VOLUME 1: 1967-1971
Edited and with an Introduction
by Andrew O. Lindsay (Abridged)
INTRODUCTION
Guyana under the British was a cultural prism of bold, lucid facets in a stern, unforgiving glass that divided and segregated the lights projected in it. It held the promise of the rainbow, without an appropriate, nurturing rain. It would be the Guyanese themselves who would have to show the courage to place their own hand upon the crystal of the glass and so unveil the illusion. Thus it was that the social suffrage begun in 1954 achieved its purpose
Edgar Mittleholzer
in 1966 when Guyana declared itself a sovereign nation and republic. Going into Independence Day, Georgetown hosted flourishing drama clubs, musical societies, concerts given by Georgetown by two symphony orchestras, poetry readings, theatrical and operatic performances. The subject-matter was invariably dictated by the fact that the definition of culture was narrowly limited to representations with a European bias.
It was therefore a vacuum in the sense that during centuries of commercial exploitation there had been no real place for the locally-based West Indian writer or artist working on local
material. There were a few notable exceptions. A. R. F. Webber, though Trinidadian by birth, spent much of his life in British Guiana, and his 1917 novel Those That Be in Bondage,
was published and is partly set in the colony. Until Selwyn Cudjoe produced an edition in 1988 there were only two copies in existence. Norman Cameronís Guianese Poetry features work by twenty-nine writers, dating back as far as 1832, including a selection by Egbert Martin,all, however, writing in a mannered Victorian English. Edgar Mittelholzer wrote his
light-hearted Creole Chips in 1937, and published them at his own expense. Peter Kempadooís Guiana Boy appeared in 1960, and is the first work of fiction to describe life on the sugar estates. The Guianese Art Group, formed in 1944, tried to foster work on local themes by local artists. All the same, the prevailing climate was predominantly Eurocentric.
As John Hearne has observed, an oppressive colonial history had created a society unique in its inarticulate sterility. In the visual arts, music and literature there were only the British models to follow, and any attempt at authentic self-expression was treated with a certain amount of condescension or disdain. A. J. Seymour ñ prolific poet, respected critic, tireless essayist and founder-editor of the literary periodical Kyk-Over-Al recalls that when, as a young man, he first declared his intention to write poetry he was greeted with anger and in credulity. He was made to feel that for a young Guyanese to have such an ambition was to make himself into an upstart. No publishing house existed in Guyana to publish aspiring authors, because there no commercial incentive to sell books by home-grown authors to a population conditioned to believe that nothing local was worth reading. The aspiring Guyanese writer was therefore not writing for a Guyanese or even a Caribbean audience, and his creativity was stultified by the need to ensure that his material would be comprehensible to British or North American readers. In short, the colonial masters had created an inferiority complex on a national scale. Prem Misir has neatly summed up the situation as follows:
“The European imperialists believed their beliefs, values,
norms, rules, laws, language, etc. were innately superior to
the local cultural format; many locals in the colonies surrendered to, and assimilated the imperialist definitions and concepts. And the way to rise in social mobility was through recognition and acceptance of the imperialist culture; modernity, a target to which many people aspire, is akin to taking on a Western look. Thus, the local culture is subject to a dual marginalisation – Western imperialists’ subordinationof the locals culture, and the locals themselves subordinating their culture to the imperialistsí way of life.”
Writing in 1960, George Lamming remembered: “This was the kind of atmosphere in which all of us grew up.”
“On the one hand a mass of people who were either illiterate or if not, had no connection whatever to literature since they were too poor or too tired to read; and on the other hand a colonial middle class education, it seemed, for the specific purpose of sneering at anything that few or was made on native soil.”
It was in such an atmosphere that the young Mittelholzer began to try his hand at writing, meeting with endless rejections from British publishers. Like so many other writers or artists seeking recognition he had to find it outside British Guiana. The same was so of art. In the British Guiana of the late 1940s, the paintings of Denis Williams were treated with a certain derision and hostility until they were praised by the London establishment and by the reviewer in Time magazine. Recognition by the media is a measure of success. It also casts the artist into a cauldron of debate, for back home, in British Guiana, the implication of success stood in the way of what Seymour and his contemporaries saw as authentic Guyaneseness – the representation as well as the direct participation in the life and troubles of the Guyanese folk. Those abroad who achieved some acknowledgement as to the worth of their art would have been viewed with a degree of suspicion and an inevitable modicum of envy at home. To compound matters, artists have had to contend with the reality that systems of education place little value on the Arts. Michael Gilkes has explained that: “The major reason why our schools still do not actively encourage the Arts alongside the Sciences is that our school systems emerged from and were shaped by colonialism. Schools in the Colonies were designed to provide a level of basic educational competence among the poor as potential workers, but they were also designed to nurture a subservient educated class who could be groomed to become the captains of industry, judges in the courts of law, leaders of the organised Christian church and Heads of financial institutions while remaining loyal to the tenets of Empire. Our school systems still bear the marks of their colonial origins. The role of Art was never central to a colonial education, nor is it today, for very similar reasons.”
To sharpen the edge of debate, colonial rule deliberately fosters ethnic division:
[Ö] it should be remembered that throughout Guyanese history the elements of race, because of religion and language,have been factors which the master class manipulated so that they worked against unity.”
“Descendants of the black slave population in the colony knew of no other culture than the British one. As a means of keeping them in their place their ancestors had been coerced into Christianity by the colonisers. Links with their authentic past had been systematically and irrevocably severed and it was therefore inevitable that any of them wishing to venture into the field of the arts would have no option but to follow the British model, where such an enterprise was regarded as presumptuous.
When the Indian population began to arrive in the late 1830s they brought and retained their religion, so the predations of Christian missionaries were largely unsuccessful. They also brought with them the richness and beauty of the Bhagavat Gita, the cherished traditions of divali, Phagwah and other festivals, their ancient pantheon of divinities, their jhandi flags, their language, and a rich heritage of drama, song, and the distinctive art that lay at the heart of their religion. This was their canon fully formed and self-sufficient and despite the ghastly privations of indentureship, it was not wrested from them.” Theirs was a culture central to their daily lives, and naturally enough they held tenaciously to it. Why would they wish to embrace Eurocentric models of culture? Why would they set religion and tradition aside in order to emulate a culture much less sophisticated than their own?”
“As for the indigenous peoples of the interior, they might as well not have existed. They did not speak English, so what contribution could they possibly make to culture? It is salutary to remember that in the late nineteenth century, except for keeping a few villages intact as curiosities, there was earnest discussion about exterminating the Amerindians altogether.”
For these reasons it was never going to be easy for a writer or an artist to be distinctively Guyanese, and it is not surprising that so much post-colonial literature in Guyana and the wider Caribbean deals with the question of identity: it is of course a preoccupation in the works of Mittelholzer, and a recurring theme in several of the Memorial Lectures that bear his name.
One of the first attempts to lift the dead hand of cultural imperialism was the establishment of History and Culture Weeks in the late 1950s. These had four main aims: to bring together people from rural and urban areas; to recognise the importance of cooperation between all ethnic groups to provide a better quality of life for all; to conserve the country’s heritage; and to encourage creativity.
This bringing together of persons from rural and urban areas is particularly significant. At the time, about 70 percent of the population lived in the countryside, and were predominantly East Indian. Georgetown’s population was largely African or mulatto.So Seymour’s vision testifies to his clear determination to break down barriers between ethnicities. It is worth reminding ourselves from the outset that these events were actively supported and encouraged by both Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham.
In a published, open letter of 1958 Denis Williams wrote: The week of Guianese History and Culture is a magnificent step forward. I sincerely hope it will have the desired effect
On this level of thought I have recently come to believe that the time has come for a comprehensive publication of
West Indian literature ñ the first fifteen years, say, 1943ñ1958.
A tremendous amount has been done in this period, and I envisage something of the kind which used to come out of America. Fifteen years of West Indian Literature whole novels and/or excerpts (800 ñ 1,000 pages), poems, essays, etc.accompanied by adequate biographical stuff. This would be our first cultural gesture at nationhood on the international level and we can sure put up a show to make the literary world sit up and listen.
Implicit in any such cultural gesture at nationhood was a clear determination that the time had come to take issue with unthinking deference to European norms, and to challenge the assumption that a developing Guyanese culture, in the widest sense of that word, would require a European imprimatur.
It was against this background ñ indeed because of it ñ that the idea for the Memorial Lectures took shape. Following on Independence, there were urgent moves to bring together
Guyana’s writers and artists. Inspired by idealism and optimism, there was much discussion about ways in which to promote and showcase Guyanese scholarship. Following Mittelholzerís death, Jan Carew had written to Burnham suggesting some kind of memorial plaque, but it was A. J. Seymour who wrote again and proposed the Lectures.
There was also strong support from the influential group of writers and artists who would go on to create and host the first Carifesta in 1972, with the theme The Artist in Society
with Special Reference to the Third World. These were tireless advocates of a national identity defined and shaped in the arts. On the death of Edgar Mittelholzer in 1965, the government instituted the Memorial Lectures in his honour on themes of contemporary Guyanese or Commonwealth Caribbean writing or aspects of the relationship between thought and history and the emergence of creative writing in the Caribbean area, in order to promote a sense of national pride and help keep Guyana in the forefront of the new nations.
Thus in 1967 the Edgar Mittelholzer Memorial Lectures were instituted under the auspices of the National History & Arts Council which had been set up two years earlier. Each speaker would address a number of public audiences over a period of several days, though there was no hard and fast rule about the number. The initial plan was to present a lecture every two years or so, and by and large this is what has happened, though there have been interims of longer than two years. To date there have been fifteen Lectures and fourteen speakers (Denis Williams spoke twice). Each speaker gave three or four presentations which, collectively, have yielded over forty individual papers.
It is to the credit of the Guyanese government that each lecture was published soon after it was delivered. Copies were often printed in limited edition and now many are no
longer readily accessible. A few a still to be found on websites specialising in rare books, where they command high prices. It is for this reason that they have been assembled in a single volume: these lectures are so important that they should be made wider known and shared by all those with a passion for the arts, whichever the world stage.
