"Too dangerous for silence"

Chinua Achebe declines Nigeria's COFR (like an OBE or Order of Canada) for political reasons:

In a letter to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, part of which was published in Nigeria's Guardian newspaper Sunday, Achebe said: "Nigeria's condition today under your watch is, however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honor awarded me."



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Better translation. Always the King James, Claude, always!

http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/t...tag=public&part=all

Go ahead, ninjas, "be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices!" Read the poem.

http://ebible.org/bible/web/Song.htm

Edited by author 11-06-2003 12:26 AM
Yeah, I believe it made an appearance in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Merchant's Tale" and later in Margaret Laurence's "The Diviners."

"Feminism is as old as literature itself. Feminist writers like Virginia Woolf, Elaine Showalter and Patricia Meyer Specks..."

As old as literature itself?

Remember those stories about how Elaine Showalter, Patricia Meyer Specks, Homer, and Solomon had this little writing circle going, and one day Solomon forgot to bring the salsa (it was his turn), but he did bring the first draft of poem called "Song..." Oh, what was it now? "The Song of something or other", I can't remember. Homer said that Solomon should be careful, that people might think he was objectifying the woman in his poem, but Showalter said she thought it was romantic and sweet. Whatever happened to that poem? Did it ever get published anywhere?

I'm Not Quite Sure that Virginia Woolf Dates Back to the Beginning of Literature...

I think we're dealing with a language barrier here. But seriously - this is interesting if only as a look at feminist writing from a Hausa cultural POV.




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Seamus, I love that sentence for the same reasons, I think, that you are wary of it--because underlying the surface tedium of superficial freedom, there is a hell of a lot of stuff that needs to be written about, and that is only touched on by a small minority of writers. I don't think that the author of the article really believes that freedom is simply medicore tedium.

Madeleine, couldn't agree with you more. Anyone who says Coetzee is apolitical is a simpleton or an ideologue (is there a difference?).

I don't quite understand the idea that Coetzee is not a political writer. I think he is incredibly political. What makes him so great is that he doesn't make it easy for all/some readers. He could have set "Waiting for the Barbarians" in South Africa, but he didn't, he set it up in some unknown land, and the result of that was that we had to look at the work as pertaining to the world in general, not just the "dark continent." I think that made readers examine the larger issues of torture and cupability more.

I've only read two books of Coetzee's so far (Barbarians, and Disgrace) but I don't see him as politically passive. No, he doesn't follow party lines, and his characters aren't heroes, and there is no simple answer - David, in Disgrace, learns from his mistakes but does that mean he'll stop committing them? No, not really. I studied that book in a class, and several people had a problem with the fact that he doesn't become this wise healer type by the end, but I thought that was great, that Coetzee refused to give us the easy way out. But just because his books are honest and complex doesn't mean they aren't still political. It just means that his work isn't agitprop

There is an article about Lewis DeSoto, South African/Canadian novelist in this month's Toronto Life. What's most intriguing is the conveyance of his political passivity. I do not think one must write out of a politicized ideal in the sense that one ought to thematic drive some large issue home but! How can one write about Africa, or anywhere, really, without? I disagree wholly that freedom is tedious; it's not. Africans aren't free and nor are most of us. We're only free insofar as we're free to experience that tedium, that mediocrity that our government, our media glazed neighbours, and our curriculum obliged teachers allow us. How free is that? It's a very pretty sentence, and if you velieve it, it'll swallow you up.

And this one:

"If we do not measure ourselves against the best in the world we run the risk of condemning our artists to perpetual mediocrity."

Word, brother. Word.

"It needs a voice that will excite its genius and handle with brilliance the tedium of our freedom."

That is a brilliant fucking line.

Edited by author 10-23-2003 10:28 AM
Is Coetzee the Voice of Africa? Africans Don't Think So

An interesting article on political writing in Africa - many of the points could well be applied to us.




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Is African Literature in Danger?

If so, of what?




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