The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places I Nadine Gordimer; Ed Ited and Introduced by Stephen Clingman.-Tst American Ed
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The Essential Gesture NADINE GORDIMER The Essential Gesture Writing, Politics and Places Edited and with an introduction by Stephen Clingman ALFRED A. KNOPF NEW YORK 1988 THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. Copyright© 1988 by Felix Licensing B.V. 1.0. and Stephen Clingman All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Con ventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd., London. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Harcourt Brace jovanovich , Inc., for permission to reprint 'The Burning of the Books' from Bertoli Brecht's Selected Poems. Copyright 194 7 by Bertolt Brecht and H. R. Hays. Copyright renewer� 1975 by Stefan S. Brecht and H. R. Hays. Reprinted by permis sion of Harcourt Brace jovanovich, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gordimer, Nadine. The essential gesture: writing, politics and places I Nadine Gordimer; ed ited and introduced by Stephen Clingman.-tst American ed. p. em. Bibliography: p. ISBN 0-394-56882-6 1. Gordimer, Nadine-Biography. 2. Novelists, South African-2oth cen tury-Biography. 3· South Africa-Politics and government-2oth cen tury. 4· South Africa-Race relations. I. Clingman, Stephen. II. Title. PR9369•3•c6z467 1988 823-dc 19 88-21612 w � Manufactured in the United States of America. First American Edition Contents Acknowledgments Vll Introduction Beginnings A Bolter and the Invincible Summer I 9 A Writer in South Africa Where Do Whites Fit In? 3I ChiefLuthuli 38 Great Problems in the Street 52 Censored, Banned, Gagged 58 Why Did Bram Fischer Choose jail? 68 One Man Living Through It 79 Speak Out: The Necessity fo r Protest 87 A Writer's Freedom 104 Selecting My Stories I I I Letter fromJohannes burg, I 976 I I8 Relevance and Commitment I 33 A Writer in Africa Egypt Revisited I48 The Congo River I 57 Madagascar I86 Pula! I99 Merci Dieu, It Changes 211 A Vision ofTwo Blood-Red Suns 22I VI Contents Living in the Interregnum The Unkillable Word Censors and Unconfessed History Living in the Interregnum The Essential Gesture Letterfromjohannesburg, 1985 Notes 311 Index 343 Acknowledgments Compiling this volume has involved intensive as well as pleasurable work and in this regard I must acknowledge my gratitude to Nadine Gordimer who not only gave me the free run of her personal material, but was always at hand to help with the tracking of elusive references to sources she might have used. This was service above and beyond the call of duty, and I could not have done without it. Others who helped me trace particularly intractable references, or else provided invaluable background information, include colleagues at the University of the Witwatersrand: Gilbert Marcus and Laura Mangan of the Centre fo r Applied Legal Studies, Tim Couzens, Kelwyn Sole and Paul la Hausse of the African Studies Institute, Philip Bonner, Department of History, Hen rietta Mondry, Department of Russian Studies, and Reingard Nethersole, Department of Comparative Literature. Andrea van Niekerk assisted with aspects of translation; Reeva Bor owsky helped me find an important clue in the pursuit of Turgenev; Tamsin Donaldson (later) provided advice and words of wisdom. I am especially grateful to Professors Charles van Onselen and Tim Couzens of the African Studies Institute fo r providing such a congenial setting in which to carry out this work, and to the Society fo r the Humanities, Cornell University, where the book was completed. One acknowledg ment is a close and heartfelt one: my wife Moira not only helped with references and proof-reading, but once again was the reservoir of serenity from which I continue to draw strength. Needless to say, whatever deficienciesrem ain in the editing of this volume are the fa ult of none of the people men tioned here. Ithaca, May 1988 Stephen Clingman vii Introduction In June 193 7, at the age of thirteen, Nadine Gordimer's first published fiction appeared.' In the fifty-one years since then people the world over have become fa miliar with the career of a major writer. Since 1949 Gordimer has published seven volumes of short stories and nine novels; her work has been translated into some twenty languages; she has won several of the most important literary prizes in Europe, the United States and South Africa. To many she has, through her fiction, become the interpreter of South Africa as, over the years, her country has marched down its doom-ridden slope of apartheid. Inside that tragedy Gordimer's has been a voice of conscience, of moral rigour, and of a clarifiedhope - the kind of hope that writing of brilliance can bring with it, no matter what kind of social distortions it is fo rced to survey. What not many readers are aware of, however, is that fo r much of that period Gordimer's fictionhas been accompanied by a remarkable output and array of non-fictional writing. Essays on writing and other writers, on South African politics, on censorship; biographical and autobiographical pieces; reviews and travelogues: these have been a consistent accom paniment to her fiction, echoing its concerns, providing a picture of South Africa in transition, and an inner account of an equivalent set of changes in Gordimer's life, experience and thoughts. Of a comprehensive catalogue ofnearly 160 titles some originally appearing in major international publications, some in small, out-of-the-way magazines, some relatively minor or never published at all - this is a selection of essays on writing, politics and places.2 In some respects the categorisations are broad ones. Thus, the essays on 'writing' and 'politics' include biographical pieces on literary and political figures, while Gordimer's 2 Th e Essential Gesture articles on censorship cover both literary and political ground. Similarly, the idea of'places' alludes to Gordimer's continuing attention to her South African world - a world which emerges in some breadth and depth through these essays - as well as those pieces of a specifically geographical alignment - her travel essays on Africa. What then are some of the issues which arise through a volume such as this? What are the thematic continuities which bind it together? This introduction cannot answer these questions at any length, but it can open up some avenues of thought. 'I remain a writer, not a public speaker: nothing I say here will be as true as my fiction.' Gordimer's pronouncement, from her essay 'Living in the Interregnum',3 stands as a kind of judg ment on her non-fiction as a whole. One can readily under stand why she makes it. Beyond the mere conventionality of a belief in the essential mystique of fiction, there is the fo rmula tion she offers elsewhere in this volume, in 'Selecting My Stories': 'fiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but undreamt of in the living of a single life.' Here we do begin to see how fictionmay represent social truths more searching and comprehensive than strict limitation to the 'facts' would allow. But is it necessarily so that Gordimer's fiction is 'truer' than her non-fiction?Is there such a radical gap between the two? Are there perhaps other kinds of truths which emerge from a collection such as this? One kind of truth evident here is an obvious and immedi ately compelling one: Nadine Gordimer is a most extra ordinary observer of her society. Through her essays the reader will gain an intricate and intimate view of what life in South Africa is like; even the South African reader is likely to be taken aback, perhaps recognising fo r the first time an aspect of the fa miliar or everyday world because Nadine Gordimer has noticed it. The quality of her writing has everything to do with this. On occasion here, as elsewhere, she has been dismissive of journalism in general because of its supposed superficiality. Yet these essays show what a superb journalist Gordimer might have been, because her insight is inseparable from her literary skills: one might say she is able to see in these words. Thus, in describing Albert Luthuli, or Bram Fischer, or Nat Introduction 3 Nakasa, suddenly the factual account deepens. By means of a word or a gesture characterisation comes through; a story envelops the characters; we are in the midst of a narrative, and the narrative adds substantially to our understanding. This is not very different from the skills with which Gordimer's fiction is imprinted, and indeed it would be surprising if this were not the case. Because of the skills, however, we are getting a highly privileged fa ctual account. In the same way that journalism takes on the proclivities of narrative in her hands, over the course of the essays - con sidering now the South African essays primarily - Gordimer's social depiction deepens into an implicit history. Nowhere in this volume is there a comprehensive survey of South African society or politics over the last fo rty or so years (any such overview is beyond the scope of this introduction as well). Yet, through these essays a history emerges none the less, one which the reader can fo llow. The rise to power of the National Party in 1948, and life under apartheid; the political, social and cultural world of the 1950s; the sabotage and resistance of the 1g6os, as well as their defeat by the state; the rise of the Black Consciousness movement in the 1970s and the Soweto Revolt; the revolution which seemed to have begun by the 1g8os: a cumulative picture builds up not only of these events and movements themselves, but also of what it has been like to live through them.