Amiri Baraka (Everett LeRoy Jones) and the Great Irish Writers

For years I have maintained that often, in the history of theatre and literature, the best and most representative writers of a country are often outsiders or minorities. Pushkin had African roots, Gogol and Bulgakov were Ukrainian, Pasternak was Litvak, etc.

This is one reason why it seems natural to me, though not always to others, my association of three lines of research, apparently distinct, but in fact with a great deal in common: Black American writers, post-colonial writers and Irish writers. What a surprise, then, to find my intuition confirmed by a radical Black-American communist and namesake (at least until he changed his name), Amiri Baraka. The article (from Home, a collection of essays published in the sixties), is called "Black Writing" and often refers to Joyce's The Dubliners. In the last paragraphs, Baraka writes:

"The vantage point is classically perfect - outside and inside - at the same time. Think of the great Irish writers - Wilde, Yeats, Shaw, Synge, Joyce, O'Casey and Beckett - and their clear and powerful understanding (social as well as aesthetic) of where they were and how best they could function inside and outside the imaginary English society, even going so far as teaching the mainstreamers their own language, and revitalizing in the doing." (p. 140)

Some commentators (Watts, 2001) say that Baraka's position oversimplifies the question, that there can be no comparison between a colonized people like Ireland, and an enslaved people who were forced to abandon all connection to their past. But this argument implies that culture is eminently geographical, and that the African cultural practices did not persist for centuries in the Americas; in Colombia and Cuba, however, Yoruba and Ibo are still spoken in some places, and if the search for a romantic Celtic past has driven the Irish writers, there is no question that a search for a romantic African past, for all its caleidoscopic enormity, has also driven Black American writers. What is also certain is that colonialism and the slave trade were of a piece, in terms of mentality, and that colonialism and post-colonialism are hardly limited to our era. I would like to ask Aesop, Greek poet and Roman slave, his opinion on this matter.

In any case, the point here isn't so much the formal social setting, as Baraka's comment on the "imaginary English society" - implying, if I understand him well, that the colonizing "cultures" are not cultures at all, but political clubs, or at the very least, cultures of power practices. Rome was one of the first trans-national organizations, and if Latin was later vitalized it was by indigenous cultural re-conquest. Baraka's whole point, as radical as it may seem to some, is that where there is a powerful institution, there can be no art - and that siding with the powers that be often is the fastest way to kill art. Baraka's argument, in fact, is more Hegelian than Marxist: it is the sublimation of the conflict between master and slave, where, as Hegel famously writes, the master suddenly becomes (shall we say culturally?) dependent on the slave, and the slave, master of his own work, art, and eventually, freedom.

Play and Action

A frustrating difficulty of certain talented actors is that they capture the play tactics of a scene quickly, and begin to play them. But they do it with such mastery - and so automatically - that they forget their stage partner. And since there is no action without a stage partner, the play tactics kill the action.

We have all witnessed it: we see a well-played performance, and we enjoy it very much at first, but bit by bit we begin to get bored. This is because the actors are playing, but they aren't pursuing a concrete action.

There is no doubt that doña Helia, in Today's a Holiday, wants to greet her cousin, wants to talk to him, to accompany him on this holiday, etc. All of that is great fun, and the scene is written that way: those are the play tactics of the character. But if the actress who performs doña Helia doesn't discover what the character wants, and doesn' try to pursue that action, then the play tactis will suddenly become false and the scene will stop working.

Helia wants to cheer Silverio up, wants to accompany him, for sure, but what she really wants id to find out what is going on between him and Pilar; she wants to find out what's gotten into Silverio. If she pursues this action actively, then the rest will suddenly, come alive, and will acquire a certain agreeable ambiguity, much more interesting for the audience. And this is impossible without connecting with the stage partner.

Play tactics aren't actions. Action gives life to play.

A Definition of Virtue

Here is a very moving excerpt from Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel, and a sentiment which I share with regards to the difficulties involved in truly loving your enemy:

"Virtue is not merely like the combatant who, in the conflict, is only concerned with keeping his sword bright, but it has even started the fight in order to preserve the weapons. And not only can it not use its own weapons, it must also preserve intact those of the enemy and protect them against its own attack, for all are noble parts of the good, on behalf of which it went into battle." (Hegel, 232)