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Beaven Tapureta Bookshelf
Two decades and some few years after legendary author Dambudzo Marechera’s passing on, his influence still seems larger than life in the literary circles. The power of Marechera’s works is immortal; it has become the benchmark and a lifetime apprenticeship for many artists in Zimbabwe and abroad. ‘‘Marecheranism’’, still in its informal stages of development, seems to have inevitably crossed over to other types of art such as theatre, film, sculpture, and painting. Aspiring writers who are fond of Marechera’s texts and inspired to dizzying heights by his outspoken character normally are at war with themselves when trying to maintain their own originality and style. Yet by critically accepting this phase when external literary influences that come with wide reading, one can eventually find his or her own voice. For even Marechera once said, “I do not consider influences pernicious. They are a type of apprenticeship. When I started writing D.H Lawrence was a skeleton in my cupboard . . .” (“Dambudzo Marechera 1952-1987”, a tribute compiled by Flora Veit Wild)

In an article on Marechera in a Moto Magazine some years ago writer David Mungoshi (writing as Chigango Musandireve) discovered something which today holds sway, that, “His (Marechera’s) work is the lost object of desire which budding writers wish to conjure up in their own writing. In the words of Alves, and, as psychoanalysis has realised, there is neither time nor space. What is dead and lost is brought back to life again.”

Author of a NAMA award-winning novella “Shards”, Cythia Marangwanda, does not hide her love for Marechera (and Yvonne Vera). In an interview with Bookshelf in December last year, she said, “I consider Marechera and Vera my literary ancestors. I can relate to their style and technique, that highly poetic form of prose of Vera and Marechera, the dense stream of consciousness of their narratives and the commitment to their craft.”

Marechera, also referred to as “the enfant terrible of African literature”, is in most cases considered an incomprehensible writer in life and works. The conundrum of his life and texts invite us to a world of ingenuity, challenge our intellects, and give us new images and perspectives about the world we live in. Reading his works challenge us out of our hiding nooks and forces us to examine our taboos.

More commentaries or critical works on Marechera are being produced both in print and online, more seminars focusing on his life and books are being held, more followers . . . the nostalgia is irresistible! To date, well-known researches on Marechera include “Emerging Perspectives on Dambudzo Marechera” (edited by Flora Veit-Wild and Antony Chennels), “No Room for Cowardice: A view of the Life and Times of Dambudzo Marechera” (David Pattison), “Moving Spirit: The Legacy of Dambudzo Marechera in the 21st Century” (accompanied with a DVD), “Marechera and the Colonel: A Zimbabwean Writer and the Claims of the State” (David Caute), “Reading Marechera” (edited by Grant Hamilton), “Dambudzo Marechera: A Source Book on his Life and Work” (Flora Veit Wild), and “An Articulate Anger: Dambudzo Marechera” (Kirsten Holst Petersen).

Local writer and academic Nhamo Mhiripiri edited another critical appraisal of Marechera’s life and works titled “Speaking to, Living with Dambudzo Marechera in the 21st Century”.

The greatest and memorable event to ever take place in celebration of Dambudzo Marechera was a conference at Oxford University in the United Kingdom where Marechera also studied and lived.

The conference, organised by Dobrotta Pucherova and Professor Elleke Boehmer in the university’s Faculty of English, was held few years ago, simply dubbed “Dambudzo Marechera: A Celebration”. It was a multi-media festival celebrating the avant-garde work of Dambudzo Marechera.

A number of local established writers and academics took part in the conference and the Marechera discourse was wonderfully viewed from varying standpoints grounded on local and international literary trends. For instance, Memory Chirere presented a paper titled “Marechera-mania and Zimbabwean Literature” in which he argued that so many local writers have launched their own literary careers first by imitating Marechera and then finding their own voices.

Other Zimbabwean writers who took part in the celebration include Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Christopher Mlalazi, and Brian Chikwava.

Last year, a ‘‘controversial’’ short film called “Flora and Dambudzo” (by Dr. Agnieska Piotrowska, an academic in film at the University of Bedfordshire) was screened during the Zimbabwe International Film Festival. The film was shot, edited and co-produced by Joe Njagu, one of Zimbabwe’s premiere filmmakers. Based on revelations by Flora Veit Wild in her ‘‘controversial’’ essay in 2012 that she had an affair with Dambudzo Marechera, the film adds to the complicacy of the Marechera character. The film is being used to explore the issue of inter-racial love. Such is the Marechera enigma!

Dambudzo Marechera’s works have been reprinted, re-published or translated. Such progress of his books, even after years since his passing, is really amazing. His award-winning “House of Hunger”, published in 1978 by Heinemann, was again published in New York in 1979 by Pantheon Books. In Zimbabwe, the book was published by Zimbabwe Publishing House in 1982 but it already had been translated into German the previous year (1981). In 1988, a Dutch edition of “House of Hunger” was published. As we speak, the book is available in Spanish!

Other works by Marechera are “Black Sunlight” (1980), also available in French, “Mindblast or the Definitive Buddy” (1980), also available in German, “Black Insider” (1990), “Cemetery of Mind: Collected Poems” (1992), and “Scrapiron Blues” (1994) which was translated into Swedish in 2011.

There must be something unique and promising about ‘‘Marecheranism’’, sooner or later it will catch up with us like a legend that has in its fold writers such as Dr. Charles Mungoshi, Stanley Nyamfukudza, Musaemura Zimunya and others belonging to the same generation.

With his vast contribution to the growth and recognition of Zimbabwean literature, truly Marechera deserves to be honoured and there is no better way to do this honour other than by supporting the smooth running of the Dambudzo Marechera Trust established in 1988. What’s more, by making his books especially critical works about him, available to Zimbabwean readers.