Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [223]
On that subject my opinion is irrelevant. What is relevant is what he himself believed. And there the answer is clear. He believed our life-stories are ours to construct as we wish, within or even against the constraints imposed by the real world – as you yourself acknowledged a moment ago. That is why I specifically used the term authorization. It was not the authorization of his family or his executors that I had in mind, it was his own authorization. If you were not authorized by him to expose the private side of his life, then I will certainly not assist you.
Coetzee cannot have authorized me for the simple reason that he and I never had any contact. But on that point let us agree to differ, and move on. I return to the course you mentioned, the course on African literature that you and he taught together. One remark you made intrigues me. You said you and he did not attract the more radical African students. Why do you think that was so?
Because we were not radicals ourselves, not by their standards. We had both, obviously, been affected by 1968. In 1968 I was still a student at the Sorbonne, where I took part in the manifestations, the days in May. John was in the United States at the time, and fell foul of the American authorities, I don’t remember all the details, but I know it became a turning point in his life. Yet I stress we were not Marxists, either of us, and certainly not Maoists. I was probably to the left of him, but I could afford that because I was shielded by my status within the French diplomatic enclave. If I had gotten into trouble with the South African security police I would have been discreetly put on a plane to Paris, and that would have been the end of the matter. I would not have ended up in a prison cell.
Whereas Coetzee …
Coetzee would not have ended up in a prison cell either. He was not a militant. His politics were too idealistic, too Utopian for that. In fact he was not political at all. He looked down on politics. He didn’t like political writers, writers who espoused a political programme.
Yet he published some quite left-leaning commentary in the 1970s. I think of his essays on Alex La Guma, for example. He was sympathetic to La Guma, and La Guma was a communist.
La Guma was a special case. He was sympathetic to La Guma because La Guma was from Cape Town, not because he was a communist.
You say he was not political. Do you mean that he was apolitical? Because some people would say that the apolitical is just one variety of the political.
No, not apolitical, I would rather say anti-political. He thought that politics brought out the worst in people. It brought out the worst in people and also brought to the surface the worst types in society. He preferred to have nothing to do with it.
Did he preach this anti-political politics in his classes?
Of course not. He was very scrupulous about not preaching. His political beliefs you discovered only after you got to know him better.
You say his politics were Utopian. Are you implying they were unrealistic?
He looked forward to the day when politics and the state would wither away. I would call that Utopian. On the other hand, he did not invest a great deal of himself in these Utopian longings. He was too much of a Calvinist for that.
Please explain.
You want me to say what lay behind Coetzee’s politics? You can best get that from his books. But let me try anyway.
In Coetzee’s eyes, we human beings will never abandon politics because politics is too convenient and too attractive as a theatre in which to give rein to our baser emotions. Baser emotions meaning hatred and rancour and spite and jealousy and bloodlust and so forth. In other words, politics as we know it is a symptom of our fallen state and expresses that fallen state.
Even the politics of liberation?
If you refer to the politics of the South African liberation struggle, the answer is yes. As long as liberation meant national liberation, the liberation of the black nation of South Africa, John