'What angle are you going to take?' some folk asked when I was working on Prokofiev volume one. To which the only answer could, rather primly, be: 'there is no one angle, only multiple angles'. No biography I've ever read has been more scrupulous in weighing up the complexities of its subject than Artur Domosławski's fascinating study of his more-than-journalist colleague Ryszard Kapuściński.
Immortal throughout the world above all for his takes on Haile Selassie in The Emperor and on the last of the Pahlavis in Shah of Shahs (the singular covers of my old paperback copies pictured below), Kapuściński's facts in these very individual masterpieces seem to have been essentially true but deliberately loose in detail, sometimes simply fictional. 'You can rebuild reality,' he told another Polish reporter, 'but taking authentic elements from that reality', concluding 'Reportage as a genre is going through an evolution from journalism to literature'.
Yet neither when reading those key texts nor watching the compelling Kathryn Hunter in the stage adaptation of The Emperor - in which she plays multiple characters at the court of Selassie - did I take on board their roles as metaphors for the regime under which Kapuściński lived in his native Poland, which he supported as loyal socialist - as distinct from a Soviet Communist - for so many years but developed an ambiguous attitude towards in later years (it was only with some reluctance that he eventually took sides with the Solidarność movement, understanding that it was more about the 'human dignity' he wrote so much about than about wages. This is a compelling story in itself which takes up the larger part of Domosławski's Chapter 30.
Some things are clear: crucially, that wherever he travelled on the continents where popular, anti-colonial uprisings were multiplying, he wanted to live among ordinary people, to see the conflict from their points of view. This quotation, from an interview in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, sums it up well:
I do not believe in impartial journalism. I do not believe in formal objectivity. A journalist cannot be an indifferent witness, he should have the capacity for what in psychology is called empathy....So-called objective journalism is impossible in conflict situations. Attempts at objectivity in such situations lead to disinformation.
He never changed in that stance. His evasiveness over so much else, however, provokes some murky grey areas, and here Domosławski's untiring quest for different voices, other points of view is so impressive. The biographer is wry about the absence of women in his writing - 'Kapuscinski the man may love the female half of humanity more, but Kapuściński the reporter rarely notices it' - and the inequality in the relationship with his marvellous wife Alicja.
Domosławski adopts Kapuscinski's notion of collecting diverse apercus under the title of Lapidaria, and the fifth of these in the biography, asking 'Was Kapuściński a Thinker?', touches one special essence. The journalist Wiktor Osiatyński, who raised the question with his friend abut why he didn't write a serious book about the observations in the Lapdaria, opines that 'a thinker makes generalizations, creates syntheses and looks for similarities. Rysiek was the opposite - he looked for differences, his world was he world of detail, and he was brilliant at showing those details, the various colours of the world'. Osiatyński adds that 'what he said about globalisation was an intellectual discovery for me: that here we are watching globalisation on CNN, but meanwhile, vast stretches of the world are going through the opposite process - de-globalisation, which means separating themselves from the rest'.
From our alarming perspective, eight years after the biography was published (and translated, it would seem excellently, by Antonia Lloyd-Jones), Kapuściński's thoughts on the drawbacks of liberal democracy in the west, which meant for him that Marx was still pertinent, make potent reading:
Our entire world has become a great big amusement centre. Entertainment has become the main content of culture. And as both consumption and entertainment demand peace and a pleasant atmosphere, the media have started to create this atmosphere for us, by shifting the world's real problems out of our sight: poverty, hunger, diseases and wars.
Thanks to this we have forgotten that we, the people of the West, are only a small part of mankind on our planet, and that our entertainment and amusement are accompanied by a deepening division in the world, growing inequalities.
How we now see that this ignorance brings the problems boomeranging back on us. A later correlation observed by Kapuściński is that 'everywhere the strength and wealth of the centre are growing, while the outskirts are getting weaker and poorer'. That's certainly one of the roots of the mess that we in Britain find ourselves now. The American present, too, is foreshadowed in the book he wanted to write about Idi Amin, Donald Trump with a much higher body-count, requiring 'a climate of universal mendacity...The truth cannot be just a little twisted, it must be completely reversed'. He notes Popper's observation that 'ignorance is not just a simple lack of knowledge, but an ATTITUDE, an attitude of refusal, an attitude of dissent against accepting knowledge. The fool REFUSES to know...' And here we are at the grim beginning of 2020, facing problems which Domosławski did not necessarily foresee, but which Kapuściński had already begun to prophesy. Ultimately, yes, a very great man.
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16 comments:
What you write here is breathtaking. Of many things, what you write reminds me of Marvin Zonis, a professor at University of Chicago, who had decades of experience with Iran. I took a seminar with him, but didn't understand his perspective, though I was pretty sure he was wrong on the merits. (Here's a review of a book he wrote, to give you an idea of his perspective: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1991-06-16-9102230317-story.html) The quotation on objectivity in journalism resonates--and I would say it extends beyond conflict situations. My ongoing view throughout my adult life has been that belief in objectivity is a trap. We are all subjective, and what is critical is to recognize and understand the biases we bring to making judgments, rather than pretend bias, or perhaps less loaded, predilections, don't exist. And to the point "everywhere the strength and wealth of the centre are growing, while the outskirts are getting weaker and poorer," I recently read an astonishing statistic from an Oxfam report (though in retrospect, I should not have been astonished): 162 people have as much wealth as 50% of all humanity. I don't know that we will find our way out in time, but it is essential not to lose hope.
Or to keep on fighting and highlighting the injustices (which I feel is the role of us Remainers in the UK now - I shall NEVER stop hammering away at the inhumanity of all those Tories voting against the admission of a tiny fraction of child refugees to be reunited with their families in the UK. We also need to keep reminding Brits of your Horror Clown's commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, claiming there are 'far fewer issues between the UK and the US than there are between either of us and the EU'. Heavn help us). As for breathtaking, that's all down to the two Poles. I especially like it that in the later stages of the book RK is more prophetic than his biographer realised at the time.
I have to disagree with Susan. We MUST strive for objectivity.In any context. That it can never to wholly achieved does not take away from objectivity as an aim. As Lessing said, it is the search for truth that is important,not its possession. That does not mean that we might not come to a conclusion. But to start with the view that one cannot be objective is a recipe for emotions, hate, unbalanced causes - and many of the problems of the modern world. I would mention also the reply of Aristotle when asked why people go to tragedies, to which his reply was - to purge the emotions with pity and fear, and so come to a catharsis. We must pour the acid of a true cynicism on one's ideas and emotions, before addressing a question.On the distribution of wealth.the matter is more complex than Oxfam believes, and they do not attack the right targets
May I make two amendments? First, rather than hope “or” continuing the good fight, as we must, I would say “and,” as too often those who give in to losing hope are really saying I won’t be bothered to fight anymore. Second, and I know you didn’t mean it this way, rather than “your” horror clown, perhaps “the,” as so many of us here did what we could to fight against his election and then after, to fight for Dems to retake the House. But you are oh so right of the need to remind everyone that he and his minions and enablers, like Ross, do not have the best interests of either the UK or the US at heart. What’s so awful is how easily folks seem to forget that.
First, David, you would be arguing first and foremost with RK, since he's the subject of the post, and I'd like it if you could engage with it and him. Instead, admirable as much of what you say is, it's familiar. The point of writers like this - and I do think he's a thinker, a question his biographer grapples with - is to make us modify our fixed point of view.
Second, Sue, by 'your' I meant to distinguish between yours and ours - since it's clear we have a copy in many ways, and again a majority of us tried to fight against him. And 'or' clearly means 'and' since it starts my response.ie 'It is essential not to lose hope' (you) 'or (strictly nor..' etc (me).
So I think those amendments are not, after all, necessary, though I agree with what you say.
Although I disagreed with Susan in what I wrote, my comment was not really off piste as the argument against objectivity was reported in your entry. And if I may be allowed to follow up the comments you and Susan make on current politics, I will add that the rise of the demagogue - Trump and Boris - is due to a large extent to the rise of popularism. Letting everyone have power is seen as desirable and a definition of democracy. Those who know what they are doing are criticised as the elite Had the House of Commons taken the decision, Brexit would never have happened.
No, it wasn't off piste but I had hoped you would address the main subject and his fascinating ideas. He foresaw the rise of populism and just as his studies of the Shah and Haile Selassie aren't just about them and their countries, so his projected third book in the trilogy, about Idi Amin, contains so much that could be applied to Trump now. Pity he never completed it; the excerpts are extraordinarily topical. I can't recommend this book too strongly for a lover of recent history such as yourself.
I will obtain the book. I would warn against analogies. They turn one question into three. The original ( say Amin ), The supposed analogy ( say Trump) and then the extent to which they are an analogy.
No-on's saying Trump is another Amin. But the points of contact are instructive. Not that RK aims to be instructive; he's a highly creative writer, a purvyor of faction (for want of a better word).
The book you describe is about him, not faction itself?
Haven't you read the post? It's the most thorough and nuanced of biographies.
David: yes, not strictly necessary, you are right, and I am not sure what possessed me to think aloud in that way. Here is something you wrote in the comments that I love: “The point of writers like this - and I do think he's a thinker, a question his biographer grapples with - is to make us modify our fixed point of view.” It’s only the rarest of writers who can do that, and the rarest of readers (of which you are definitely one) who take up the challenge and thinks deeply, as you have done here.
On the subject of prizing objectivity, I go back to this quotation you note from RK: “I do not believe in impartial journalism. I do not believe in formal objectivity. A journalist cannot be an indifferent witness, he should have the capacity for what in psychology is called empathy....So-called objective journalism is impossible in conflict situations. Attempts at objectivity in such situations lead to disinformation.” And to your own comment on writing your biography of Prokofiev: 'What angle are you going to take?' some folk asked when I was working on Prokofiev volume one. To which the only answer could, rather primly, be: 'there is no one angle, only multiple angles'” which I thoroughly endorse.
To Sir David, We are not so far apart as you may think. I will now enter the dangerous waters of amending again, amending what you have written to say this: “We MUST strive for truth.In any context. That it can never to wholly achieved does not take away from truth as an aim. As Lessing said, it is the search for truth that is important,not its possession. That does not mean that we might not come to a conclusion.” To which, as modified, I say amen.
Don't apologise - I just wanted to clear up any misunderstanding, and I hope I explained exactly what I meant. It's appalling that we both have to 'own' our monsters, despite resisting them vigorously.
In terms of thinking deeply, I'm finding Elena Ferrante's Frantumaglia, a collection of letters, essays and interviews around her four major works of fiction (counting the so-called Neapolitan Quartet as one) unbelievably fruitful. I know you would love it, and the way it examines so many things: the struggles of women shorn of any narrow feminist strictures, the state of Naples and Italy today extending to the world, the nature of adapting novels to the screen. Probably best to have read the novels first, though the single essay entitled 'La Frantumaglia' is one of the wisest and most universally valid things I've ever read by anyone. What an astonishing woman.
Susan, I am glad that we have come to close agreement. I would only add that one cannot pursue truth without objectivity. Emotions and subjective preferences have to be set aside. I suppose that I distrust ANY argument for abandoning objectivity in any context because I regard such a claim as jumping on the slippery slope to an assumption that there is no such thing. I suppose that I am in this as in many things lacking in sympathy with the natural instincts of humanity. But so many of the troubles in the world are due to those instincts.
On the strength of your post, I went searching our library system for either the biography (not available) or something by Kapuściński and ran across Travels with Herodotus. Something in the way he meditates on his travels reminds me a bit of Claudio Magris (to whom you also introduced me). Kapuściński makes so many vivid observations, like this one, while in India: "When I . . . . thought about the small boy greeting the morning star with stanzas from the Upanishads, I doubted whether I could ever comprehend a country in which children start the day singing verses of philosophy." This single sentence holds so much to savor, and there are many such meditations in the book, so far. So thanks, again for the introduction.
That sentence catches his involvment with local people so well. 'Travels with Herodotus' is the one I haven't read - it's sitting on a shelf, so time for that next.
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