Ryszard Kapuściński on the Book "The Emperor"

“You can write only one such book in your life. It is a certain idea that cannot be repeated, because if one were to repeat it, it would already be a failure. ‘The Emperor’ arose from a very simple situation. I was already then a reporter who had been working in Africa for over ten years. I had been writing reportages, better, worse, various kinds. When I was sent to cover the Ethiopian revolt, it was a normal military coup d’état.

I was gathering material for a normal cycle of reportages, but when I returned with that material, I felt that I could no longer write like that. Military coups follow more or less the same scenario. You arrive at the airport and there is a check, then there are tanks, then there are barricades in the streets, then you have to go and register, then you have to take your material to the military censors. Everything begins to repeat itself, and I cannot repeat myself and tell the same story as at the time of other coups. So how to write? I did not know. The editorial office was calling me asking me to submit reportages, and I had nothing. Not a word. As a precaution I locked myself in my flat and did not go to the editorial office at all. They began bombarding me with telegrams: ‘When will we get the first instalment?’ But I still had nothing in my head. It was getting worse and worse, I was close to depression and complete collapse. I could not manage it. I was reading, and trying to write — nothing came of it. Until at last, as usually happens in such situations, a flash of inspiration came to me. The beginning of a book is always the hardest part, because in writing a book it is very important to get into the rhythm. Once you have got into the rhythm, the rhythm carries you. I knew that when I was having difficulties with the beginning, I always had to look for the simplest thing, some detail, from which to start. I began looking through all the photographs from that period, materials, magazines, and finally I saw it. In one photograph the emperor is sitting on his throne with a small dog on his knees. Then I remembered that Haile Selassie did indeed have such a dog, which he always appeared with. And then I thought to myself that it is not me saying this, but one of the emperor’s servants: ‘It is a small dog of Japanese breed. It is called Lulu.’ When I had that one simplest sentence, I knew that I would have a book. I had masses of accounts. The whole problem was one of selection and structure.

But another difficulty arose. When I took that first and second instalment to the editorial office, everyone said: ‘Well, fine, but where are the reportages about Ethiopia? Something is beginning here about the emperor, about the dog, about how he feeds the animals, but where is Ethiopia? There was a great revolution there, great events, great arrests!’ I answered: ‘Don’t worry. Wait. That will come a little later.’ Then I brought the third instalment, the fourth, and at that point the opinion arose that it was a very good description of Gierek and the whole of our Central Committee. In the editorial office people began to be afraid there would be unpleasantness as a result; they began asking: ‘What are these texts? Supposedly about Ethiopia, but in fact not really about Ethiopia.’ They wanted me to finish these texts as quickly as possible, so that there would be no more fear and danger of what might happen next. Afterwards it was already clear to everyone in Poland that this was in effect an allusion to the prevailing regime, but fortunately there was in force at that time a provision in the censorship regulations whereby if a text had been accepted once, it did not need to go through censorship again. Since each of my instalments had a censorship stamp, the publishing house did not need to worry about it, as it already had all the instalments stamped. And in this way the book appeared. I myself protested, saying that it was not precise, that it was a book about Gierek’s regime and what prevailed in Poland, since I wanted it to have a more universal dimension. My concern was that it should be a book about the mechanisms of dictatorial power. And that it should be a book about how participation in power demoralises, depraves, and distorts. And that it should be a book about how a normal person enters into arrangements, dependencies, the structure of politics, and how these change him. Whereas when he falls out of them, he once more becomes quite an ordinary person. In ‘The Emperor’ the emperor himself barely appears. It is a book about the people of the court, about how the court creates a dictatorship.”

Ryszard Kapuściński