Wilson Harris accepts second Guyana Prize
Offers Warwick conference sneak preview of new novel 'Mask of the Beggar'
By John Mair in Warwick, England
Stabroek News
May 24, 2003
The octogenarian author Wilson Harris, viewed by some as the genius of Guyanese literature, was presented with his second Guyana Prize for Literature at a special ceremony at the Warwick University Arts Centre last weekend. Harris announced that he was "delighted" to accept this Lifetime Achievement Award especially at a time when his homeland was in, as he put it, a "crisis".
In his acceptance speech Wilson apologised for not being physically able to go to Guyana in person to accept the award last December but felt that Warwick was a "fitting place" for him to receive it. Before the presentation, he had been lauded by fellow Guyanese, Professor David Dabydeen for his intellectual generosity. "He told me to be a writer not a critic twenty years ago in a hotel room in Wolverhampton. It's the best advice I have ever been given."
Professor Mark McWatt of UWI Cave Hill, another Guyanese born scholar, declared himself "privileged" to be presenting the Prize (and the nearly 2000 pounds Sterling prize money) to Harris.
His lap of honour over, Wilson then went on to deliver a speech on "The Brutalisation of Truth" to a rapt audience of sixty that included the former British High Com-missioner to Guyana Edward Glover and his wife, several professors of literature from around the UK and many students studying the work of the great master for their doctorates.
Wilson was as opaque as ever. As in his writing, he tried to establish the firm link from Guyana's native Indians to Pre-Colombian and Aztec civilisations elsewhere in South America. He bemoaned the bulldozer effect of cultural hegemony. "In our lack of profound understanding we obliterate the parts we appear to detest in those we subdue" as he put it. His intellectual fire spared few people or few institutions. The spirit of the native "is still overshadowed by the intolerance of the church" but there was room for optimism. That being overcome as "science is now playing the part that religion once did." Quantum Theory instead of Holy Water, Chemistry instead of Confession.
Harris is a perfectionist. He uses words like verbal jewels. Each one written, spoken and polished like a small diamond or emerald in its own right. Each one as vital as the one before and the one after. He is a prize product of the education system of the old Guiana. His world view and his love affair with pre-industrial civilisations formed by his formative years as a surveyor for the British Guiana Lands and Survey Department in the Guyanese interior.
Those hours spent reading and thinking by lantern light have brought forth a deeply thoughtful man. In both his speech and his writing, he seems to exist on a different plane, in a different reality from us ordinary mortals.
Harris' radicalism has not been tempered by age. Most ambitious or preposterous (according to your point of view)is his thesis that the very form of the novel needs to be addressed and changed. Sadly, not in his lifetime.
Harris' latest novel 'The Mask of the Beggar' is due to be published in the UK in August this year. He announced that this would be his last at the age of eighty-three. "I wish I could go on and write again but I haven't got the energy," he regretted.
Those familiar with the oeuvre of Harris will not be surprised at some of the familiar themes of 'Mask'. The Warwick audience was treated to a sneak preview. "The intangible threads, the mystery of consciousness" as he put it. But, intangible or not, he does not even then make it simple: each reader must have their own interpretation. "You must read differently, you must understand differently" and learn to break down the "institutional ways of reading."
All with the over-arching aim to "bring the imagination into new ways of existence."
On paper or in the flesh, listening to or reading Wilson is a rich experience. Eight decades of Guyana should be proud of this literate son. He deserves every prize they have awarded him.(