A Great Artist Is Never

It Is Difficult To Restrain Admirers Of Shakespeare Once They Have Begun To Speak Of Him.

It Is More Than Their Land That You Take Away From The People, Whose Native Land You Take. It Is Their Past As Well, Their Roots And Their Identity. If You Take Away The Things That They Have Been Used To See And Will Be Expecting To See, You May, In A Way, As Well Take Their Eyes.

If I Know A Song Of Africa, Of The Giraffe And The African New Moon Lying On Her Back, Of The Plows In The Fields And The Sweaty Faces Of The Coffee Pickers, Does Africa Know A Song Of Me? Will The Air Over The Plain Quiver With A Color That I Have Had On, Or The Children Invent A Game In Which My Name Is, Or The Full Moon Throw A Shadow Over The Gravel Of The Drive That Was Like Me, Or Will The Eagles Of The Ngong Hills Look Out For Me?

Here And There, In Some Older Houses, Old Faded Daguerreotypes Still Hang On The Walls... They Seem To Us To Be Very Simple... Compared With The Artistic And Skillful Portraits Made In Later Days... Here Was A Photograph That At One Time Had Been The Last Word, A Very Modern Portrait... Today It Is Just A Part Of Cultural History. The Small Yellowed Surface Has Acquired Depth, An Admonishing Perspective. We Hold In Our Hand A Symbol Of The Structure And Ideology Of An Epoch.

The Flamingoes Are The Most Delicately Colored Of All The African Birds, Pink And Red Like A Flying Twig Of An Oleander Bush. They Have Incredibly Long Legs And Bizarre And Recherché Curves Of Their Necks And Bodies, As If From Some Exquisite Traditional Prudery They Were Making All Attitudes And Movements In Life As Difficult As Possible.