‘Waiting for a Ghost’ J. M. Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg

Résumé 0

This paper is about the psychological, political, and artistic declinations of the figure of the ghost in Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg. By using as his center of intelligence the historical Dostoevsky at the time he was preparing to write The Possessed, a political novel about nihilism and revolution and by manipulating facts and fiction, Coetzee writes a dark and poignant tale which subtly investigates the complex relationship between reality and art, historical discourse and private drama. While hinging on the experience of mourning and guilt, in itself a Dostoevskian and a post-colonial epitomatic theme, the novel provides an indirect commentary on post-colonial South Africa in the throes of repressive authority and dangerous radicalism. The ghosts to exorcise in this novel are not just those of pre-revolutionary Russia which so closely resemble South Africa poised on the brink of upheaval, or those of fatherhood adumbrated in the theme of generational strife—the divide between a disillusioned and conservative father who rejects vengefulness and the Nihilist, radical and self-destructive views espoused by the young; they are those of a man who, distraught by remorse, in the end finds himself unable to wring meaning and redemption from his work.