more coetzee

Here's something else from Life & Times of Michael K.


"When he thought of Wynberg Park he thought of an earth more vegetal than mineral, composed of last year's rotted leaves and the year before's and so on back till the beginning of time, an earth so soft that one could dig and never come to the end of the softness; one could dig to the centre of the earth from Wynbert Park, and all the way to the centre it would be cool and dark and damp and soft. I have lost my love for that kind of earth, he thought, I no longer care to feel that kind of earth between my fingers. It is no longer the green and the brown that I want but the yellow and the red; not the wet but the dry; not the dark but the light; not the soft but the hard. I am becoming a different kind of man, he thought, if there are two kinds of man. If I were cut, he thought, holding his wrists out, looking at his wrists, the blood would no longer gush from me but seep, and after a little seeping dry and heal. I am becoming smaller and harder and drier every day. If I were to die here, sitting in the mouth of my cave looking out over the plain with my knees under my chin, I would be dried out by the wind in a day, I would be preserved whole, like someone in the desert drowned in sand."


(J.M. Coetzee)


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Someone once described Coetzee's writing as 'pitiless' - and she didn't mean that as a compliment. I agree that his writing lacks pity - but then I don't see 'pity' as a hallmark of good writing. I don't even see it as a hallmark of humane writing. What Coetzee seems to have, as a writer, is not pity, but compassion. Even at his most brutal, he accords his characters dignity, refusing to patronise, holding their pain at a distance so that as readers, we are not allowed to wallow in a cathartic wash of sympathy, but are forced to consider their suffering from an angle that is almost, but not quite, impersonal.

The effect is devastating.

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Edit: 19 Oct 07

Here's something taken from a friend's blog on pity and compassion that I think illuminates what I said earlier in this entry.

"...pity implies a power relationship: pity is kindness shown to people/beings less advantaged than you; pity is predicated on weakness. We pity the poor, we pity the wounded. We pity celebrities or politicians though they have wealth and power: we pity them based on their lack of privacy, their (perceived?) lack of "a normal life".... You can pity people who aren't liked, because you feel somehow better, by being "liked".

Because pity involves power, it is possible that through pity, we ignore or obscure the humanity of those being pitied. The poor become a class, the sick become a mass, and pity continues as long as the pitier can maintain an idea of the weakness of the pitied.

Compassion is kindness based on the recognition that we are all beings that suffer. If pity denies individuality by relagating the recipient of kindness to powerlessness; compassion, while not necessarily suggesting it, at least leaves the nature of the individuality open...

Compassion, like pity, can be extended both below and above. But through compassion, because there is no need for weakness as a condition of kindness, we now have a way to show kindness to those above us who tend to oppress, to acknowledge that no matter how powerful the control exerted, at its core lies a being subject to suffering. Compassion allows us to return the face to the force that turns us faceless: it is through compassion we return the face to the authority and also to ourselves...

... Faced with the certainty that we suffer, and also of the uncertainty of how another suffers, in our compassion lies the possibility for kindness without condescension, the kindness of an individual being to an individual being."
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