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David Mungoshi with his wife Emma at the launch of “Live Like an Artist” at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare

Tanaka Chidora  Literature Today
I have known David Mungoshi, that is, face-to-face, since May, 2011. On the day that I met him, I had just made a presentation at the Book Cafe (old venue) on heroes and heroines in Zimbabwean literature. I was still a “snot-faced” academic, learning the ropes as they say. So, you can imagine my elation at speaking in front of a gathering that comprised Memory Chirere, Petina Gappah, Edwin Mhandu, Virginia Phiri, Shimmer Chinodya, Davison Maruziva and, of course, David Mungoshi.

All of the above are well-known writers, literary practitioners and academics and so, speaking in their presence, back then, provoked a complex set of reactions in my stomach. After my presentation, which Chirere later confessed lived up to its billing, we chatted for a while, Memory, Edwin, Virginia and myself . Then David walked up to me and said, “That was a good presentation, but don’t be misled. You still have a couple of hurdles to jump.”

That’s how I came to know David, the man who does not have any qualms with speaking his mind. I still remember this other argument we had some time last year on a WhatsApp platform concerning Zim dancehall. It lasted two days. Yes, two days! Only Elliot Ziwira has attempted to beat that record in one of our arguments on “inspiration” and “influence”. It was David, Shingai Rukwata Ndoro, Ranga Mataire and myself.

David’s argument was that Zim dancehall is not bringing anything new in terms of youth values. It is just the medium of expression that has changed, but the values are the same values that the youths of David’s youthful days actually expressed through dressing styles for instance, or through speech acts. There is nothing new under the sun; the value systems remain even as the mediums of expression change. In other words, David was saying, “I have seen it all.” This is where you locate “Live Like an Artist” (2017). David has seen it all. In the world of literature he has actually seen it all.

Our discussions have exposed to me how David has read widely. I still remember the time he sent to me, on WhatAapp, a poem that haunts me to this day: “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare. The last two lines that haunt me say:

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Those two lines, those two beautiful lines, have a beautiful, haunting presence in my mind. It was as if David was telling me what to expect in “Live Like an Artist” — simple sentences (direct and poignant sometimes), beautiful metaphors worked in very simple ways, and the unhurried communication of someone who knows that both running and walking get us to the same place. David has seen it all. He has also seen the literary world of complex sentences, big words (some vitriolic, some forceful) and noisy rhymes. “Reading Stains on the Wall”, his 1992 novel, would show you where David is coming from. The opening paragraph of the novel reads:

“The thick foul stench from the offensive turbulence of human waste that boiled, seethed and fermented in the murky writhing depths of an intrusive pond that had been sighed, groaned and heaved forth by generations of the little town’s inhabitants hit the October day with the force of death”.

Now, read the opening verse of the first poem in this collection:

Live your life like an artist

Striving and labouring unappreciated

Until someone discovers you

This is where David’s art has led him, or where it has crawled back to — to the simplicity and straightforwardness of an artiste who has learned his lessons well.

While I was reading this collection, I kept thinking of Constantine Peter Cavafy, that Egyptian Greek, whose mature poems, which rarely rhymed, centralised remembrance and recollection, especially of past actions that were pleasurably committed, or past actions that were unfortunately omitted. For instance, In Cavafy’s “Body, Remember”, the persona is speaking to his body about its past and foregone indulgences and the eyes that ogled it. They (the persona and his body) can now talk about it plainly because “everything is finally in the past.”

In another one, “The Mirror in the Front Hall”, Cavafy uses an eighty-year-old mirror as the persona. The mirror is fascinated by a very handsome young man, who visits the house and stands before the mirror to adjust his tie. The joy of the mirror comes from the fact that it has “embraced total beauty for a few minutes.”

But what makes us reflect is what the mirror tells us, that in its eighty years, it has seen a lot — many faces and objects. We get the feeling that these faces and objects have come and gone, or that they have grown old and lost the vitality of youth, and this too shall be the fate of the young man. That sobering effect of Cavafy’s poems is what I experienced when I read “Live Like an Artist”.

Reading a poem like “How Quickly Time Passes” testifies to what I am saying here. One verse reads:

How quickly this thing called time passes

How thoroughly it lulls your senses

And how so very rude the awakening

When other things demand allegiance of you!

Here David Mungoshi utilises the tone of one who has seen it all, one who has seen time blowing the whistle on oblivious lovers, or on young people who thought they would remain young, vibrant and ogled at forever. He brings this observation to its most poignant climax in “A Poem About Time Going By” where the persona, in a very melancholic tone, muses:

Once upon a time

I was in diapers

Screaming my lungs out

When the fancy seized me

Now I see me

In diapers again

When an old man’s incontinence

Makes me feel sad and retarded

That is how time marches on

And yes, you too will get there

Here, the persona becomes the Cavafian mirror saying to us, “Gaze at me, but know this: you are just but gazing at yourselves” (chuckle, chuckle, chuckle). “When I Was Young”; “Old Man Passing On”; “In A Doctor’s Waiting Room”; and “Paradise Lost” are some of the numerous poems that communicate the effervescence of life in a very sobering, yet beautiful manner.

Yet, these deceptively simple and sad reflections are not all there is to David Mungoshi’s collection. Sometimes the persona is a love-hungry individual, who meets his lover again and implores her to spend time with him as they “sip nectar from each other’s lips” (“Meeting up Again”); or a defiant individual, who thinks that having nothing in life allows him the chance NOT to count losses (“Song of the Defiant”); or the beer guzzler embracing the bottle’s hypnotic spell (“Guzzler’s Anthem”).

My favourite is “Stories from My Picture Album”. It reminds me so much of a photo of me that was taken when I was in Grade Three. I was standing between Grandpa and Grandma with my two uncles kneeling in front of us. I never got the chance to see the photo even after the photographer had processed it until my aunt surprised me by flourishing it before my eyes some time last year. I could not recognise myself.

How time flies!

But what we learn from these poems is that everything crawls back to art, everything including a woman suckling her baby in the back of a truck; or the habits of time, this relentless task master; or the life of a hungry artiste; or the clichéd utterances we use everyday; or the moribund mass that is our dying world — everything crawls back to art.