For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the author's internal conflict about the impact of writing in the face of societal injustices.
Athol Fugard reflects on his struggles with the significance of writing amidst the harsh realities of apartheid South Africa. He grapples with the feeling that his contributions through writing may seem inadequate compared to the urgent actions required to address such deep societal issues, emphasizing the moral dilemma faced by artists and writers when confronting injustice.
In practice
In a speech about the power of literature, one might quote Fugard to illustrate the struggles of writers in oppressive societies.
What I quickly discovered is that our so-called new South Africa has as much material for a story-teller as the old one. The landscape hasn't really changed. Who is in power now is different to who was in power then, but the squatter camps grow like cancer, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
You'll see that the strong, the affirmative, the positive voice in any of the plays I've written is that of a woman. My men are, well, not quite worthless, but they are certainly weak, and that reflects the reality I grew up with and what I think has in a sense shaped me.
I can't think of a single one of my plays that does not represent a coincidence between an external and an internal event. Something outside of me, outside even my own life, something I read in a newspaper or witness on the street, something I see or hear, fascinates me. I see it for its dramatic potential.
For you in the West to hear the phrase 'All men are created equal' is to draw a yawn. For us, it's a miracle. We're starting out at rock bottom, man. But South Africa does have soul.
As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.
...What is the use of beauty? i have lived my life surrounded by painters, and still I do not know the answer. But i suspect, some days, that beauty helps protect the spirit of mankind, swaddle it and succor it, so that we might survive. Beauty is no end in itself, but if it makes or lives less miserable so that we might be more kind-well, then, lets have beauty, painted on our porcelain, hanging on our walls, ringing through our stories.
How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.
I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising.
There is a beauty in nature and culture that we no longer have access to. Those things you can't forget, you embroider... The further you tell, the further you travel from truth, which means, of course, that literature is a lie.
I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.
We read and remember certain writers because they offer distinctive voices and perspectives, because they've given themselves over completely and passionately to their obsessions while vigorously ignoring everything else.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.