Nadine Gordimer - Telling Times - Writing and Living, 1950-2008

54 Gilbert Marcus, ‘The New Enlightenment’, Centre For Applied Legal Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 1990.

55 ACAG UPDATE, March 1990.

56 The Star , 19 March 1990.

57 ACAG UPDATE, March 1990.

58 The Weekly Mail , 5–11 April 1990.

59 Ibid.

60 Gilbert Marcus, ‘The New Enlightenment’.

61 John le Carré, Guardian , 15 January 1990.

62 Albie Sachs, ‘The Gentle Revenge at the End of Apartheid’, Index on Censorship , April 1990.

63 Albie Sachs, ‘Preparing Ourselves for Freedom’, ANC In-house Seminar on Culture, 1990.

64 Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830–1857, selected, edited and translated by Francis Steegmuller, Belknap Press, Harvard, 1980, p. 224.

65 Barbara Masakela, ‘Possible Strategies for Culture in a Post-Apartheid South Africa’, paper given at UNESCO Working Group on Apartheid, Dakar, Senegal, November 1989.

Joseph Roth

66 In a letter to his translator, Blanche Gidon, quoted by Beatrice Musgrave in her introduction to Weights And Measures , Dent, London, 1983, p. 9. Roth lived in Paris for some years and two of his novels, Le Triomphe de la beauté and Le Buste de L’Empereur , were published first in French. Le Triomphe de la beauté probably was written in French; it appears not to have been published in German.

67 I have been told that the standard German biography, David Bronsen’s Joseph Roth: Eine Biographie , Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne, 1974, is now in the process of translation for Roth’s English publisher, Chatto and Windus. Another biography by Nat Cohen of Toronto is planned for publication by the Overlook Press.

68 Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities , vol. I, Secker and Warburg, London, 1961, p. 64, translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. Musil was born in 1880, and though long neglected as a writer outside German-speaking culture, was not forgotten as long as Roth. Musil became a figure in world literature in the fifties; Roth’s work had to wait another twenty years before it was reissued in Germany, let alone in translation.

69 The Silent Prophet was edited from unpublished work, with the exception of fragments published in 24 Neue Deutsche Erzähler and Die Neue Rundschau in 1929, and published after Roth’s death, in 1966.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.

7 °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 Tim e: 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.