Telling Times
Page 82
69 The Silent Prophet was edited from unpublished work, with the exception of fragments published in 24 Neue Deutsche Erzähler and Die Neue Rundschau in 1929, and published after Roth’s death, in 1966. The English translation by David Le Vay was published in the United States by the Overlook Press in 1980. The work appears to have been written, with interruptions, over several years. The central character, Kargan, is supposedly modelled on Trotsky.
70 Czeslaw Milosz, ‘To Raja Rao’, Selected Poems, Ecco Press, New York, 1980, p. 29.
71 The dates I give are generally the dates of first publications, in the original German.
72 Walter Benjamin, ‘One-Way Street’, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, edited and with an introduction by Peter Demetz, translated by Edmund Jephcott, Schocken, New York, 1986, p. 83.
Turning the Page
73 References here are to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Up in Arms by Chenjerai Hove, Fog at Season’s End by Alex L. Guma, Down Second Avenue by Es’kia Mphahlele, Song of Lawino by Okot P’Bitek, Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Money-Order by Sembene Ousmane, The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera, A World of Strangers by Nadine Gordimer, Fools by Njabulo Ndebele, Blame Me on History by Bloke Modisane, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist by Breyten Breytenbach, The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka and A Tough Tale by Mongane Wally Serote.
Letter from South Africa
74 2010: O. R. Tambo Airport, renamed for the great Oliver Tambo, a hero of the struggle against apartheid, up on the heights of Mandela.
75 Oliver Tambo along with him; and the renaming of hospitals, many other institutions, and high roads for freedom fighters.
Our Century
76 Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, Meridian Books, London, 1951, p. 16.
The Status of the Writer in the World Today
77 Quoted, in paraphrase, by Vladimir Nabokov, in Nikolai Gogol by Vladimir Nabokov, New Directions, New York, 1961, p. 129.
78 ‘Congress of Negro Writers and Artists’, at the Sorbonne, Paris, under the auspices of Présence Africaine, 1956.
79 Publishing and Book Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Annotated Bibliography, Hans Zell Publishers, Oxford, 1996.
80 ‘Time To Be Truly Part of Africa’, Lebona Mosia, Dean of the Arts Faculty, Technikon Northern Gauteng, Soshanguve, The Star, Johannesburg, 26 September 1997.
81 Octavio Paz, In Light of India, translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger, Harcourt Brace, 1997.
82 Henri Lopez, Le Lys et le Flamboyant, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1997. My translation from the French.
83 Amu Djoleto, ‘A Passing Thought’, Messages: Poems from Ghana, edited by Kofi Awoonor and Adali-Mortty, Heinemann, London, 1971.
When Art Meets Politics
84 Franz Kafka, Kafka’s Diaries, 1922.
85 Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time.
86 Ernst Fischer, The Necessity of Art.
87 Pablo Picasso, Lettres Françaises.
88 Gustave Flaubert, letter to Turgenev, 13 November 1872, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1857 – 1880, translated and edited by Francis Steegmuller.
89 George Steiner, Language and Silence.
90 Pablo Neruda (my notebooks do not give the source – probably his autobiography).
91 Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne, translated by Joel Agee.
92 Milan Kundera, Life Is Elsewhere.
93 Czeslaw Milosz, ‘To Raja Raó’, Selected Poems, Ecco, New York, 1980.
A Letter to Future Generations
94 George Soros, ‘The International Crisis: An Interview’, New York Review, interview with Jeff Madrick, January 1999.
95 Amartya Sen, ‘Economics Laureate Condemns Arms Sales’, The Star, Johannesburg, 5 January 1999.
96 Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of United Nations, speech at launch of UNDP ‘Eradication of Poverty’ programme, UN, 1997.
Hemingway’s Expatriates
97 Walter Berthoff, ‘Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the 20s’, American Trajectories 1790–1970, Penn State Press, 1990.
98 Joan Didion, ‘Last Words’, The New Yorker, 9 November 1988.
99 Berthoff, American Trajectories.
100 Berthoff, American Trajectories.
101 Toni Morrison, ‘The Kindness of Sharks’, Playing in the Dark – Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Vintage, New York, 1992.
102 Ibid.
Personal Proust
103 William Blake, The Notebook of William Blake.
What News on the Rialto?
104 In Search of Lost Time: now accepted as a more accurate translation of Proust’s title formerly in English as Remembrance of Things Past.
The Entitlement Approach
105 Mamphele Ramphele, ‘World Bank Will Reward Good Governance’, Sunday Independent, South Africa, 11 March 2001.
106 President Abdoulaye Wade, ‘African Leaders, IMF and World Bank forge new strategy on poverty’, The Star, Johannesburg, 21 February 2001.
107 Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981.
Joseph Conrad and Almayer’s Folly
108 Author’s note to Almayer’s Folly.
109 ‘The world is a will to power – and nothing else besides.’ Nietzsche, Will To Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann, Random House, New York, 1967, p. 550. Quoted by Edward W. Said, ‘Conrad And Nietzsche’, in his collection Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2000, p. 75.
Witness – Past or Present?
110 Jorg Lau, Die Zeit, 2000 (no precise date given).
111 Philip Gourevitch, ‘What They Saw at the Holocaust Museum’, New York Times Magazine, 2 December 1995.
Living with a Writer
112 Reinhold Cassirer died in 2001.
With Them You Never Know
113 Olaudah Equiano, Equiano’s Travels: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African.
114 Wulf Sachs, Black Hamlet – The Mind of an African Negro Revealed by Psychoanalysis, Geoffrey Bles, London, 1937; Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1996; Witwatersrand University Press (with a new introduction by Saul Dubow and Jacqueline Rose), Johannesburg, 1996.
115 Cecil Rhodes, attributed by Olive Schreiner, Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1897.
116 O. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization, translated by Pamela Powesland, Praeger, New York, 1964.
117 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism, Knopf, New York, 1993.
118 Generations later, among South African whites who joined the South African black liberation struggle, Jews were prominent, including Dennis Goldberg, sentenced to life imprisonment, Albie Sachs (post-apartheid Constitutional Court judge for fifteen years in free South Africa) who lost a leg and the sight of one eye when a bomb was hidden in his car, and Ruth First who was killed by a parcel bomb. Both these acts the work of the apartheid forces.
119 A colony: in Roman usage ‘a settlement of Roman citizens in a hostile or newly conquered country’, Oxford English Dictionary. Colonialism: ‘a policy whereby a nation maintains or extends control of foreign dependencies’, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
120 Nosipho Majeke, The Role of the Missionaries in Conquest, publisher unknown.
121 Said, Culture and Imperialism.
122 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press, New York, 1967.
William Plomer and Turbott Wolfe
123 Mongane Wally Serote, Scatter the Ashes and Go, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 2002, p. 55.
124 Edward W. Said, ‘Challenging Orthodoxy and Authority’, Culture and Imperialism, Knopf, New York, 1993, p. 319.
Witness: The Inward Testimony
125 Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1921.
126 W. B. Yeats, Collected Poems.
127 Mongane Wally Serote, Yakhal’ Inkomo.
128 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
129 Czeslaw Milosz, Native Realm, Selected Poems.
130 Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel.
131 Primo Levi, If This Is a Man.
132 Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove (from Remembrance of Things Past).
133 Albert Camus, The Rebel.
134 Milan Kundera, postscript to Life is Elsewhere.
135 Pablo Picasso, from my notebooks, unknown source.
Faith, Reason and War
136 Salman Rushdie, Guardian, 19 November 2005.
137 Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence – The Illusion of Destiny, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2006.
Naguib Mahfouz’s Three Novels of Ancient Egypt
138 Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel, translated by Hannah and Stanley Mitchell, Merlin Press, London, 1965.
139 Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street, translated by Peter Theroux, Doubleday, New York, 1990.
140 Naguib Mahfouz, The Dreams, Dream 5, The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo and New York, 2005.
The Lion in Literature
141 See Shylock’s speech in The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene i.
142 Olaudah Equiano, Equiano’s Travels: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African.
143 Sol T. Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa.
By the Same Author
NOVELS
The Lying Days / A World of Strangers / Occasion for Loving
The Late Bourgeois World / A Guest of Honour
The Conservationist / Burger’s Daughter / July’s People
A Sport of Nature / My Son’s Story / None to Accompany Me
The House Gun / The Pickup / Get a Life / No Time Like the Present
STORY COLLECTIONS
The Soft Voice of the Serpent / Six Feet of the Country
Friday’s Footprint / Not for Publication
Livingstone’s Companions
A Soldier’s Embrace / Something Out There
Jump / Loot / Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black / Life Times
ESSAYS
The Black Interpreters / On the Mines (with David Goldblatt)
Lifetimes under Apartheid (with David Goldblatt)
The Essential Gesture — Writing, Politics and Places (edited by Stephen Clingman)
Writing and Being
Living in Hope and History: Notes from Our Century
Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954–2008
EDITOR, CONTRIBUTOR
Telling Tales
First published in Great Britain 2010
The individual pieces in this collection are copyright © Nadine Gordimer under their
original dates of publication, with the exception of ‘Living in the Interregnum’,
which is copyright © 1983 by Felix Licensing BV
This collection copyright © 2010 by Nadine Gordimer
This electronic edition published 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The right of Nadine Gordimer to be identified as the author of the work has been
asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
The publishers are grateful to Leo Carey for his meticulous work
in preparing the manuscript of this book for press
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