do not see, study, read, and doom with a heartbreaking epic narrative.
Those who do not see the suffering of others, do not care about environmental problems, are the ones that are destined with blindness. While reminding once again that literature is filled with many examples other than this novel, in which emphasis is on empathy, it is necessary to open our doors to literature in the way of “Stay at Home” lifestyle”.