I recommend Marechera's MINDBLAST. It starts with a youth being indoctinated by a giant cat. The cat wants him to say 2 plus 2 equals 4, but the youth insists it equals 5. The cat become more and more condemnatory: "I will reeducate you!" whilst the youth insists that reality can mean whatever he wants it to mean.
This is paradoxical criticism of the stifling of creativity, especially that of writers, under Robert Mugabe's Marxist regime.
There were only a few hundred copies made of this excellent collection of sketches, poetry and some unfinished works. The order that it wasn't allowed to be published in Zimbabwe was temporarily reversed -- (or perhaps permanently so, but still there are no books available for purchase, and sellers request over 100 pounds for old copies). My university library copy, hurriedly printed by College Press, was yellowing, with many of the pages inserted in the wrong order (duplications, along with some pages missing).
Other sections of the book are veiled criticisms of the regime, which tried to co-opt ambitious writers by offering them unproductive jobs in 'The Ministry of Education'.
Here's another criticism of censorship from one of the long poems:
Minds of every hue intermingle with matter
Only of concern to the Censor; Athena
And Malcolm X are the hosts, dealing
Out dagga [marijuana] and kachasu (a lethal homebrew spirit) to freedom's veterans.
Black sky, dark stingray --- O To drown in deep waters!
This dried-up Lake Kariba
Of censorship peering over
Homer's shoulder;
That tumultuously waterless
Victoria Falls
Of writer after writer
Hurled to the seething hell below.
I gave her the pure bloom of jacaranda
The fiery ecstasy of flamelilies
The continuous gnawing delight
That now is nothing but painful memory;
And few the luminous seasons in her eyes
Which to sheer adoration toss grudgingly
Bits of psychological speculation,
Bits of political condemnation.
Were Hell other people
And not myself I could willlingly
Diagnose the scratchings at the other side
Of the door.
The telephone rings; from the other end of the line
My name an voice introduce themselves: Poet.
1 comment:
You can’t ever be certain what the author meant, and, as you have correctly pointed out, sometimes their own interpretations of their work can be inferior in relation to the actual work. However, cultural studies does take an acute interest in how the writer is embedded in historical time and place, rather than giving sway to completely freewheeling interpretations. I really don’t like Barthes idea that the author is dead. That makes me sad — although prying too much into the author’s life also makes me sad.
That absurd prying into the artist’s personal life is what Dambudzo meant (haha!) when he said:
And few the luminous seasons in her eyes
Which to sheer adoration toss grudgingly
Bits of psychological speculation,
Bits of political condemnation.
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