The Guardian just lately revealed Departmental Lecturer Barney Norris’s tribute to the playwright and novelist Athol Fugard, who has died on the age of 92. You possibly can learn the total textual content under:
I really feel that Athol Fugard and his spouse, Paula Fourie, modified my life within the autumn of 2022 after I visited South Africa to spend time with them and their daughter Halle. We had been purported to be engaged on a e-book collectively, and we did; however our time turned a lot greater than that. There have been lunches in the home or the restaurant not far away; walks within the woods; a braai that went on previous midnight.
Over espresso within the mornings I’d sit with Athol and we’d use an app on his cellphone to establish the calls of all of the birds within the backyard. Then he may inform me a narrative from his life – the awe he felt when he requested Yvonne Bryceland to smash a chair to bits throughout rehearsals for Antigone and he or she proceeded to take action for a full half-hour; the journey he made by sea at 18 from Cairo to Japan, when an illiterate Somalian sailor used to observe him each night time as he wrote a novel by hand, sitting on a deck hatch; and the best way that sailor by no means spoke to him once more when he completed the novel, determined it was horrible, and threw it within the sea.
Simply as soon as, he instructed me the story of a play he was planning. He spoke elegantly, fastidiously, barely formally; I hardly dared breathe for concern he’d cease. He and I had shared sure excessive experiences, albeit greater than half a century aside, which had been formative for each of us, and I believe consequently we bonded fairly strongly; over the course of my time with him we each cried collectively, taking each other’s arms. And on a regular basis he handled me like I used to be sufficient. To obtain that from somebody whose life had been so huge radically altered my perspective.
His companion in creation and enjoyable was Paula, maybe probably the most formidably clever individual I do know. The undertaking we had been all engaged on collectively was, partly, an examination of Athol’s flaws. They had been relentlessly clear-eyed and analytical in all they did. However they had been additionally two extraordinarily romantic folks, to the purpose the place they’d determined to start out a household collectively. Athol remained a dreamer, filled with plans to the tip. His most hanging high quality, although, was his infinite gratitude, which I believe was nurtured by his a few years as a practising Buddhist. He felt very fortunate to have lived a unprecedented life.
I believe that life incorporates an pressing lesson for us. His work is a mannequin for a way to withstand a regime one detests whereas remaining dedicated to the nation one loves – a urgent query for an excellent many individuals at this time. In his last public look, talking to a web-based viewers convened by the Society of Authors final 12 months, he shared what I believed may be the important thing tenet of that undertaking: “Anger is a withering emotion. It’s higher to write down out of affection.”
