- 14 African Literature

 Prepared by :Sima Rathod

Paper – 14 The African Literature

Email Id : rsima144@gmail.com 

Submitted to :Smt.S.B.Gardi.Department of English, MKBU

Abstract : In this Assignment I have tried to compare two texts One is Waiting for Barbarians by South African Novelist J. M. Coetzee and another one is by Italian novelist, short story writer, Journalist and Dramatist Dino Buzzatti’ Il Deserto Dei Tartari (The Tartar Steppe) which almost deals with the same subject of Colonialism, Empire and the Barbarianism of the Empire on the nomads.

Keywords : Colonialism, Barbarians, Empire, Magistrate, Colonel Joll, Drago. 

Introduction :

John Maxwell quotes a South African novelist and translator who is noted for his novels about effects of colonisation according to great writers inspire every novel is carefully structure every sentence carefully crafted every word carefully selected all information is disclosed or not it seems for a reason reason that is nevertheless elusive and tricky to pin the if there is a General feeling that a reader text from a codes in oval it would be safe to say that it is not one of the resolution indeed most often we find ourselves asking why? Gem quizzes Prize winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between operation and oppressed the magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of confidence in a place in remote X situation is that of all man living in an unreliable complexity which regions that ignored justice and decency for decades the magistrate has been a loyal servant to The Empire running the affairs of a tiny Frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians when interrogation expert arrived they were he witnesses the empires Cruel and answers treatment of prisoners of War bolted into sympathy for their victims and helps them to fight back with the Empire and in return he himself the enemy of Empire. Il Deserto Dei Tartari and waiting for Barbarians share some crucial elements in common and it may seem strange that the two authors with such diverse backgrounds light dinner Gujarati and M codes choose the sum setting a world space on the border and the same allegory the threat of an invasion from the northern desert it seems a reasonable hypothesis that are similar climate of political claustrophobia and insecurity as well as a sense of looming disaster shaped their works. The novel Il Deserto Dei Tartari is often linked to kafkas The Castle, the Tartar Steppe is both a scathing critique of military life and a mediation on the human thirst for glory. It a tell of a Young soldier Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar Steppe, as almost without his I'm not saying he has come to share the others wait for a foreign invasion that never happens. 

Research objectives :

 Drogo and Magistrate are same? Drogo’s suicide can be considered a philosophical suicide? 

Research Methodology :

The study contains narrative research and follows descriptive method. 

Colonialism :

What is the practice of domination which involves the subjugation of one people to another one of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is hard to distinguish it from imperialism frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms like colonialism and imperialism also involved political and economic of control over a dependent territories of the two terms have a word provide some clues about how they differ the term Colony comes from the Latin word for learners meaning farmer this rule reminds us that the practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a new territory where the arrival lived as a permanent set love while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin imperialism on the other hand comes from the Latin term imperium which means to command the term imperialism Rose attention to the way that one country exercise power over another whether through settlement. Colonialism is not a modern phenomenon world history is full of examples of one society gradually expanding by incorporating adjacent territory and settling its people on unique Concord a territory the ancient greeks set of colonialism as did the Romans the most and the ottomans to name just a few of the most famous examples of colonialism.

Comparison of IL Deserto Dei Tartari and Waiting for Barbarians. 

Neither novel can be located by any precise historical or geographical coordinates so as to stress their allegorical nature Gujarati detect a Kingdom which is almost computer image of Italy in mid 1800 as we can infer from a number of details in the fourth a painting has an inscription in letting the monocular is in fashion the army uses 32 grams lead bullets but the telegraph is still unknown he also mentions of you real place and people names for land the tartars Surjit sees along with some other that do not exist the village of San Rocco, King Pietro the third, Prince Sebastiano, cosy though stretches this ambiguity in for other by accumulating conflicting details that leaves The Reader completely disoriented and make it impossible to locate the Empire anywhere in the world or at any precise time in history the main elements of the family are is the nation is introduced at the very beginning of the novel when the magistrate us that he has never seen a pair of sunglasses before sunglasses or rather smoke colour take what lenses have been owned by different cultures from time immemorial and they were definitely common at a time when glass Windows glass decoration clocks pencils Muscat and guns were in use as it is the case with waiting for the barbarians detail the only one of the kya and but not and has a very significant one in the text would locate the narrative in a totally unknown time in history for has an apocalyptic field future.

The Subtle interplay between familiar and unfamiliar parameters the valve novels for example the magistrate mentions a proverb cold heart cold hand which is not quite the  The Reader is  familiar with a cold heart a warm hand. Gujarati employee similar device an unfamiliar effect when he mentions a real Nation Holland The Reader is totally at a loss having to accept that a smooth passage does exist from the fictional world of the novel into our country on the map.

The protagonist of waiting for barbarians is simply the magistrate and jewels victim the Barbarian girl my Joel and Mandal the only people with the name are characterized by implications whether ironical or not contained in their names. Mai recalls MA, a linguistic near Universal for mother found in many of the world's languages and she is in fact the mother figure in the novel is not a Jolly person neither does he Jolly people to win their cooperation for the more in Africans Joel means to pay around to have fun with singles out the worst kind of torture somebody whose job is also his recreation his dark glasses and the black carriage he travels in identify him as an informational creature who brings about death and destruction with his Lethal touch each changes healthy people into cripples and dead bodies and that tool heart by granary a single of life into a horror chamber.

In the two novels there is no state religion either and religion in general plays a very minor Road this is most surprising considering that Coetzee is describing the history of imperialism submission to a region goes hand in hand with colonization but neither the fisherfolk nor the Barbarian seem to have been touched by any activity means to convert them Gujarati portrays the life at a military outpost where oddly enough there are no religious observances whatsoever and not even Chaplin is ever mentioned.

In Coetzees’s novel The Clash between the two embedded in the magistrate and Joll is above all the conflict of interest political and moral where is in Buzzatti’s novel the Fort and the capital town represents two irreconcilable forces. Two incompatible words that of the soldier and that of the civilians the masculine and the feminine. 

Conclusion :

Il Deserto Dei Tartari and Waiting for Barbarians do not offer simple answers for strategies they reflect in different ways Tamil ise of those intellectuals who are unable to produce any meaningful transformation and therefore waiting for a change that comes from the outside the former is the historical product of the political climate in Italy during the period of fascism and the letter of that of South African during Apartheid to paraphrase roll number regular in all these are the data is an example of complexity the magistrate in waiting for barbarians of importance both experience and in escapable feeling of alienation. 

References

•        Davies, Dominic . Great Writers Inspire. n.d. 27 April 2021 <https://writersinspire.org/content/jm-coetzee-1>.

•        HOWE, IRVING . Archive The New York Times . 18 April 1982. 27 April 2021 <https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/02/home/coetzee-barbarians.html>.

•        Keene, Frances . The New York Times. 24 August 1952. 27 April 2021 <https://www.nytimes.com/1952/08/24/archives/the-useless-waiting-the-tartar-steppe-by-dino-buzzati-translated.html>.

•        Nobel Prize.Org. n.d. Nobel Media. 27 April 2021 <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2003/coetzee/facts/>.

•        Pugliese, Cristiana . "Waiting on the Border: a Comparative Study of Dino Buzzati’s Il deserto dei Tartari and J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians." African Journals Online 14.2 (2013): 22.

•        SARNA, NAVTEJ . The Hindu. 3 April 2010. 27 April 2021 <https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/navtej_sarna/Second-Thoughts-In-the-twilight-zone-with-Coetzee/article16123607.ece>.

•        The Editors of Encyclopaedia . Britanica. 5 February 2021. 27 April 2021 <https://www.britannica.com/biography/J-M-Coetzee>.

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