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8 - Force Fields
- from Part II - Objectivity and Communication
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- By Carrol Clarkson, associate at the University of Cape Town
- Edited by Tim Mehigan, Christian Moser
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- Book:
- The Intellectual Landscape in the Works of J. M. Coetzee
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 03 July 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 March 2018, pp 172-188
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Summary
MY OVERARCHING INTEREST in this chapter is in the materialization of thought (and hence the projection of a subjective consciousness) in language. Any utterance obliges the speaker or writer to make linguistic and other formal choices, and these choices, in turn, generate a particular force field between speaker and listener; writer and reader; me and you. Part of our brief for the conference held in Brisbane in April 2015 was to speak about Coetzee's European influences. My point of departure is to consider some aspects of Coetzee's engagements with Dutch— not to focus on direct linguistic and literary influences and resonances, but, more philosophically, to open onto a discussion of the ways in which the interference of another language can help to shed light on linguistic forces at work in our own.
I begin by looking at Coetzee's translation and discussion of “Ballade van de Gasfitter” (a sonnet sequence by Dutch poet Gerrit Achterberg) and then move on to consider Het Goede Verhaal: the Dutch translation of Coetzee's most recent book, The Good Story, coauthored with psychotherapist, Arabella Kurtz. My discussion here focuses on the Dutch word verzinnen—to make up, or to invent— yet with an etymological resonance of “making sense of.” It is a cliché to speak about what is lost in translation; this essay broaches the question of what is gained in translation. In this context, an important conceptual touchstone is Coetzee's 1982 essay, “Isaac Newton and the Ideal of a Transparent Scientific Language”: I conclude the essay with a brief consideration of this piece. Newton faced unexpected linguistic challenges (with far-reaching consequences for the reception of his theories) when it came to writing in English rather than in Latin about the force of gravity. In its careful reflection on problems of translation and the complex relation between syntactic and subjective agency in English, the Newton essay brings together my two main lines of enquiry.
If the young John of Youth is to be believed, Coetzee's relation to Dutch does not hold out too much promise. John gives a rather unflattering account of his Netherlandic heritage:
There remains Holland. At least he has an insider's knowledge of Dutch, at least he has that advantage. Among all the circles in London, is there a circle of Dutch poets too? If there is, will his acquaintance with the language give him an entrée to it?
14 - Coetzee’s Criticism
- Edited by Tim Mehigan
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- Book:
- A Companion to the Works of J. M. Coetzee
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 February 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 December 2011, pp 222-234
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Summary
In His Essay, “Die Skrywer En Die Teorie” (“The Writer and Theory”), Coetzee makes a claim that, by his own admission, surely scandalized his South African literary audience when he first presented this paper at the SAVAL conference in Bloemfontein in 1980: “I must confess,” says Coetzee,
dat die beste kritiek vir my meer inhou as die letterkunde. Dit is miskien ’n skande, maar ek lees liewer Girard oor Sofokles of Barthes oor Balzac as romans.
[the best criticism holds more for me than literature does. It is perhaps scandalous, but I prefer reading Girard on Sophocles, or Barthes on Balzac, than novels.]
In the course of his paper, Coetzee identifies two attitudes to literary criticism that he sets himself against, and this provides the inspiration for the double entendre in the title of my chapter: the following discussion is about Coetzee’s own critical essays, but it also addresses Coetzee’s critique of assumptions about the relation between fiction and critical writing. To date, Coetzee’s novels have attracted far more scholarly attention than his critical essays have — and when his essays and interviews are cited, this is typically done within the context of a discussion primarily concerned with the fiction. However, Coetzee has produced no fewer than five volumes of nonfiction (White Writing, 1988; Doubling the Point, 1992; Giving Offense, 1996; Stranger Shores, 2001; Inner Workings, 2007) and has published several other essays, interviews, and literary reviews besides. Coetzee’s master’s thesis on Ford Madox Ford (1963), which he wrote while working as a mathemetician and computer programmer in England, and his doctoral dissertation on Samuel Beckett (1969) each play a significant and distinctive role in Coetzee’s own development as a writer. At the time of writing his master’s and his doctorate, Coetzee found himself at a busy intersection of literary studies and linguistics, computational logic, and mathematics (Coetzee holds postgraduate degrees in literature and linguistics, and also in mathematics). In his MA thesis, Coetzee writes of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier that it is “probably the finest example of literary pure mathematics in English” (FMF, x), and in his doctorate on Beckett, he developed and experimented with a statistical method of analyzing literary style.
10 - Drawing the line: justice and the art of reconciliation
- Edited by François du Bois, University of Nottingham, Antje du Bois-Pedain, University of Cambridge
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- Book:
- Justice and Reconciliation in Post-Apartheid South Africa
- Published online:
- 01 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 08 January 2009, pp 267-288
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
In conversation with Angela Breidbach, South African artist and film-maker, William Kentridge, speaks about his early interest in art:
I come from a very logical and rational family. My father is a lawyer. I had to establish myself in the world as not just being his son, his child. I had to find a way of arriving at knowledge that was not subject to cross-examination, not subject to legal reasoning.
Kentridge presents artistic and legal practices as being entirely different to each other, yet the creative process of making a drawing, for Kentridge, involves a movement that is partly ‘projection’ and partly ‘reception’ of an emergent image – it has to do with ‘what you recognize as the drawing proceeds’. This act of projection, reception, and hence of recognition, also applies to the event of viewing a drawing, and it is in this context that I discuss the implications of ‘drawing the line’ in all its ambiguity. Drawing a line in the literal sense – as a graphic artist would – is a gesture that may not be subject to legal reasoning (to use Kentridge's phrasing), but at the same time, in the drawing's address to those who view it, the artwork depends upon and anticipates a ground of recognition. It thus sets perimeters to a potential field of response.
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