My bones and my flute

"..In short, everything - all the mobility, all the aliveness , all the pregnant vigour, of this array of symbols that shimmers in my awareness - is, in relaity, death. Death in the guise of movement and sunshine, death in the guise of green leaves, and a pattern of sounds, death in the guise of human figures loving and fearing and fretting over the making of money..."

This excerpt from "My bones and my flute" is one of the many examples of the amazing writing of  Edgar Mittelholzer.
December 2009 marks his 100th Birth anniversary  .  There was a lot more excitement about gaza and gully this year than about one of the most prolific Guyanese authors.

There are many scholarly reviews of Mittelholzer's work. I like the idea of a man writing from the place where he lives and creating stories and characters out of people we could know. Guyana seems to become more irrelevant in literature as the years go by. we hear that Mittelholzer's first book was published right in Berbice. There are no publishers left in Berbice 70 years later.  My Bones and My Flute is a nice jumbie story, and the radio version was very popular. I found the ending a bit tame, not the writing, but the fact that the jumbie could be formed and seen by everyone.. well, that is too ordinary. Still, I do not plan to hold no old paper soon from Berbice.

There was an event at Castellani House on Wednesday 16 Dec, to celebrate the 100th Birthday. Two presentations and some readings from books.  The audience was less than say the number  you hear when the Iranians visit the tomb of Hafez. It was good to hear some more about the man, but it was sad when you realise that next 100 years, no one would probably remember him here.

The persons who read excerpts read from photocopied pages, whether for convenience or for the fact that the only versions which are available to Guyanese are photocopies of photocopies of copies of Mittelholzer works which used to be available a long time ago.

I read of other countries and societies who value their books and their literacy. Guyana, though, seems to be thriving on a rapidly declining appreciation of reading, and writing and thinking. Instead of more books and authors and book stores and bookshops and publishing houses , we have less.
Why fret though, as Mittelholzer said, it is all death.