Apartheid and colonialism wreaked havoc on South Africa. For novelists, how to recreate South Africa's turbulent history without getting bogged down in political writing is a challenging task. Most writers in English in South Africa, from Olive Schreiner to Nadine Gordimer and André Brink to Mongane Serote, have tried to reconcile the contradiction between the freedom of the novel and the limitations of history in a realistic way.
The realistic-leaning Gordy defaulted to the task of a South African writer to truly document or reflect the harsh realities of South Africa. For her, writing is essentially a matter of appearance. In this process, what she calls "creative self-absorption" must always be conditioned by a "sense of conscience." However, Coetzee doubts whether the creation of simple realism can present the truth of things better than imagination. He preferred to write "according to the novel itself rather than the laws of history." In this regard, many people have a lot of criticism. Stephen Watson objected that Coetzee's focus on text meant that his work was "nothing more than a cleverly constructed hollow," while Goldimer saw "aversion to all political and revolutionary solutions" as one of his weaknesses.
Writer Coetzee
The arguments and criticisms in between highlight Coucher's dilemma. On one side are Europe, America and postmodernism, and on the other side are South Africa and the post-colonial era. For the former, he was African; for the latter, he was "the Afrikaners" (white natives). And his extensive critical essays on dissent, language, literature, culture, and even animal rights complicate such debates. A theorist who writes novels, a linguist who writes reviews, and a self-conscious postmodernist. Coetzee, who has multiple identities and the cultural background of the European and American elites, did not devote himself to the revolutionary cause of South Africa like Gordimer, but turned his back to choose to use English writing to deconstruct the "black" and "white" binary story, even if it is a realistic alternative work "Shame", there is no grand historical background or urgent ethical appeal, but only coldly intervened, the pain in which although real and shocking, but more absurd and meaningless.
Shame is a real and desperate book. Through all the love affairs of the nameless professor David Lurie, it is incomparably deeply aroused from an incomparably deep desire,even though it is only the flame of twilight, the last burning before extinguishing. Coucher quietly mocked Lurie's anachronistic and not without bitter romanticism. And when he faced the allegations of sexual harassment, Coucher did not beat his "ugly" soul with an ethical and moral whip, did not let him use sensational "repentance" to dispel the public's condemnation, nor did he let the prosecution satisfy the imagination of the world with a "forgiveness" of resignation, but let him admit punishment and not admit guilt. The narrative thus begins the journey of how a graceful person becomes disgraced step by step.
Shame
Couche is so vicious that he lets Luri avoid the country and his daughter Lucy, who lives on the farm, and arranges for him to do a dirty job at the animal rescue station, and then stabs Lucy through the misfortune of being raped by a black man. What made Luri even more miserable was that his daughter, who had been raped, refused his offer to emigrate to Europe, was willing to marry the rapist's relatives, and even insisted on giving birth to the "evil seed"—in exchange for a little protection in the black-dominated land. The "fall" of individuals such as dominoes collapsing and the looming "great changes" of history quietly merge. What makes people shudder is the careful planning of the group in advance of this case, the resentment of the perpetrators during the rape, and the high-profile publicity afterwards. Cut into south Africa's "reality" in such a way that black and white seep out of the gray curtain: will the years of colonial sins be eliminated? The unjust black "ghost" in Morrison's "Darling" no longer clings to her mother like a ghost, but incarnates as a black man in "Shame" to take revenge on the white oppressors of yesteryear. They are all spokesmen for history. Lucy was the victim, and how could the blacks who raped her not be victims of historical and racial decisions?
Instead of confessing in empty language and false gestures, Luri confessed punishment for his disgraceful and distant behavior. Just as the victim is incapable of forgiveness, the perpetrator is even less qualified to repent. For forgiveness means erasing past suffering, and true repentance may only come from the empathetic suffering of sinners. When Luri knelt down and apologized to the girl's family, it was not so much a grand sounding thing as pity for the same disease. Hope for reconciliation between the two sides comes from the sympathy of the fellow victims. Because in the face of fate and history, they are equally pitiful.
Luri's Gengsuke prevented him from being seduced by the world, and his weakness made him unable to bear the tragedy of pleasure and revenge. So he had to give up. Coucher asks Luri to write an opera about Byron's love affair with 19-year-old Teresa against a wasted dog symbolizing his situation. The "redemption" implication of this creation is soon dissipated by Luri's voluntary abandonment, and the theme of "sinking" that runs through the work finally reaches its climax at the end of the novel: Lurie puts the waste dog who likes to listen to the music he composes on the stage of euthanasia. This means giving up completely cutting off the tail of light in the sinking black hole, and also taking off the hat of "literary redemption" given to him by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Coucher's sober abandonment of creation is a metaphor for the transcendence and incompetence of "literature", while Lucy's confused pregnancy symbolizes the endless power of "nature". If black male rapists represent the "history" of colonialism, then Lucy, a white victim, heralded the possibility of reconciliation between the two sides at the cost of taking root on the farm. This is the most secret and deep background of "Shame". Coucher's greatness lies in the fact that he always expresses Lucy's reasons for "giving" vaguely: "Yes, the road I am walking may indeed be dangerous, but if I leave the farm now, I will suffer defeat, and I will taste this failure for the rest of my life." 」 Such a "pattern" is obviously not within the scope of South Africa's "revolutionary" cause.
If Lucy's tenacity in turning hatred into nurturing means the difficulty of reconciliation and the tragedy of struggle, then Lurie's helplessness from decency to depravity shows the cruelty of life and the humility of the individual. He taught a course on romantic poets at the technical university, which was not romantic at all, and spread "advanced communication techniques" to a group of ignorant students. He understood this embarrassment very deeply, but he was unaware of his own irony. He published monographs on Mephistopheles, but he did not have the ferocity to get out of the study; he wrote about sex and fantasy, but his desires were as short and light as butterflies; he liked the naturalistic poet Wordsworth, but his life was as dull as the desert; he had Byronian beauty and sexual desire, but he did not have Byron's debauchery and chaos.
In the truth of Luri's indifference to this, there may be a pretentious and cynical arrogance that he himself is unaware of. Such a preparation made his fate turn even more shocking. Willing to gamble and lose, he was calm in his reputation, but he had no dignity in the encounters of the black territory: full of poetry books but useless, the university professor became a dog-killing volunteer; the "master" who gave orders became a respectful "servant"; before forcefully seducing young and sweet girls, and then inadvertently obeying the old and fading woman, until the original "sin" was completely "punished".
Kuche, who is difficult to distinguish between "left" and "right", and "black" and "white", often presents and respects the ambiguity and complexity of the remarks that are either yang and yin, or sound east and west, or the opposite. With his best novel, Shame, he silently refutes those who question him: the power of the novel comes from its brilliant narrative art, and it can also assume the moral and historical responsibility of the people. (Editor-in-charge: Li Jing)