Imaginary intersection: Thomas Mofolo, Gertrude Stein and W. E. B. Du Bois

Abstract

This brief exploration of the potential connections and interconnections between Thomas Mofolo, Gertrude Stein and W. E. B. Du Bois began as a result of happenstance but quickly transformed into an investigation fuelled by a sense of wonder and mystery. The wonder was due to an evocative literary echo. The mystery came through the discovery of a few overlapping facts that may or may not add up to an argument, but certainly add up to a compelling story that might as well be true. In a larger frame, this essay attempts to look at the way works of literature in the early 20th century could have played a role of aesthetic influence on each other despite being separated (via their locus of creation) by geographic distance, cultural milieu and potential access. It also hopes to undermine the assumption in the Global North/Western mind-set that the currents of aesthetic influence flow only in one direction. The specific goal is to imagine Thomas Mofolo’s first experiment, his allegorical narrative Traveller to the East, rippling out from the small mountain nation of Basutoland (now Lesotho) in Southern Africa, up the continent and either across the Mediterranean Sea to Paris—the home of expatriate Jewish American experimental writer Gertrude Stein—or across the Atlantic to New York and into the hands of African American sociologist, intellectual and Pan-Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois.

Keywords

• literature
• Thomas Mofolo