Coded messages ...Clarity is good but so is ambiguity...
By Naguib Mahfouz.
Egyptian author (In awarding the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature to Naguib Mahfouz, the Swedish Academy of Letters noted that "through works rich in nuance - now clearsightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - (Mahfouz) has formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind.")
''Political regimes vary in their tolerance of free expression, which presents the writer with a number of dilemmas. I believe that a writer should first have a view that deserves to be expressed. Then it is up to him or her to decide on how to convey that view to the public. Novelists have many ways of getting around the censor. Many ideas can be conveyed by symbols, by creating a certain atmosphere, by suggestion, in the space between the lines. It is better to be discreet than dishonest. It is better to camouflage your thoughts than to distort them to please the powers that be.
Even while disguising their opinion, novelists should express their true thoughts. Otherwise their writing would be muddled, worthless. If writers cannot address politics and remain truthful, then they should write about non-political matters. The message novelists send to their readership is an integral part of their art. True art cannot sacrifice content to form, which would constitute a betrayal. Indeed, it is the on- going and ensless mediation between the two -- between form and content -- that makes of art such a privileged site for human endeavour.'' |
