The old world which applied the bourgeois concept of property even to
art, would have aalled this plagiarism, literary theft, and so on.  To
us these allegations are nonsense. The poem by Bebe' is certainly one
of the best examples of de'tournment in Lautreamontf s tradition, and it
is significant as an example of how a militant can transform a poem of
sorrow into a poem of hope.
The new Mozambican poetry is absolutely new in one sense, that it is
tied up with, intertwined with, inseparable from, life. This fact,
which would nave been normal in pre-capitalist societies and will seem
normal again in the future, bears now a particular significance in
face of the Western culture, phich for the last century *ias been dominating tor trying to dominate the whole world.  This culture has completely lost the connection between art and life and recovers it only
sporadically during revolutionary episodes, strikes, etc.  We cannot
here enter into a discussion on  the total separation that has occurred,
slowly but definitely, in the Western civilisation between art, or
generally culture, and life. However, we must at least give a sketch
of the situation in order to illustrate our point.  The split is not only
evident in the abyss which separates so-called artistic production and
mass production in all fields;  movies, books, music, the figurative
arts:  what the people road, listen to, see and generally "consume" is
absolutely different from what is supposed to be of a high artistic
standard.  But this is evident also on another level* Even for those
who produce the recognised works of art and for those who enjoy them,
or at least claim to, these works have an extremely limited impact on
their actual life.  For the former the work of art has become v.ork in
the sense the word lias in capitalist society, a real job:  he is an
artist, as someone else is a metal worker or a clerk, specialised in
being an artist and nothing else.  Of course the artist and his world
don't accept this equalisation, the artist being considered somebody
different from everybody else, living out of reach, completely cut off
from reality. For the others the consumption of art is relegated to a
specific moment which has nothing to do with the rest of the day. All
these are aspects of the same phenomenon, the specialisation of art.
We need to mention all this because otherwise it would not be possible
to understand fully the revolutionary value of present Mozambican poetry •;
This poetry is born out of action and of the necessities of the present.
There is only one artistic production, accessible to everyone.  Since
t^ere is no difference between the artist and the rest of the people -
everybody can be an artist, besides fulfilling his specific tasks -
art and life are connected in every sense. This appears even more
clearly if we consider not only poetry, but all the artistic production
of the new Mozambique. The greatest part of this production has not
yet crystallised in ita final forms:  songs, dances, plays, aremost of
the time extemporised and are not recorded or written,  pictures and t
sculptures are produced tor the meaning they have to the producer and
not with exhibition or sale as their first goal. When, for example, the
daily problems of the liberated areas are expressed in extemporary plays.
-20-