Living in Hope and History

by Nadine Gordimer

  —Jawaharlal Memorial Lecture, 1995

  NOTES

  THREE IN A BED: FICTION, MORALS, AND POLITICS

  [4] ‘The whale is the agent . . .’ Harry Levin, ‘The Jonah Complex’, The Power of Blackness (Vintage Books, 1960), p. 215.

  [7] ‘My book is going to sell . . .’ Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857, selected, edited and trans. by Francis Steegmuller (Belknap Press, Harvard, 1990), p. 224.

  [8] ‘undirected play . . .’ Seamus Heaney, The Government of the Tongue (Faber & Faber, 1988), p. 96.

  [9] ‘as not having to do . . .’ From a quote in my notebooks, source not noted.

  [9] ‘Russia became a garden . . .’ Bely quoted by Peter Levi in Boris Pasternak (Hutchinson, 1990), p. 142.

  [9] ‘We want the glorious . . .’ Quoted by Evgeny Pasternak, Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years 1930-60 (Collins Harvill, 1990), p. 38.

  [10] ‘A sincere but perverted . . .’ Claudio Magris, Inferences from a Sabre, trans. Mark Thompson (Polygon, 1990).

  [10] ‘I told him My Sister, Life . . .’ Quoted by Peter Levi in Boris Pasternak (Hutchinson, 1990), p. 100.

  [11] ‘The lie is quite as real . . .’ Magris, Inferences, p. 43.

  [11] ‘We page through . . .’ Mongane Wally Serote, A Tough Tale (Kliptown Books, 1987), p. 7.

  [11] ‘We want the world . . .’ Ibid.

  [12] ‘a disease at the very centre . . .’ Harold Pinter, broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4 programme Opinion, May 31, 1990.

  [14] ‘guerrillas of the imagination . . .’ Seamus Heaney, ‘Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam’, The Government of the Tongue, p. 73.

  [15] ‘help people . . .‘ Per Wastberg, addressing PEN International Writers’ Day, June 2, 1990.

  [15] ‘When seats are assigned . . .’ Quoted by Peter Levi in Boris Pasternak, p. 159

  THE STATUS OF THE WRITER IN THE WORLD

  TODAY: WHICH WORLD? WHOSE WORLD?

  [19] they show both the writer and his or her people what they are . . . Paraphrased by Vladimir Nabokov in Nikolai Gogol (New Directions, 1961), p. 129.

  [20] the first congress . . . Congress of African Writers and Artists, the Sorbonne, Paris, under the auspices of Presence Africaine, 1956.

  [25] ‘imaginary history . . .’ Lebona Mosia, ‘Time to Be Truly Part of Africa’, The Star, Johannesburg, September 26, 1997.

  [28] With the exceptions of the pre-Hispanic civilisations . . . Octavio Paz, In Light of India, trans. Eliot Weinberger (Harcourt Brace, 1997).

  [28] ‘Every civilisation . . .’ Henri Lopès, Le Lys et le Flamboyant (Editions du Seuil, 1997). My translation from the French.

  [29] ‘What you expect . . .’ Amu Djoleto, ‘A Passing Thought’, Messages: Poems from Ghana, ed. Kofi Awoonor and Adali-Mortty (African Writers Series, 1971).

  REFERENCES: THE CODES OF CULTURE

  [39] ‘to make the reader . . .’ S/Z, trans. Richard Miller, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974).

  [39] As Richard Howard sums up . . . ‘A Note on S/Z’, by Roland Batches, p. X1.

  [40] ‘To survey his writings . . .’ Harry Levin, ‘From Obsession to Imagination: The Psychology of the Writer’, Michigan Quarterly Review X11:3 (Summer 1974), p. 90.

  [40] to survey his . . . Harry Levin, ‘From Obsession to Imagination’, p. 90.

  [40] to make the reader . . . Barthes, S/Z, p. 21.

  [40] ‘Words are symbols . . .’ Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Congress’, The Book of Sand, trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni (Penguin, 1979), p. 33.

  [42] Italo Calvino wrote . . . ‘Whom Do We Write For?’, The Literature Machine, trans. Patrick Creagh (Secker & Warburg, 1987), p. 86.

  [45] ‘another body of knowledge . . .’ John Berger, ‘An Explanation’, Pig Earth (Pantheon, 1980), p. 9.

  [45] ‘She writes the kind of fiction . . .’ Lorrie Moore, review of Bobbie Ann Mason’s Love Life in The New York Times Book Review, March 12, 1989.

  [45] there has been demonstrated recently . . . 1996 census records population as 40,583,573, of whom 4,434,697 are white. An officially unconfirmed census in 1998 gives a figure of 46 million.

  THE LION, THE BULL, AND THE TREE

  [50] ‘The African Apprehension of Reality’, from Senghor: Prose and Poetry, ed. John Reed and Clive Wake (Heinemann, 1976).

  [52] ‘Lord God, forgive . . .’ Ibid.

  [52] As Claude Wauthier remarks . . . The Literature and Thought of Modern Africa (Pall Mall Library of African Affairs, 1966).

  [53] ‘Senghor sees Chaka . . .’ Ibid.

  [54] ‘unity is rediscovered . . .’ ‘New York’, Senghor: Prose and Poetry.

  THE DIALOGUE OF LATE AFTERNOON

  [59] the latest work . . . Naguib Mahfouz, Echoes of an Autobiography (Anchor Books, 1997).

  [60] he has the gift . . . ‘Zaabalawi: The Concealed Side’, Nadine Gordimer, Writing and Being (Harvard University Press, 1995).

  [65] ‘Zaabalawi’, The Time and the Place, and Other Stories (Doubleday, 1991).

  JOSEPH ROTH: LABYRINTH OF EMPIRE AND EXILE

  [69] ‘Je travaille, . . .’ In a letter to his translator, Blanche Gidon, quoted by Beatrice Musgrave in her introduction to Weights and Measures (Everyman’s Library, 1983), p. 9. Roth lived in Paris for some years and two of his novels, Le Triomphe de la Beauté and Le Buste de L’Empereur, were published first in French, not German. Le Triomphe de la Beaute probably was written in French; it appears not to have been published in German.

  [70] ‘One can’t be angry . . .’ Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities, trans. Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser (Secker & Warburg, 1961). Musil was born in 1880, and though long neglected, he was not forgotten as long as Roth. Musil became a figure in world literature in the fifties; Roth’s work had to wait another twenty years before being reissued in Germany, let alone in translation. A new and more complete translation of Musil’s novel, by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike, was published in 1995.

  [70] (1928?) The Silent Prophet was put together from unpublished work, with the exception of fragments published in 24 Neue Deutsche Erzahler and Die Neue Rundschau in 1929, and was published long after Roth’s death, in 1966. The work appears to have been written, with interruptions, over several years. The central character, Kargan, is supposedly modelled on Trotsky.

  [70] ‘Found unfit . . . ‘Joseph Roth, The Emperor’s Tomb (Chatto & Windus), p. 119.

  [71] ‘We love the world . . .’ Roth, Right and Left (Chatto & Windus), p. 48.

  [72] ‘intended to exemplify . . .’ Roth, The Silent Prophet (The Overlook Press), p. 9

  [73] ‘Ill at ease . . .’ Czeslaw Milosz, ‘To Raja Rao’, Selected Poems (The Ecco Press, 1980), p. 29.

  [74] the dating of his novels . . . The dates I cite are generally the dates of first publication in the original German.

  [75] ‘fall into a gloomy . . .’ Roth, Right and Left.

  [75] ‘It seemed to the stationmaster . . .’ Fallmerayer the Stationmaster, in Hotel Savoy, which also includes ‘The Bust of the Emperor’ (Chatto & Windus), p. 131.

  [76] ‘Though fate elected him . . .’ Roth, The Radetzsky March (The Overlook Press/Tusk).

  [78] ‘This is for you, Herr Baron . . .’ Roth, The Emperor’s Tomb (Chatto & Windus).

  [80] ‘an extensiveness . . .’ Walter Benjamin, ‘One-Way Street’, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Dementz, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Schocken Books).

  [80] ‘Lieutenant Trotta died . . .’ The Radetzsky March, p. 309.

  [81] ‘My friends’ excitement . . . Long live the Emperor’, The Emperor’s Tomb, p. 152-56.

  [102] ‘History says . . .’ Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991).

  HOW SHALL WE LOOK AT EACH OTHER THEN?

  [139] ‘So we shall have buried apartheid . . .’ Mongane Wally Serote, A Tough Tale, p. 7.

  [139] an American analyst of world problems . . . Flora Lewis, International Herald Tribune, June 20, 1990.

>   [141] Sixty-six. According to Major-General Herman Stadler, the South African Police expert on ‘terror’ organizations, sixty-one whites have been killed in Freedom Fighter (he terms them terrorist) attacks since 1976. Information supplied to Allister Sparks, August 23, 1990. According to Mr Sparks’ files, there were five other deaths of this nature between 1960 and 1976, bringing the total to sixty-six by August 1990.

  [143] ‘If we want things . . .’ Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard, trans. Archibald Colquhoun (London: Collins Harvill, 1960), p. 31.

  [144] Václav Havel said . . . From my notes, taken at a conference, ‘The Anatomy of Hate—Resolving Conflict Through Dialogue and Democracy’, Oslo, August 1990.

  ACT TWO: ONE YEAR LATER

  [170] I quote Leibniz’s gibe . . . Philosophische Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin, 1875-90), Vol. IV, p. 329. Leibniz’s statement, like Descartes’ Rule, is quoted from Bernard Williams’s study Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (Pelican Books, 1978), p. 32.

  AS OTHERS SEE US

  [177] ‘Tough Love Crowd’ . . . Ronald Suresh Roberts, Clarence Thomas: Tough Love Crowd; Counterfeit Heroes and Unhappy Truths (New York University Press, 1995).

  LABOUR WELL THE TEEMING EARTH

  [185] ‘might do well to re-dedicate themselves . . .’ Pranay Gupta, International Herald Tribune, September 16, 1997.

  THE WRITER’S IMAGINATION AND THE

  IMAGINATION OF THE STATE

  [192] what Lukács calls . . . Theory of the Novel.

  [194] ‘to discover the conditions . . .’ ‘What Is Epic Theatre’. From Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (Fontana, 1983).

  WRITING AND BEING

  [196] Like the prisoner . . . Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The God’s Script’, Labyrinths and Other Writings, ed. Donald H. Yates and James E. Irby. (Penguin, 1988).

  [197] Roland Barthes asks . . . Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (Hill and Wang), p. 131.

  [197] Claude Lévi-Strauss wittily de-mythologizes . . .‘ . . . je les situais a michemin entre le conte de fées et le roman policier’, Histoire de Lynx (Plon), p. 13.

  [197] as Nikos Kazantzakis once wrote . . . Report to Greco (Faber & Faber), p. 150.

  [198] as Roland Barthes does . . . S/Z.

  [199] Anthony Burgess once gave . . . London Observer, April 19, 1981.

  [200] a little Kafka parable . . . Franz Kafka, ‘The Third Octavo Notebook’, Wedding Preparations in the Country (Secker & Warburg).

  [202] Camus dealt . . . Albert Camus, Carnets 1942-5.

  [202] And Márquez redefined tendenz fiction thus . . . Gabriel García Márquez, in an interview. My notes do not give the journal or date.

  [203] Czeslaw Milosz once wrote . . . ‘Dedication’, Selected Poems (The Ecco Press).

  [203] and Brecht wrote . . . ‘To Posterity’, Selected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, trans. H. R. Hays (Grove Press), p. 173.

  [203] ‘make the decision . . .’ Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco.

  LIVING ON A FRONTIERLESS LAND:

  CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION

  [210] Edward Said cites . . . Orientalism (Vintage Books, 1979), p. 25.

  [213] Claude Lévi-Strauss’s splendid exegesis . . . The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Vol. 1 (Jonathan Cape, 1970).

  OUR CENTURY

  [216] ‘If I cannot move Heaven . . .’ Virgil’s lines from the Aeneid, as translated by Freud as a motto for his Interpretation of Dreams.

  [216] ‘the defining moments of terror . . .’ Gar Alperovitz, ‘The Truman Show’, Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 9, 1998.

  [216] ‘are not merely . . .’ The Crazy Iris, and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath, ed. Kenzaburo Oe (Grove Press, 1985).

  [217] France was followed by India and Pakistan in 1998.

  [223] ‘One of the things . . .’ Salman Rushdie in an interview, London, 1995.

  [224] ‘to speak of trees . . .’ ‘To Posterity’, Selected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, trans. H. R. Hays (Grove Press, 1959).

  [224] ‘a terrible beauty is born’… ‘Easter 1916’, Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (Macmillan, 1950).

  [224] which Proust defines . . . Quoted by Robert Painter in Marcel Proust, Vol. 11, p. 307.

  [225] Satyajit Ray, Indian film-maker . . . Quoted by Andrew Robinson in ‘The Inner Eye: Aspects of Satyajit Ray’, London, October, 1982.

  [226] ‘man in the process . . .’ Sartre, Le Fantôme de Staline. (Publisher not recorded in my notebooks.)

  [228] ‘Freedom for the huts! . . .’ Georg Büchner, Der Hessische Landbote (The Hessian Messenger). (Publisher not recorded in my notebooks.)

  [229] Gandhi formulated a concept . . . M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1950).

  [229] ‘Satyagraha postulates . . .’ Ibid.

  [230] as Umberto Eco writes . . . ‘Ur-Fascism’, The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995.

  [236] ‘without doubt the most murderous . . .’ Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short 20th Century 1914-1918 (Michael Joseph), p. 13.

  [236] ‘ceaseless adventure of man . . .’ Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (Meridian Books, 1951), p. 16.