Arts on Sunday

Of the several publications in literature and culture coming out of the Oxford University Press (OUP) for 2007 and 2008, there are many that are of particular interest.

One of these is an anniversary publication about one of the foremost modern dramatists. On April 13, 2006, Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, who died on December 22, 1989, would have been 100 years old. OUP produced two books to mark this. The first was Beckett and Badiou: The Pathos of Intermittency (January 2007) by Andrew Gibson and the second, Beckett at 100: Revolving It All by Linda Ben-Zvi and Angela Moorjani, dated for release in April 2008.

Beckett was born in Dublin where he studied for his BA, but moved to France soon after and built his career there. His first publication was poetry and he was also a fiction writer (novels and short stories), as well as a writer of critical essays. His last work was a collection of short stories and some of his most famous works were published in French, including the plays En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot), 1952, Acte Sans Paroles (Act Without Words) 1957 and Fin de Partie (Endgame). After all, he remained in France his entire life and had a strong interest in Descartes and the Italian, Dante. Beckett was most celebrated as the foremost proponent of Theatre of the Absurd or Absurdist drama, a theory articulated by critic Martin Esslin, and Waiting for Godot has been acclaimed as the first and quintessential Absurdist play. This drama had a very significant performance among inmates in an asylum. Beckett’s influence on modern literature was powerful as he has been described as the last ‘modernist’ and the first ‘post-modernist.’ He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

This is how Oxford describes Beckett at 100… “To commemorate the centenary of the birth of Samuel Beckett, this book, containing twenty three essays by leading international Beckett scholars, rethinks traditional critical assumptions, readings and theories concerning the Beckett canon, provides new contexts and associations, and reassesses his impact on the modern imagination and legacy to future generations.”

Guyana has, in the past, been much influenced by the work and example of Mahatma Gandhi and now, at a particularly vulnerable interlude, his spirit is yet again being invoked, or is badly needed. There has never been any waning of interest in his work, however, and Oxford has announced another book, The Essential Writings: Mahatma Gandhi, edited by Judith M Brown (April 2008). The quotation “those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means,” is highlighted by the publishers to introduce it. They continue: “this new selection of Gandhi’s writings taken from his books, articles, letters and interviews sets out his views on religion, politics, society, non-violence and civil disobedience. Judith M Brown’s excellent introduction and notes examine his philosophy and the political context in which he wrote.” It is one of the Oxford World’s Classics.

Another theorist who, like Beckett and Gandhi, made a great impact on the modern imagination and left a lasting legacy for continuing generations is the very controversial Sigmund Freud. Oxford explains that, “since Freud re-imagined Sophocles’ Oedipus as a trans-historical Every-man, far-reaching changes have occurred in the social and sexual conditions of Western identity. This book shows how both classical and Freudian perspectives may now differently illuminate the forming stories of a present-day world of serial families, multiple sexualities, and reproductive technologies.”

Freud is best known for his pioneering work in psychoanalysis and modern psychiatry. His mythical connections arise from his creation of the “Oedipus complex” that Freud blames for certain latent neurotic disorders in boys.

He drew on the archetypal Greek myth of Oedipus, the prince who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother in fulfilment of a prophecy. This was the story used by the Greek playwright Sophocles to construct the play Oedipus Rex, one of the great Greek tragedies. Freud employed this myth while working out his practice of psychoanalysis and his theories of sexuality.

Another influential personality is also treated in the latest Oxford books. Jose Marti : Revolution, Politics and Letters, Volume One: Cuba: The Struggle for Indepen-dence by Jose Marti is edited by Ana Dopico, translated by Fred Fornoff (April 2008). The publishers explain “Jose Marti occupies a central place in Latin American letters, and he is an unparalleled foundational figure in Cuban culture. This ground-breaking two-volume work offers the most comprehensive collection of Marti’s prose work available in English. Where recent translations have offered selected anthologies of Marti’s writing, this edition offers a key archive of essays, journalism, speeches, political documents, and historic correspondence, many translated for the first time.”

The writer and revolutionary Marti is one of the heroes of the Cuban nation.

Yet another writer treated in the very lengthy list of new Oxford titles is Spanish playwright Frederico Garcia Lorca whose Selected Poems translated by Martin Sorrell with an introduction by D Gareth Walters is printed with parallel Spanish texts. “Lorca’s poetry is steeped in the land and folklore of his native Andalusia, and he evokes a world of intense feelings. This selection balances his early poems with better known later work to give a clear vision of his poetic development, in excellent translations and with an astute introduction,” Oxford writes. This is another in the set of Oxford World classics. Lorca is also well known for his plays The House of Bernada Alba and Blood Wedding which take the audience into his dangerous native culture of machismo.

Also in the theatre is the historical work on censorship. On occasions, recently, there have been minor upheavals over the censorship of dramatic scripts at the National Cultural Centre in Guyana, but theatre censorship was only removed in Britain around 1968, as Theatre Censorship from Walpole to Wilson (October 2007) by David Thomas, David Carlton and Anne Etienne, makes clear. The publisher says of the work: “Using previously unpublished material from the national archives, this book provides a thoroughgoing account of the introduction and abolition of theatre censorship in England, for Sir Robert Walpole’s Licensing Act of 1737 to the successful campaign to abolish theatre censorship in 1968. It concludes with an exploration of possible new forms of covert censorship.”