Ryszard Kapuscinski and his silva rerum
If you aspire to write about the world we find ourselves in, you should aspire to write, now and then, as the late Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007) wrote. And you should, now and then, attempt to write about more than your petty obsessions. Most of us, alas, never manage this. Here's how he nailed our miserable failings:
Twenty years ago, I was in Africa, and this is what I saw: I went from revolution to coup d'Ètat, from one war to another; I witnessed, in effect, history in the making, real history, contemporary history, our history. But I was also surprised: I never saw a writer. I never met a poet or a philosopher — even a sociologist. Where were they? Such important events, and not a single writer anywhere?Then I would return to Europe and I would find them. They would be at home, writing their little domestic stories: the boy, the girl, the laughing, the intimacy, the marriage, the divorce — in short, the same story we've been reading over and over again for a thousand years. You know, the other day I was reading about the novels that won the annual French prizes. It was incredible. None of these books had anything to do with our world, our reality — nothing. There was one about an unwanted child, and another about a boy, a girl, the laughing, the intimacy —"
In the course of an historically important interview with the then editor of Granta, Bill Buford, the late Ryszard Kapuscinski described what he did by resorting to the Latin phrase silva rerum: the forest of things. "That's my subject: the forest of things, as I've seen it, living and travelling in it."
Kapuscinski asked himself: "Why am I a writer? Why have I risked my life so many times, come so close to dying? Is it to report the weirdness? To earn my salary?" And he answered: "Mine is not a vocation, it's a mission. I wouldn't subject myself to these dangers if I didn't feel that there was something overwhelmingly important — about history, about ourselves — that I felt compelled to get across. This is more than journalism." Ryszard Kapuscinski was more than a reporter. He was a fearless witness and a great storyteller.
Comments
Huh! Nowadays, though, writers (in English, anyway) prefer to write about the failed ambition, the angst, the ennui, the affair, the addiction.
I figure if I want to learn about that stuff, I can just look around me. I don't need to read about it in a book. (Or at least, not in more than twenty or thirty books.)
That's why I prefer science fiction and fantasy, which tackle problems on a grand scale -- the clash of civilizations, the conquest of death, the death of sleep, etc...
Unfortunately, many science fiction editors now prefer the little domestic stories shoe-horned into a science fiction context.
Posted by: Angie Schultz | January 25, 2007 10:27 PM
Well, he was more then a fearless witness and a great storyteller. He worked towards meetings of cultures and understanding each other on many levels, but whats most important he prooved with his life that an unarmed man on his own but one who believes in other human beeings can survive no matter how difficuld circumstances are.
Posted by: Tomas | February 9, 2007 10:19 PM