Commonwealth Literature and the Modern World

I COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE AND THE MODERN WORLD edited by HEN A MAES-JELINEK Published under the sponsorship of the REVUE DES LANGUES VIVANTES. Place Cockerill 3 4000 LIEGE. Cover designed by John Rochester © Librairie Marcel Didier S.A. Bruxelles 1975. D. 1975/0208/2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword . 7 Hena Maes-Jelinek Opening Address : Commonwealth Literature in the Modern World 9 A. Norman Jeffares Reflection and Vision 15 Wilson Harris Poems .... 21 Wayne Brown The Impact of Literary Periodicals on the Development of West Indian Literature and Cultural Independence . 25 Reinhard Sander Melville and Harris : Poetic Imaginations Related in their Response to the Modern World . 33 Joyce Adler The "Intimacy of a Horror" : The Tradition of Wilson Harris's Palace of the Peacock . • . • . 43 John Fletcher T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and Wilson Harris's The Waiting Room . 51 Eva Sear/ 5 The Poetical Journey of Derek Walcott . 61 Michel Fabre V. S. Naipaul's Free Statement 69 Alastair Niven Towards a History of South African Literature 79 Albert Gerard Black South African Literature in English, 1900-1950 89 Tim~ns The Criticism of African Novelists and their Narrative Resources . 97 Christopher Heywood The Nigerian Civil War in Nigerian Literature 105 Arthur Ravenscroft Wole Soyinka Talking Through his Hat 115 Bernth Lindfors The Cross Tilted to Fall : Hal Porter's The Tilted Cross 127 Anna Rutherford Form into Shape : His Natural Life and Capricornia in a Common- wealth Context 137 Robert T. Robertson Death as the Gateway to Being in Janet Frame's Novels 147 Jeanne Delbaere-Garant Janet Frame's Brave New World: Intensive Care 157 Victor Dupont New direction in Canadian Fiction 169 Hallvard Dahlie Wilson Harris's Contributions to Kyk-over-Al: 1945-1961 175 Reinhard Sander Notes on Contributors 177 Members of the Conference . 181 6 FOREWORD The papers published in this volume were delivered at a conference on Commonwealth literature held at the University of Liege from 2nd to 5th April 1974 on the theme "Commonwealth Literature and the Modern World." -..Drle of the purposes of the conference was to promote an exchange of views between members of the European branch of ACLALS (Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) and other European scholars who have begun to study and teach Commonwealth literature. It was not a purely European concern, however. The conference was attended by the Guyanese novelist Wilson Harris, the South African novelist Dan Jacobson and the Caribbean poet Wayne Brown, and critics came from Mrica, Canada, the West Indies and the United States. Commonwealth literature is par excellence a field of comparative studies. As Professor Jeffares suggested in the opening address, no culture exists in a vacuum, and the study of a particular literature or writer calls for comparison with what is being or has been written in other regions of the Commonwealth and with the English literary tradition itself. Professor Jeffares's argument centres on the reception given Commonwealth literature in the modern world and raises the essential and often debated question of critical standards within and outside the Commonwealth. His plea, taken up by Christopher Heywood in his discussion of the criticism of African novels, is for open, non-parochial critical assessments that would avoid both the traps of literary fashion and the partiality of much well-intentioned academic criticism. The unconscious prejudices inherent in the complacently "humanistic" approach of this kind of criticism are exposed by Wilson Harris, who warns against the danger of polarizing literatures into established or "complete" entities and their so-called "colonial" by-products. The task of the creative imagination, Mr Harris implies, is to unmask the self-decep tively "generous" postures in contemporary attitudes which may thwart the free development of truly original art whether in the metropolis or in its former dependencies. The majority of papers deal with the other aspect of the theme, namely the individual writer's response to the modern world. Some are concerned with the "common ground" (alluded to by Professor Jeffares) that is present in the seemingly disparate experience of people in different ages and in the many parts of the Commonwealth. The three papers on Wilson Harris I are all comparative studies and point to a potential dialogue between his creative imagination and that of earlier writers. From a somewhat similar dialogue between "old worlds and new," or old and new literatures that may I 7 present opposite visions of the world but share in a community of language, Professor Robertson discovers the emergence of "the third alternative," a distinctive element in Commonwealth literature. The descriptions of a divided or cruel world found in the work of such writers as Hal Porter, Janet Frame, V. S. Naipaul and the Nigerian poets (on all of whom contri butions were offered) seem to be far removed from any such possibility as that discussed by Professor Robertson, but it is quite plain that many writers in the Commonwealth are indeed working towards the creation of this "third alternative." Apart from critical essays, this volume also contains poems by Wayne Brown,..._some of which have never been published before. Some of the materials analysed are not readily available: Professor Lindfors discusses talks given by W ole Soyinka on the Nigerian radio; Tim Couzens gives an account of works that he has only recently discovered by the South African writer H. I. E. Dhlomo, and Reinhard Sander contributes a complete bibliography of Wilson Harris's early, uncollected writings. We regret the non-appearance of Dan Jacobson's contribution to the conference. Mr. Jacobson gave a reading of his fine short story "Beggar My Neighbour," which captures so fully the pitfalls and emotional tensions into which the white South African liberal is betrayed. Mr. Jacobson followed his reading with an informal account of "the story behind the story." After relating the anecdote (of an incident in his home town) that had given him the initial situation, he explained why he came to discard successive drafts (involving new episodes, more complex handling of character and implication and shifts of narrative viewpoint) until by trial and error he arrived at the form in which the story was published. Mr. Jacobson's modesty and geniality in laying bare his "craft"-his patient construction of a "house" that in its final form would not "collapse" as soon as its author turned his back-endeared him to the audience and gave a special pleasure to the morning. * * * Thanks for financial assistance are due to the Belgian Ministry of Edu cation, the University of Liege, the Administration of International Cultural Relations in Belgium, the Australian Embassy, the British Council and several generous donors, who prefer to remain anonymous. I am grateful to Professor Welsch, Rector of the University of Liege, for graciously lending the Chateau de Colonster and to Professor Simon, Professor Gerard, my colleagues and students for the valuable help they gave to make the conference a success. My grateful thanks go to Eva Searl for the considerable help she has given me in editing the papers and to Anna Rutherford for much helpful advice and for her assistance in preparing the manuscripts. Hena Maes-Jelinek 8 COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE IN THE MODERN WORLD A. Norman Jeffares A welcome decision was taken at the ACLALS conference in Uganda that future international conferences on Commonwealth literature will occupy no more than half of their time with discussion of the local literature of the country where the conference is being held. This is as important as is a continuing wish-so well exemplified here in Liege (as earlier in the regional conferences in Aarhus in 1971 and in Leeds in 1970 and 1972) to have present both writers and critics. Now one certainly gains a deeper under standing of a country's literature by visiting its locale-the reader can measure his imagination against the reality of sights, and sounds, and smells, as well as against the intellectual and social background. The imaginative experience and the actuality become complementary. For instance, I used to read as a child those stern and stirring tales of India penned by Flora Annie Steele, Maud Diver and I. A. R. Wylie-then I advanced to Kipling, with Kim and the short stories. My own subsequent experience of India-some intensely concentrated months in various regions in 1957-made sense of some of what had seemed not exactly non-sensical but non-apprensible in these romances and novels. And then, I read Narayan's novels which suddenly united for me the lasting elements in earlier Victorian and Edwardian views of India, and the teeming reality of modern Indian life with all its mixtures of attitudes, of materialism as well as the spiritual qualities so often over-stressed by Indian writers. And Narayan's gentle irony is very attractive to the modern reader: not least to those who have had the good fortune to see something of the subcontinent and appreciate its contrarities : the pressures created by its teeming life and the ennervation caused by its climate. So a visit to a Commonwealth country means that the visitors see l 9 something-even if only a little-of the particular country as well as meeting a variety of local writers and critics. There is a great advantage to both . incomer and insider in such meetings. There is the obvious stimulus of meeting different attitudes, based on different experiences. But what is gained is, ultimate:Iy;-a recognition of common ground, common experience. And this is the great literature of the past, its status proved over the years to be beyond the whimsies of literary fashion, or the remorselessly circling thesis machinery, ever seeking new material for processing or old for recycling.

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