Versindaba
~ 'n Kollektiewe weblog vir die Afrikaanse digkuns ~

Gesprekke op Facebook is maar soos enige sosiale interaksie – dit het die potensiaal om interessant te raak. So gebeur dit een aand dat ek tegelyketyd drie aparte kubergesprekke aan die gang het; een in Kanada, een Pretoria en een in Grootbrak. Twee gaan oor liminaliteit, die ander oor ʼn selakant. Teen middernag begin ek die gedagte kry dat hierdie eintlik één gesprek is. Hoe meer ek aan die liminale vis gedink het, hoe meer het ek gegoogle. Ek wou veral sien wat die kunste al opgelewer het. Is daar iewers ʼn selakantballet? ʼn Klein simfonie, dalk?

Hierdie installasiekuns deur Marcelle van Bremmel is die eerste waarop ek afgekom het http://catalogue.nimk.nl/site/?page=%2Fsite%2Fart.php%3Fid%3D9  Die meegande “artist statement lui:  “The coelacanth… represents a transitory period from life in the water to life on land and has hence become a metaphor for a crucial evolutionary step…  In a broader sense, Coelacanth could be viewed as being a metaphor for the processes of transition…”

Die nugterheid wat helder sonskyn bring het my die volgende oggend natuurlik laat besef dat my diepnagtelike mymeringe nie so oorspronklik of vreeslik aardskuddend is nie. Maar die proses was aan die gang en ek het vir die eerste keer in jare weer die selakant se spoor gevat.  J.L.B. Smith se seun, Rob, was my skoolhoof en een oggend het hy toegelaat dat skool nie te veel inmeng met ons opvoeding nie, à la Mark Twain. Ons het klasse afgekry en in die skoolsaal vergader om te luister na  J.L.B. Smith se vrou wat vertel van haar man en van die selakant. Sy was ʼn goeie spreker, vol entoesiasme en dit was vir my soos om ʼn Jaques Cousteau of ʼn Jules Verne te ontmoet. Ek het daarna lank gesoek, maar ons klein dorpsbiblioteek het niks oor die selakant gehad wat ek kon lees nie. Hoe anders as vandag, waar soveel beskikbaar is op my klein skermpie in die middel van die nag.

Die selakant se storie is so vol spanning en aksie, ek meen al vir jare dit kan ‘n suksesvolle fliek word, as dit intelligent aangepak word. Afrika in 1938. ‘n Skraal vroutjie sukkel met ‘n vyfvoet-lange vis in ‘n warm Suidelike somer. Niemand wil haar help nie. ʼn Telegram. En dan: om die onmoontlike te glo. Hier is ʼn oervis.

Geen dokumentêre DVD is te koop nie, sover ek kon vasstel. Maar hier is stukke ou “footage” wat dele van die storie vertel. Courtenay-Latimer kan gesien word.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz1oTHXvbHg

Intussen het ek baie boeke gelees oor die selakant, party meer akademies of wetenskaplik as ander, maar vir my vergelyk niks met J.L.B. Smith se eie boek nie. Old Fourlegs lees boeiend, dis soos ʼn persoonlike dagboek. Een van my vriende het ʼn oorspronklike eksemplaar  by sy pa geërf en ek is heilig daarvan oortuig dat dit eintlik langs my eerste-uitgawe Siel van die mier hoort, maar hy wil nie daarvoor val nie! Ou boeke is amper so mooi en spesiaal soos ou visse, voel ek.

In 1998 is die R2 goue herdenkingsmunt beskikbaar gestel. Dit is nou skaars en waardevol, ek het ene gesien by die Munt se opedag in 2001. Al afdruk wat ek daarvan kon kry het ‘n watermerk op….

 

Wat die ander kunste betref, het my soektog ook die volgende opgelewer: ʼn Tydskrif, http://www.thecoelacanthpress.co.uk/The_Coelacanth_Journal.html, ʼn paar wetenskapfiksie/fantasie tekeninge op plekke soos Deviantart (gaan kyk maar self www.deviantart.com) en ‘n punkrock-groep.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdBTKDIsLNI Daar was ook die gebruiklike “B-grade” grufilm, wat ek (genadiglik) nie gesien het nie Horror on the campus (vrygestel in 1958). Gister verneem ek so per riemtelegram dat ons eie Triggerfish animasie-studio ʼn konsepvoorlegging in Annecy doen (http://variety.com/2013/film/news/triggerfish-sets-sea-monster-movie-exclusive-1200493414/)  vir ʼn vollengte fliek oor ʼn professor en ʼn fossielmonster uit die see iewers in Afrika.  Ek wonder, ek wonder…!

Maar wat van gedigte? My gesprek met Marie Bredenkamp op facebook het juis gegaan oor ons onderskeie kennismaking met mense in die destydse Natal. Sy het Shirley Bell geken, wat die 1969 kinderboek Old man coelacanth geskryf het en in besit is van baie van J.L.B. Smith se korrespondensie en geskrifte. Ek wou al lankal ʼn gedig oor die selakant skryf, maar het elke keer halfpad opgehou. Uiteindelik het ons laatnaggesels en Marie se verjaarsdag my toe meer op vrouens se stories gefokus en ek het maar solank die volgende vers gepleeg:

Van M tot by die see

(vir Marie)

Vir jou verjaarsdag wil ek ʼn vers voltooi

wat ek voor my ma se dood begin het,

sommer omdat haar naam dieselfde was

as joune en die opnoem van woorde my koers gee;

ek volg hulle soos spore of sporte, soos toonlere

wat my moet lei na oewers of waters, la mer, mare,

sê ek, Maria, Marjorie – ek skryf

lossies, los en los. En vas :

 

Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, hoe gepas

dat sy die lewe in 1907 moes binneglip

onder die sterreteken van die vis

 

asof iemand toé reeds kon raai dat die see haar ʼn roeping en ʼn lot

present sou gee, dat sy kort voor Kersfees sou moes heen en weer

van taksidermis tot lykshuis, dringend op soek na ʼn koelkamer of ys

om maaiers en rotting weg te hou van die sogenaamde rotskabeljou.

 

Wie kon voorspel dat ʼn longvis op vinne sou stap

tot in die binneland van haar hart,

dat haar bestaan van strand tot strand

gevul sou word deur die professor

en die selakant ?

 

Sy kon as hoogbejaarde vrou helder

soos in ʼn kinderrympie onthou

haar swemmende fossiel, die blou

latimeria chalumnae

 

            “was covered in hard scales

and it had four limb-like fins

and a strange puppy-dog tail”

 

Toe sy alleenlopend sterf op 97 jaar

het sy seker lankal besef:

soms word ʼn hele lewe

in sout en formalien bewaar.

 

Ons het die selakant en sy misterie miskien lief vir die vrae wat dit vra, meer as vir die antwoorde wat dit verskaf. Ek spoor ʼn kinderrympie op, “The coelacanth flip flop” en ook Matthew Ladd se gedig wat begin: “Is it such a crime to stop writing/ we could all burn our manuscripts”. Dan is daar nog Elizabeth Spires se vers wat begin “I saw you in a book: bubble-eyed and staring” uit haar bundel The Wave-maker. (Ek kon nog nie die volledige verse opspoor nie). Rick Mullin se bundel kon ek nie kry nie, net die voorblad:

Op die Saatchi-galery se webblad is net een selakantskildery beskikbaar: http://www.saatchionline.com/art/Painting-Oil-Frozen-Coelacanth/314069/219054/view

Sedert my hoërskooljare is lewendige selakante nou al in hulle habitat verfilm en baie spesimens is versamel. Selekant is eintlik nie net een vis nie, dis ʼn orde. Die soorte in die Ooste is net familie van ons eie Latimeria chalumnae. Nogtans vind ek dit ironies dat die mens die selakant se verdere voortbestaan juis bedreig noudat ons hom ontdek het! Gaan lees gerus maar orals op die internet hoeveel selakante gevang en doodgemaak word. Daar is selfs ‘n geval van “a coelacanth and her 23 pups unfortunately died”.

ʼn Dooie selakant is nie eers naastenby so mooi soos ʼn lewendige een nie. Om mee te begin, verloor hy sy kleur en sy oë word dof. En juis daarom, vind ek Johann Lodewyk Marais se koeplet uit sy bundel In die bloute so skrynend, so verskriklik ráák.

J.L.B. Smith

“Die selakant is pragtig blou en grys

op die oomblik wanneer sy swemblaas bars”

 

 

 

Foto deur: Ela Lempp.

Die Poolse digkuns is inderdaad geseënd met ‘n aantal formidabele digters, waaronder die Nobelpryswenners Wisława Szymborska en Czesław Miłosz, plus die “kon-net-sowel-gewen-het”-kandidate soos Zbigniew Herbert en veral die weergalose Tadeusz Różewicz (foto). SJ Fowler, wat ‘n onderhoud vir 3:AM Magazine met die 91-jarige Różewicz gevoer het, begin sy onderhoud met die volgende waarneming: “A poet who changed the face of twentieth century poetry, Tadeusz Różewicz is a giant of Polish literature and undoubtedly one of the most important poets the country has ever produced. Still writing in his 91st year, his lifetime engagement with groundbreaking poetry, fiction and plays has spanned, and often encapsulated, the seismic tumult of the past century in his home nation. His poetic is the rarest of things, an anti-art that resides still within the realm of the explicable, and the ethical, striding between the utterly personal and the political – often brutal in its beauty and intensity, it is an aesthetic that is wholly his own, unique and unwavering [...] Tadeusz Różewicz has set him aside as one of the most respected innovators and stylists in modern European history.”

Inderdaad.  Danksy Różewicz se ervarings tydens die wêreldoorlog, en veral vanweë die feit dat hy grootliks as ‘anti-digter’ beskou word, sentreer heelwat van Fowler se vrae rondom dié aspek van Różewicz se skrywerskap en as sulks raak dit ‘n onderhoud wat netjies aanklank vind by heelwat van die onlangse gesprekke op hierdie webblad; veral die wat oor die etiese aspekte van die digkuns gehandel het …

 By wyse van lusmaker, die volgende drie vrae, met Różewicz se antwoorde daarby:

3:AM: You’ve spoken of an almost epiphanic moment when you realised literature could not provide you with refuge and solace in the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War and your painfully intimate involvement with those experiences. Is your work centred on a notion of this failure of literature to provide concrete resolutions?

Tadeusz Różewicz: I‘m going back to 1945. I found myself in Krakow. I was going to study Art History at the Jagiellonian University, and it wasn’t accidental that what I chose to study was the history of art. It was in order to reconstruct the Human Being bit by bit. It was as if I had two different men living inside me then. One was full of admiration and respect for ‘fine’ arts – music, literature, poetry; the other was full of mistrust of all the arts. The site for this struggle inside me, between those two personae, was my poetic practice. I felt admiration, reverence, for works of art – the aesthetic experience replaced the religious experience – but at the same time I felt a growing disdain for those ‘aesthetic’ values. I felt something had ended forever – for me, for humanity – and it was something that religion or science or art hadn’t protected. As a young poet – and one who worshipPed all the great poets, living and dead, like gods – I came to understand Mickiewicz’s words, too soon: ‘It’s harder to live well through a day than to write a book’. And I understood, also too soon, what Tolstoy said: that writing a children’s alphabet book means more than all the novels of genius. Well, understanding ‘truths’ like that prematurely doesn’t help a writer who’s got years of apprenticeship ahead of him in the kingdom of art.

3:AM: And do you think this realisation is an ethical reality that all writers and readers need to grasp, to admit literatures limitation, and work forward under that foundation?

TR: I turned away from aesthetic sources. Dismissively. I thought: ethics, that can be the source of creative work. But both those wells had dried up: ‘The murderers washed their hands in them’. So I tried to reconstruct the one that seemed to me the most important for life, and for the life of poetry. Ethics. And because I’d linked politics with ethics and not aesthetics ever since my youth, my work had a political hue, and in my mind the political stood for the socially progressive.

3:AM: What are your reflections now, decades on from your decision to employ your definitive, direct, minimalist and fundamentally reactionary and ethical and responsible, poetic style?

TR: New art comes into being through the invention of a new form – a new form of expression, a new language and syntax. Not through making noble declarations, repeating slogans, signing letters and protests, not through insisting that we’re full of humanitarian feelings. An engaged artist is an artist who’s engaged in the struggle for a new form… the content’s the same for everyone: everybody suffers, has family conflicts, sexual problems, gets ill, has problems with children, political problems, religious, dietary, ecological, housing, and so on and so on. That’s the human condition… but only artists are condemned to try to solve the problems of form. An epigone’s not a creator, because the hardest problems have been solved for him by the real Creators. Nowadays we often hear that everyone’s an artist and a poet, that everything’s poetry… yes, it’s true, everything is poetry… except for bad poems.

Gaan lees gerus die volledige onderhoud by 3:AM Magazine. Vir jou leesplesier volg een van Różewicz se beroemdste gedigte.

***

Pigtail

When all the women in the transport
had their heads shaved
four workmen with brooms made of birch twigs
swept up
and gathered up the hair

Behind clean glass
the stiff hair lies
of those suffocated in gas chambers
there are pins and side combs
in this hair

The hair is not shot through with light
is not parted by the breeze
is not touched by any hand
or rain or lips

In huge chests
clouds of dry hair
of those suffocated
and a faded plait
a pigtail with a ribbon
pulled at school
by naughty boys.

© Tadeusz Ròzewicz (Vertaling deur Adam Czerniawski)

 

 

Party mans het sagte baarde, ander harde baarde, sommige het selfs blou baarde.  My man besit geen blou haartjie, terwyl my pa, indien hy hare/baard sou had, dit blou sou wees.

Eers was daar ʼn foto nog voordat ek n gedagte was- die foto is êrens verlê tydens ons ‘groot trek’.

Toe was daar die skets (1998, 2 jaar na haar dood) in my sterfregister sketsboek.

Ek wag al soveel dae op jou;

kyk hoe maer het ek geword van verlange.

Huidiglik werk ek hieraan om vrede te maak:

Dit is natuurlik geinspireer deur die foto van hul in gelukkiger dae en die skets van 1998 asook ʼn boek met die storie van bloubaard wat ʼn vriendin vir my gestuur het.

Op die internet vind ek die wonderlike artikel sien hier, oor die burg van hertog bloubaard (die artikel is geskryf deur Carina Stander en handel oor die bundel geskryf deur HJ Pieterse.)

“Alhoewel Bloubaard soms voorgestel word as die vergestalting van die donker manlike begeerte om ontslae te raak van ‘n vrou en telkens ‘n nuwe vrou te soek, is J. E. Cirlot van mening dat Bloubaard nie deur haat gedryf word nie, maar deur verlore liefde: “The secret room of Bluebeard, which he forbids his wife to enter, is his mind. The dead wives which she encounters in defying his orders are the wives whom he has once loved, that is, who are dead to his love” (1962:xlvi).

Vanuit hierdie perspektief kan geredeneer word dat Bloubaard nie ‘n drang koester om sy vrou te vermoor nie, maar eerder om homself te martel deur die herhaling van pynlike herinneringe in ‘n poging “to restore an earlier state of things” (Freud se kursief). Inderwaarheid word Bloubaard se vrou nie vermoor nie, maar pleeg sy selfmoord deur doelbewuste oorskryding van sekere grense.” (Uittreksel uit die bogenoemde artikel.)

So ʼn jaar of wat gelede vra ‘Bloubaard’ my om ʼn heildronk op hom en sy nuwe vrou tydens sy 3de huwelik seremonie in te stel.  Bloot seker omdat my boetie nie beskikbaar was.  Ek raak die volgende kwyt:

ʼn sprokie:

Eendag nie so lank gelede was daar ʼn man:

(Kom ons noem hom kruppel.)

Hy ontmoet ʼn vrou wat hom laat huppel.

(ons noem haar silwerlokkies.)

Hulle teken op ʼn stippel.

Hy belowe om elke oggend vir haar pap te maak

Wat nie haar mond verbrand.

Met hierde belofte sal sy neus hopelik nie lank groei.

Soos die derde varkie uit steen gebou,

ʼn huwelik wat vir ewig hou?

Net soos in die verhaal van skoonlief en die ondier

Is my wens ook vir jul ʼn:

“happily ever after’

Fluit fluit my storie is uit.

So vir vadersdag wil ek ʼn nuwe heildronk instel, maar met die woorde van Johann de Lange:

Heildronk

Ek eet my toast
& drink my dooswyn
& in my hart
word alles boos rein.

Bostaande gedig is hier gevind.

 

 

Onlangs het die PoëzieCentrum ‘n bloemlesing met die gedigte van twaalf kontemporêre Roemeense digters uitgegee en om dié geleentheid in die kalklig te plaas, het Sander de Vaan namens MeanderKrant ‘n onderhoud gevoer met Jan Mysjkin, samesteller en vertaler van Voor de prijs van mijn mond; ‘n bundel wat “alle aandacht verdient”, soos De Vaan dit onomwonde stel. Want dat die Roemeense lettere ‘n vreemde gedierte is, is nie te betwyfel nie; enersyds omrede hul vernaamste skrywers nooit in Roemeens geskryf het nie (hieronder is daar skrywers soos Paul Celan, Eugène Ionesco en Tristan Tzara), dog andersyds omrede hulle – ten spyte van wat as een van die ergste verdrukkings wêreldwyd, tydens die Ceauşescu-era, gereken kan word – tog daarin kon slaag om digters van die statuur van  Nichita Stănescu, Ana Blandiana en Nina Cassian te lewer.

Met sy eerste vraag tref De Vaan ‘n vergelyking tussen die Roemeense digkuns en dié van Pole en Rusland wat baie meer prominensie in Europese geledere geniet as die Roemeense; ‘n toedrag van sake wat volgens Mysjkin direk verband hou met die afwesigheid van ‘n internasionale  “kampvegter” vir die Roemeense digters. Ook bestaan daar volgens hom nie voldoende vertalings in ander tale nie.

Maar dit net ter syde. Die opmerking waarop ek egter wil fokus, het te make met die stand van die Roemeense digkuns na die omverwerping van die Kommunistiese diktatuur en die drakoniese sensuurwette wat dié era gekenmerk het.  “Nee, vandaag kunnen ze op papier zetten wat ze maar willen,” antwoord Mysjkin op de Vaan se vraag: “al heeft het tot 2000 geduurd voor er echt een beweging op gang kwam die schoon schip maakte met de abstracte en esthetiserende poëzie van hun voorgangers. In 1998 publiceerde Marius Ianuş het ‘fracturistisch manifest’, waarin hij pleit voor een poëzie waarin de dichter zonder schroom over zichzelf schrijft. Voor de fracturisten komt het er niet op aan om een mooi taalding ineen te knutselen, met gesofisticeerde enjambementen, meditatieve diepgang of hoogdravend lyrisme. Hun drijfveer is zuiver biografisch en existentieel. Ze willen zo direct en authentiek mogelijk het niet al te vrolijke leven in Roemenië vastleggen in een taal zonder versierselen. Onder het communisme was dat onmogelijk en het kwam dan ook als een schok bij de vorige generaties aan, die hen als vulgair en pornografisch afschilderden. De fracturisten streefden naar een ‘poëzie na de poëzie’, maar ondertussen maakt hun werk gewoon deel uit van het poëtische landschap. Nadat de beweging als groep een doorbraak had geforceerd, zijn de persoonlijkheden elk hun weg gegaan, dat was bij ons met bijvoorbeeld de Vijftigers niet anders. De critici die de ‘Generatie 2000’ proberen in kaart te brengen, hebben het over ‘neo-expressionistische’, ‘minimalistische’, ‘hyperrealistische’, ja zelfs ‘deprimistische’ poëzie. Het getuigt alvast van een gevarieerd palet aan invalshoeken. Maar al gaan de dichters van vandaag niet langer gebukt onder de politieke censuur, nu klagen ze wel over de dictatuur van de vrije markt: wat niet verkoopt, wordt niet gepubliceerd. Ze kunnen het natuurlijk altijd nog zelf drukken en aanbieden, ook door middel van internet, er is geen mens die hen een strobreed in de weg legt. Er is ook geen mens die om hen vraagt, dat is een andere kwestie.”

Klink dit alles bekend? Ai, ai. Hoe meer dinge verander, hoe meer bly dit dieselfde, lyk dit my … Gaan lees gerus die volledige onderhoud. (Daar is uiteraard vele ander aspekte waaroor gesels word wat ek nie in my oorsig hierbo betrek het nie.)

Nietemin, hieronder volg drie gedigte deur drie wonderlike digters. Op MeanderKrant is daar nog vele ander om te geniet.

***

 

ANA BLANDIANA

Glas met margrietjes

Glas met veldmargrietjes
Op een witte tafel
Waar ik aan schrijf
Vrijer dan ik ben;
Om mij heen
De geur van hooi
Die me tot de slaap verleidt,
Waaruit misschien een woord
Zal druppelen;
Zachte hemel in het avondrood
Gelijkend op de kudden
Die weleer naar de stal terugkeerden;
Liefde voor alles wat is geweest,
Voor alles wat nog moet verdwijnen,
Liefde zonder zin,
Liefde zonder grenzen –
De schaduwen van populieren, lange tralies over het veld,
Veldmargrietjes
In een glas.

***

NINA CASSIAN

Klucht

Ik zou graag een keer mijn beenderen schikken
in een andere configuratie,
mijn beenderen die de weg van mijn vlees
versperren, lastige beletsels die

het omleggen in de vorm van een vrouw
en een peer, en een zeester voor mijn handen.
Ik zou graag mijn goddeloze beenderen
uitproberen in schema’s allerhande,

bijvoorbeeld: de grondvorm van het oerschip,
het doorkijkskelet van de luzerne,
ofwel de stamboom met postume vruchten
die opklimt tot een maagdelijke kern.

En ik wil graag ook mijn beenderen plooien
alsof ik geknield aan het bidden toog,
zodat ik hém op een dwaalspoor kan brengen,
de argeloze Paleontoloog.

***

NICHITA STÃNESCU

Een hond kopen

De engel kwam en zei tegen me:
‘Wil je geen hond kopen?’
Ik was niet in staat om hem te antwoorden.
Alle woorden die ik hem zou hebben toegeroepen
zouden geblaf zijn geweest.
‘Wil je geen hond kopen?’
vroeg de engel me, en in zijn armen hield hij
mijn blaffende
hart,
kwispelend met zijn bloed als met een staart.
‘Wil je geen hond kopen?’
vroeg de engel me,
terwijl mijn hart
kwispelde met zijn bloed als met een staart.

 

 

Foto deur Steve Pyke.

In navolging van die onlangse gesprek oor hermetiese digkuns, lees ek ‘n interessante stuk op Poetry International Web oor die Amerikaanse digter John Ashbery raak; ‘n digter wat allerweë gereken word as nie net een van die vernaamste hermete vandag nie, maar ook as een van die mees gewaardeerde en geliefde digters in die Amerikaanse lettere beskou word.

By wyse van oriëntering, eers die volgende kommentare wat op Poem Hunter gevind kan word: “John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery’s work still proves controversial. In an article on Elizabeth Bishop in his Selected Prose, he characterizes himself as having been described as ‘a harebrained, homegrown surrealist whose poetry defies even the rules and logic of Surrealism.’ Although renowned for the postmodern complexity and opacity of his work, Ashbery has stated that he wishes it to be accessible to as many people as possible, not a private dialogue. “

En – “No figure looms so large in American poetry over the past 50 years as John Ashbery,” Langdon Hammer, chairman of the English Department at Yale University, wrote in 2008. “[N]o American poet has had a larger, more diverse vocabulary, not Whitman, not Pound.” Stephen Burt, a poet and Harvard professor of English, has compared Ashbery to T. S. Eliot, the “last figure whom half the English-language poets alive thought a great model, and the other half thought incomprehensible”.

Die essay op Poetry International Web waarna ek hierbo verwys het, is deur Ton van’t Hof geskryf en handel oor die gedigte van John Ashbery wat hy vertaal het en wat nou as Ergens in Amerika gaan verskyn. Van’t Hof tipeer Ashbery se digkuns soos volg: “Over the years Ashbery has used a familiar technique: effective vagueness. Ashbery’s phrasing sounds concrete, but is in fact so general and ambiguous, that each time it smoothly fits in with the reader’s experiences, tuning his or her thinking to the poem. I rarely feel uncomfortable near an Ashbery poem. This effective vagueness is an important criterion for finding the proper words: whenever I have a choice, I always opt for the Dutch word that enlarges the meaning of the text in its entirety, even if it creates new connotations in comparison with Ashbery’s original work. Although I’ve never asked him, I believe that that is what he would want me to do […]Another effect of this vagueness is that every reader reads his or her very own John Ashbery poem.”

Hoekom hierdie van belang is? Wel, hierdie opmerkings oor Ashbery se kenmerkende digstyl kan myns insiens net so van toepassing gemaak word op Alfred Schaffer se digkuns; selfs die verwysing na “surrealisme” en Ashbery se versugting dat hy “toeganklike” verse wil skryf is van toepassing … Maar hoe gemaak met die vertaling van diesulke verse? Volgens sy eie verklaring het Van’t Hof homself die vryheid vergun om bepaalde woorde wat hy as “effektief vaag” beskryf in die Nederlands te “verruim”. Hierteenoor het Daniel Hugo weer met sy vertaling van Alfred Schaffer se gedigte (Kom in, dit vries daar buite, 2013: Protea Boekhuis) die oorspronklike teks met uiterste integriteit hanteer; ten spyte van die assosiatiewe (surrealistiese?) spronge wat die hermetiese vers so dikwels maak.

Myns insiens strek dít Daniel Hugo as vertaler tot eer.

Maar, ‘n laaste beskouing. In sy onderhoud met Danie Marais het Alfred Schaffer soos volg reageer op Marais se vraag oor die hermetiese aard van sy digkuns: “Watter soort poësie ek skryf, hang tot ’n mate ook af van die leser. ‘Hermeties’ sou ek my gedigte nie wil noem nie. ’n Gedig wat verwys na ’n musiekstuk of kunswerk of geografiese plek wat ek persoonlik nie ken nie, kan vir my meer hermeties voorkom. Die mate van verstaanbaarheid hang tot ’n mate saam met die soort van assosiatiewe denke van die leser. Wat wil jy as ’n leser van ’n gedig? Elke leeshouding is geldig, maar elke opvatting sorg weer vir ’n ander tipe leser. Moeilik of maklik, tradisioneel of eksperimenteel, poësie speel tot ’n mate altyd met die onsegbare.”

Inderdaad.

Op Poem Hunter is daar verskeie van John Ashbery se gedigte wat gelees kan word. Aangesien die meeste van hulle betreklik lank is, plaas ek as lusmaker hieronder net die laaste strofe van die gedig “Syringa”. En vir jou leesplesier, ‘n gedig van Alfred Scahffer soos dit deur Daniel Hugo vertaal is.

***

 

Droombegin

Die nagte is die ergste. Verderaan die laaste plase
maar alles is al onherkenbaar selfs my eie stem niks
niks maak meer sin nie – wat bestaan lyk skielik
supernaby en gedokumenteer, die water in die slootjies
die wind deur die kniehoë gras, die suigende grond
en daardie perd daar ek dink dit is ’n perd. Om tyd te wen
strik ek my veters. In my rugsak water kos droë klere
’n handvol los koeëls my selfoon het gewoonweg ’n sein.
Ek dink skaars, ek haal skaars asem, presies of ek dood is
maar ek is springlewendig. Is ek dors dan drink ek, is ek moeg
dan sing ek ’n liedjie wat my ma altyd vir my gesing het.
Van bo af sou dit miskien kon lyk of ek vlug maar
van bo af is alles duister. Hoogstens nog ’n paar kilometer skat ek
dan kom die son op, skitterend en helder lig oor alles.

© Alfred Schaffer (Vertaling deur Daniel Hugo)

***

Syringa

………..

But how late to be regretting all this, even
Bearing in mind that regrets are always late, too late!
To which Orpheus, a bluish cloud with white contours,
Replies that these are of course not regrets at all,
Merely a careful, scholarly setting down of
Unquestioned facts, a record of pebbles along the way.
And no matter how all this disappeared,
Or got where it was going, it is no longer
Material for a poem. Its subject
Matters too much, and not enough, standing there helplessly
While the poem streaked by, its tail afire, a bad
Comet screaming hate and disaster, but so turned inward
That the meaning, good or other, can never
Become known. The singer thinks
Constructively, builds up his chant in progressive stages
Like a skyscraper, but at the last minute turns away.
The song is engulfed in an instant in blackness
Which must in turn flood the whole continent
With blackness, for it cannot see. The singer
Must then pass out of sight, not even relieved
Of the evil burthen of the words. Stellification
Is for the few, and comes about much later
When all record of these people and their lives
Has disappeared into libraries, onto microfilm.
A few are still interested in them. “But what about
So-and-so?” is still asked on occasion. But they lie
Frozen and out of touch until an arbitrary chorus
Speaks of a totally different incident with a similar name
In whose tale are hidden syllables
Of what happened so long before that
In some small town, one different summer.

© John Ashbery

 

 

In my vorige drie blogs het ek geskryf oor die liminale handelinge wat met die gedig “skryfode” van Antjie Krog in verband gebring kan word. Hierdie blog het ten doel om ʼn oorsig en samevatting van die voorafgaande stukke te bied.

Die gedig “skryfode” is een van die gedigte in die bundel Kleur kom nooit alleen nie wat baie sterk fokus op versoening. In wese is hierdie ‘n epiese gedig met ‘n verhaallyn wat in die handelingspatroon sterk ooreenkoms vertoon met geykte narratiewe vorme soos die heldeverhaal, die sprokie en die mite. Soos die hoofkarakters in dié verhale, steek ook die sprekende ek in die gedig ‘n grens oor na ‘n liminale sone met die doel om sekere insigte daar te verkry en bepaalde handeling daar uit te voer alvorens sy met haar nuutverworwe insig en vaardighede na die gemeenskap en na haar vervreemde minnaar terugkeer om vrede te bewerkstellig.

Die stryd wat die spreker in die liminale sone voer, is hoofsaaklik ‘n stryd met die minnaar met wie sy in gedurige konflik leef en wat in die konteks van die bundel ‘n metafoor is vir die land en sy inwoners – en trouens ook andersom. Die stryd is ‘n meerledige stryd met die woord, ‘n twyfel aan die representasievermoë van taal. Dit is duidelik dat die spreker, vanweë haar digtersamp, versoening deur die woord wil bewerkstellig. Die skryfproses is daarop gemik om van terapeutiese waarde vir die leser te wees en om die mense van hierdie land met mekaar te versoen, maar dit is duidelik dat ook die sprekende ek deur die skryfhandeling tot versoening kom met haarself en haar situasie. Die transformerende krag van die liminale “ondergrondse” sone waarheen sy haar psigies terugtrek, stel haar in staat om communitas-handelinge uit te voer wanneer sy terugkeer na die gemeenskap en haar verlore minnaar wat gerig is op nuwe, vreedsame naasbestaan en die doel het om voorheen strydende partye en sisteme met mekaar te versoen deur middel van die woord en die digkuns.

Soos wat verkeer in die liminale sone deelnemers aan inisiasierites in staat stel om na herintegrasie in ‘n nuwe verhouding te staan ten opsigte van die gemeenskap waaruit hulle hulleself onttrek het, lyk dit asof haar afsondering “ondergronds” ook die digter van “skryfode” in staat gestel het om in die verhouding met haar minnaar nuwe insigte te verkry – waar die verhouding met die minnaar natuurlik steeds metafories is vir die gekompliseerde Suid-Afrikaanse rasse- en geslagskwessie en/of andersom. Soos die held in die sprokie die grens oorsteek en in die liminale gebied sekere toetse moet slaag alvorens hy die “prys” kan verower wat gekoppel is aan die suksesvolle afhandeling van die gestelde take of eise, so moes die sprekende ek van “skryfode” sekere psigiese en fisiese struikelblokke oorkom in die weg na versoening met die minnaar/ander/Ander. Soos verwonding vir die klassieke held deel was van sy verblyf in die liminale gebied, het ook die digter van “skryfode” nie sonder ‘n verbete stryd tot insig gekom nie en het ook sy letsels van haar “gevegte” oorgehou wat haar merk as ‘n “nuwe” mens wat met nuwe insigte die grens terug na die gemeenskap waaruit sy haar onttrek het, oorsteek.

Dit lyk dus asof ons in die geval van “skryfode” met ‘n tipiese heldeverhaal en nie met ‘n tragedie nie, te make het, aangesien die beproewinge in die liminale sone klaarblyklik ‘n positiewe uitwerking op die sprekende ek van die gedig gehad het (Estés, 2003:451). Dat daar wel ook herintegrasie by die gemeenskap plaasgevind het, kan afgelei word uit die waarneming: “ons raak mekaar aan met nuderwetse teerheid” (74) (my kursivering -MT). Die verbanning na die liminale sone het dus uiteindelik positiewe verandering teweeg gebring wat op nuwe verhoudinge in die gemeenskap dui. Benewens die reëls wat in vorige blogs aangehaal is, suggereer die voorlaaste gedig van die bundel ook dat ‘n weg van versoening gevind is en eindig met die reëls:

ek weet waarheen ek op pad is

tot hiertoe en verder huis (103).

 

Die frase “tot hiertoe” suggereer dat die reis voortgaan, maar dat vrede en versoening nie ten alle koste aanvaar kan word nie, dat sekere grense nie oorgesteek kan word nie. Tot dié besef het die geveg in die liminale sone die sprekende ek ook gelei.

 

Geraadpleegde bronne

ESTÉS, Clarissa Pinkola, 2003: Die Wolfsfrau: Die Kraft der weiblichen Urinstinkte. Aus dem Amerikanischen übertragen von Mascha Rabben (Titel der Originalausgabe: Women who run with Wolves). München: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag.

KROG, Antjie. 2000. Kleur kom nooit alleen nie. Kaapstad: Kwela Boeke.

 

 

 

Ek het al vantevore oor Archipelago Press, my persoonlike gunsteling uitgewery en Jill Schoolman (foto), wat aan die hoof staan van dié inspirerende bedryf, geskryf.  Nie net is sy die hoofindoena by Archipelago nie, maar eweneens ‘n persoon wat so stadigaan besig is om die Amerikaanse poësie-landskap op ‘n besonder indrukwekkende wyse te herdefinieer. Daarom dat dit met groot vreugde was dat ek – tydens my navorsing vir ‘n blog oor die Roemeense digkuns wat volgende week geplaas sal word – ontdek het dat Archipelago Press pas een van die grootste klokke in die Amerikaanse lettere gelui het, naamlik die prys vir die beste vertaalde werk wat verlede jaar verskyn het, wat aan een van hul publikasies toegeken is.

Dié eer gaan aan Sean Cotter wat die Roemeense digter Nichita Stănescu se gedigte na Engels vertaal het. Archipeleago Press het dié bloemlesing – pragtig uitgegee in die formaat waarvoor hulle bekend is – gepubliseer onder die titel Wheel with a Single Spoke.  

 

Oor haar uitgewery en die rede hoekom hulle uitsluitlik op vertaalde tekste fokus, het Jill Schoolman haar soos volg uitgelaat tydens ‘n onderhoud met die Koreaanse joernalis Kim Meekyung: ”Archipelago Books was founded in 2003 as a non-profit press supported by individuals and foundations. I founded this company with the goal of increasing awareness of literary voices from around the world. There is an urgent need to make international literature available to American readers. According to a recent NEA study, of the 10,000 books of fiction and poetry annually published in this country, only 300 are works in translation. America has grown into an empire that prefers to export rather than import, even when it comes to literature. Our goal is to discover what’s out there, and it is a labor of love. In part, I started Archipelago because there seemed to be an urgent need. So many important international writers, both living and dead, are simply not being introduced and read here. But, I must admit, it was more out of love than duty. I’m naturally drawn toward literature beyond our borders. It’s what I love to read. Reading is a voyage, and for me it can be as eye-opening (and moving) as traveling abroad.”

En een so ‘n digter wat deur Archipelago Press aan ‘n groter gehoor bekend gestel is, was die Roemeense reus Nichita Stănescu (1933 – 1983). Op die webblad Words Without Borders kan die volgende oor Stănescu (foto) gevind word: “Part physicist and part naturalist, Romanian poet Nichita Stănescu was always a consonant lyricist. He had created an extraordinary body of work before his death in 1983. Just fifty years old when he died, he had published over a book a year between 1965 and 1971. Conventional wisdom states that prodigious output leads to paltry results, but Wheel With a Single Spoke and Other Poems, which gathers poems from all of Stănescu’s books without being close to comprehensive, presents the case that he may well have been one of Europe’s great twentieth-century poets. English-language readers have translator Sean Cotter to thank for this tremendous addition to their literature.”

Wat ‘n prestasie! Om nog ‘n aanhaling uit die reeds genoemde onderhoud aan u voor te hou: “My dream is that our books will open people’s minds and speak to their hearts, that they might chisel away at stereotypes and awaken curiosity about other cultures and ways of seeing and being. I hope that our books might touch people deeply and serve as catalysts for social change and that they might bring people together.”

Inderdaad. Maar, ter wille van volledigheid – die ander tekste wat genomineer was vir die prys, is die volgende:

Transfer Fat deur Aase Berg, vertaal deur Johannes Göransson (Ugly Duckling Press; Sweden).

pH Neutral History deur Lidija Dimkovska, vertaal deur Ljubica Arsovska en Peggy Reid (Copper Canyon Press; Macedonia).

The Invention of Glass deur Emmanuel Hocquard, vertaal deur Cole Swensen en Rod Smith (Canarium Books; France).

Notes on the Mosquito deur Xi Chuan, vertaal deur Lucas Klein (New Directions; China).

Almost 1 Book / Almost 1 Life deur Elfriede Czurda, vertaal deur Rosmarie Waldrop (Burning Deck; Austria).

Die beoordelaars was: Brandon Holmquest, digter, vertaler, en redakteur van CALQUE; Jennifer Kronovet, digter en vertaler; John Marshall, eienaar van Open Books: A Poem Emporium; Erica Mena-Landry, digter en vertaler; Kevin Prufer, digter, akademikus, essayis en mede-redakteur van New European Poets; en Russell Valentino, vertaler en direkteur van Autumn Hill Books en ook van The Iowa Review.

En by wyse van leestoegif volg ‘n gedig uit Wheel With a Single Spoke hieronder.

***

Poet, Like a Soldier

(Poetul ca si soldatul)

 

A poet, like a soldier

has no life of his own.

His own life is wrecks

and ruins.

 

With the forceps of his cerebrum he lifts

the emotions of ants

brings them closer and closer to his eye

until they and his eye become one.

 

He puts his ear to the belly of a starving dog

His nose smells the half-open muzzle

until his nose and the dog’s muzzle

are the same.

 

During waves of heat

he fans himself with flocks of birds

he startles into flight.

 

None of you should believe the poet when he cries.

His tear is never his own.

He has wiped tears from things

and cries things’ tears.

 

The poet is like time.

Faster or slower

more deceitful or more truthful.

 

Be careful not to say anything to a poet.

Be especially careful not to say something true.

Really, be careful not to say something heartfelt.

 

Just then, he will claim he said it,

and he will make the claim such that

all of you will say, it’s true

he said it.

 

I beg you, above all

do not touch a poet!

Never put your hand on a poet!

 

…except when your hand

is thin as a ray.

Only then your hand might

pass straight through him.

 

Otherwise, it will not pass

your fingers will remain on him

and he will be the one to brag

he has more fingers than you.

And all of you will have to say, yes,

it’s true, he has more fingers….

 

Better, if you can believe me,

it would be better if you never

touched a poet.

 

…And he’s not even worth a touch…

A poet, like a soldier

has no life of his own.

 

© Nichita Stănescu (Vertaal deur Sean Cotter)

 

 

A view on two festivals -  “What is Poetry” festival (Gauteng) and the “Dancing in Other Words” festival (Western Cape)

I

Much has been written about two international poetry festivals, which took place in South Africa in recent months. Not least on this site, Versindaba, you can read about both of them (in Afrikaans, though).

     I decided to write this reflection on the two festivals in English, even though this is an Afrikaans poetry site: English was the linking language of the festival participants.

     In juxtaposing the two festivals you begin to see their various and variating significances, and some reading possibilities of both festivals emerge.

     Poems are very sensitive constructs and the hierarchy of their communications alters according to the changing contexts in which the poems are read (or reopened).     

     The two festivals represented contrasting contexts – even contesting – but not contradictory. I mention this because in the afterglow of the last of the two mentioned festivals, held in Stellenbosch, commentary arose on a Stellenbosch University-based website which is so typical of the either/or mentality found in South Africa these days as a kneejerk reaction to our complexity. (I will return to this discussion further on in my review).

     I had the good fortune to be involved in both festivals. I was asked to comment in my personal capacity, which means my opinions do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues in either festival.

     With regard to the first – held in the northern provinces of Gauteng, Northwest and Limpopo – I was an invited reader. With the second festival, I was involved in the conceptualization, albeit on the fringe in my capacity as a member of the Pirogue Collective, one of the overseeing agencies of the festival.    

    Both festivals had a caravan component – i.e. they were roaming festivals, a kind of festival which utilizes the possibilities of changing landscape and the effect this has on the poetry. (I did not attend the jaunts of the Spier Festival into the Western Cape hinterland though, during which the invited poets translated work of one another. I heard it was riveting in its riches.)

     Both festivals functioned as an installment of a train of prior and intended further festivals.

     The “What is Poetry?” festival of South Africa 2013 was curated by Indra Wussow, director of the Sylt Foundation for the arts, Germany and Jozi Artlab, Johannesburg. This caravan roamed the north of the country from 23^rd  April to 3^rd May and the event followed on the Forum Penyair International Indonesia, a poetry caravan on the island of Java the previous year. (The Javanese caravan was curated by Indonesian poet Dudy Anggawi and German radio journalist and literature academic Silke Behl, one of the co-founders the Bremen Poetry on the Road festival).

     These two festivals were the first and second installments of the on-going international poetry project What’s Poetry? (curated by German poet Michael Augustin) – borrowing its name from a poem by British “Mercy-poet” (after the river of Liverpool), Adrian Henry.

     A caravan leg of the What’s Poetry project is currently being planned for mainland China as a third installment of the project.

     The reader will notice, hopefully with amusement, the slight diversion from the project name, What’s Poetry, as reflected in the name of the South African leg of the project – namely “What is Poetry?” It happened almost seamlessly, but a few quaint questions peel off. It is probably not surprising that the name morphed in the way it did while in South Africa, a country of passionate insistence (I insist on this, you insist on that). Suddenly the emphasis was on the verb. Words have a way of paying tribute to honesty while poets sleep. To build on an image by the South African poet Nadine Botha, they are the ants that carry the house off while nobody notices …

     The “What is Poetry” tour of South Africa had something catholic, in the sense of encompassing, to its intended ambit – like its forerunner to a lesser extent. The poets for the tour were drawn from South Africa, China, Japan, Germany, India, Indonesia (Bali and Java), and the German part of Switzerland, Botswana and Russia. As in the case of the Forum Penyair in Indonesia (Java) the previous year, there seemed to be a conscious emphasis on four points of reference as far as selection goes: the continental, the part within the national, the sub continental and the binational – four relationships/ tensions that shape identities of poetries and the appearance of the world as we know it.

     In the case of South Africa the “part-national” aspect (within the context of an aspiring whole), was reflected in a choice of poets from different languages and demography. Three examples: Vonani Bila (Tsonga), myself (Afrikaans), Rustum Kozain (English). It must be said though, that languages in South Africa are sometimes shared like flowing water among the participants, they flow in and out of one another, especially in the case of the black participants.

    Different binaries among the participating poets shared different first and second languages (either literary or first languages), and these multiple variations contributed to a surprise element and uniqueness in some ad hoc partnerships of performance and reading that emerged as the tour progressed. The practicalities of communication during the tour, as with the Indonesian caravan, encouraged the poets to additionally work in a second language suitable to them (if they were not doing so already), being so adrift on the currents of multilingualism.                      

     The working definition of the word “poetic” in this caravan was broader than in the case of the festival held at Spier (discussed further on). The reference of “poetic” is not only to the literary genre, but also to the “characteristic” as it reveals itself in multiple creative genres, including graphic, visual, conceptual and photographic art, and dancing. Leading agents in these other genres also took part in discussions and lectures.

     During the caravan on Java even “the poetic” in relation to food – which Indonesia is famous for – was implicitly highlighted. Food on this “continent” (it is more than a country!) is not only a matter of survival. Neither is it just a question of enjoyment. It is a proud form of expression palpably spiritual at best, and some restaurateurs and cooks are avowed food artists.    

     There are two further fascinating facets of the “What’s Poetry” tours I would like to draw attention to. The first focuses on different contemporary forms of poetry, which exist side by side. These are forms produced within the same historical time frame by forces typical of that time, but the respective rationale and ethos of the forms differ.

     The second is a focus on different historical forms of poetry – forms that are typical of different stages in human cultural development. These forms just happen to be existing side by side due to historical contingencies such as colonialism or some other reasons for a mixture of first and third worlds, the modern and the pre-modern. (I have never been in the Russian Federation but I can imagine similar literature anomalies existing in that entity as here in my own but possibly for very different reasons.) 

     Countries like South Africa and Indonesia lend themselves to this latter type of showcasing, and there is much to learn from experiencing such charming anachronisms first-hand, either as a participating poet or a member of audience. The enticing exoticism of the experience is the least! I want to give one example of both the first and the second facets mentioned above.   

     But first an explicatory footnote on the phrase “different stages of development”. This should not be interpreted in a teleological way, i.e. that the later stages are necessarily “more developed” than the earlier. Nobody would dream to describe say, Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s poetry as “more developed” than say Homer’s. It just would not make sense to say so, and it would be untrue.   Neither would the opposite supposition be true, which often enough is found in political stupidity: That all cultures, over time lines, should be seen as of necessity on the same level.       

     At stake here is that Enzensberger and Homer cannot be read with the same presuppositions even though some presuppositions will overlap.  The one is a poet of early premodernity and the other of late modernity. But, imagine now, seeing them side-by-side, as living people performing their work in the same room …

     Something like this happened on the “What is Poetry” tour one night in Soweto. And even though the “late modernists” among us weren’t performing on that specific night, they did find themselves in the same room as a Xhosa poet whose work is testimony to the shapes of a time far removed from our own.

     She is the enigmatic Madosini (Latozi Mpahleni), an internationally recognized singer storyteller, who delivers her searing melodies and tales in the traditional styles of the Amampondo people of the Eastern Cape.

     Personally I believe that the type of memory that Madosini embodies is crucial for the consolidation and continued spawning of contemporary and future idioms in African literatures such as Xhosa, idioms that will hopefully come to adequately reflect a tenuous historical memory short-circuited by the clash with European modernity and colonialism.

      Seeing Madosini team up with the Bali poet Samar Gantang was unforgettable – two traditional cultural frames divided by thousands of miles of ocean meeting one another in a jamming session, in an impromptu love song in two different languages, sang by two folk heroes of cultures that don’t know one another. You can view it on Youube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjADmP4NvBM. The words that the Xhosa singer sang to the Balinese poet were: “Who is this spirit who tickles me with his beard, and where does he come from?”

       An example of poetry forms from the same historical time but very different in ethos would be, say, the South African urban spoken word poetry of Kgafela Oa Magagodi (SeTswana) and say, Michael Augustin’s poetry (in German, mediated by English translation), which is steeped in European traditions.

     Seeing these frames rub up against one another makes for a certain type of poetry exhibition. And the questions and thoughts that get prompted by seeing this kind of exhibit have a very stimulating ripple effect on the consciousness of the reader.       

     I called it a certain type of poetry exhibition, because there are other types of exhibit. It is deeply important that other types of poetry exhibit exist as well. Different forms augment and compliment one another, and in their simultaneous and various ways they pay tribute to a multifarious world of literature.

     Which brings me to the second poetry festival of recent months in South Africa, held at Spier wine estate outside the Western Cape university town of Stellenbosch, to great acclaim: The Dancing in Other Words Festival.     

 

II

Poet Breyten Breytenbach curated the festival. (The conveners were writer Dominique Enthoven, and Spier executive Annabelle Schreuder.)  Two invited guests, Hans van de Waarsenburg and David Schulman, could not attend.

    The line-up in the end was (from overseas): Carolyn Forché (USA), Joachim Sartorius (Germany), Thomas Salamun (Slovenia), Ko Un (South Korea), Yang Lian (China) and Bill Dodd (Britain/ Italy). From South Africa: three leading poets, all three women, Antjie Krog, Marlene van Niekerk, Petra Müller. Breyten Breytenbach (South Africa) himself completed the local line-up.

     The festival chose several lodestars or guiding spirits: Jalalludin Rumi, Marthinus (Tao) Versveld (the South African philosopher), Cesaria Evoria and Aimé Césaire.

     The most prominent lodestar was not mentioned on the initial invitation letters – Heitsi-Eibib, the San visionary and half god, who in his silent and unnoticed way governs the subjected history of this part of South Africa where the festival took place: Western Cape. A symbolic grave now exists on the Spier estate for Heitsi Eibib, and the festival ended with a tribute of lights and dancing by all the festivalgoers – invited guests as well members of the public – at this “grave”. A large banner sporting the outline of a cloak with outspread sleeves with words by the poets written on the cloak, was hoisted above the grave, like a resurrection. This was not just an empty gesture. I think it better be taken seriously by whoever saw the resurrection, because it might have implications. 

     From this gesture it can be gleaned that the festival in part wanted to excavate side-lined and silenced historical memory; that all poetry is in part an excavation process from which to imagine new trajectories, as the light reflects off the old shards. (A parallel: The trajectory of Western culture would not be what it is today, was Troy never discovered.)

     This festival, the first of more festivals intended under the banner of Spier Pirogue, wants to dance in the words of others, and in words other than those that present themselves readily. The invited poets all embodied these ideas, sometimes in stark contrast to one another. But they also complimented an emerging context created by their collective presence.

     From my description above it can be seen that both festivals shared a certain “historical consciousness” or striving, but each achieved this in different ways.  The festival at Spier seemed to foreground the construct “region” – in the cultural and linguistic sense – above that of “nation”, and thus succeeded in narrowing the focal points to good effect. In the discussion topics the focal points broadened out again to include the national and the international, bringing back the balance.        

     The main difference between the festival/ caravan at Spier and the What’s Poetry roaming festivals lies in the selection criteria. Spier focused only on poets who stand prominent in their achievements within a late modern global literary context. (They may stand prominent in other contexts as well, and the chosen context is by no means necessarily uninclined to defer to those other contexts and to speak to them.)

    I mention this because of the murmurs that went up in certain Stellenbosch circles that the festival was “not representative” of South Africa’s “demography”. (Please see Section I above, on how complex the issue of “representativity” can be.)

     Now if there is one concept that in South Africa (and some other places) has equaled the self-mimicking, self-inflated levels of sheer delusion found in historic exercises of exclusivity such as apartheid – it is, ironically, this one: “demographic representativity”. This essay is not the right time to go into the topic. As Marlene van Niekerk said in her comment, I am tired …

     Suffice to say that one festival cannot do everything. It should do well in what it sets out to do.

     Suffice to mention that concerns of demographic selection run the risk of belying the very core of poetry itself: the belief that it is possible to identify with the other so intrinsically that it does not matter who is writing the poetry.             

     Suffice it to say there is a certain narcissism of “inclusion” afoot in some sectors in South Africa: Everything must at the same time be everything else, or else it has no right to exist. And this is then put forward as a threat, or in the form of blackmail, with a bottomless amount of ego and false indignation. No debate here, which is the procedural protocol of deferring politics, nothing of curiosity given embodiment, or the vision given flesh. It is simply demanded. There is something in this blackmail style of ethical demand that is akin to fundamentalist religiosity. Which, of course, was the father of apartheid itself.

     Suffice it to say: As long as moral indignation carries on reflecting a misguided hegemony as it presently does, or unilaterally elevated centers of purported “common” conviction, especially concerning the “ideal functioning” or “nature” of an activity such as poetry – it will fail to be an answer to the narcissistic delusions of colonialism and apartheid, and for a very simple reason: It remains a reflection of those delusions in the shape of its reflexes.

     Which brings us to poetry, to the festival of “dancing poets”, they of the Nietzschean star variety.

     Poetry is an “underlabourer” activity not unlike philosophy in this respect, which strives to address the wounds of our categories. Poetry can never be an answer to the physical wounds of the world as found “out there”. But take note of what it does to the categories, those demons and angels who initially created the world’s wounds. If we take note of this, we might be able to adapt our shadows to those messages, and our shadows might in turn adapt us, and then the world around us might be adapted. No, will be adapted.    

     These are meta-messages, which ironically have no words to describe them. Poetry is the words of “wordlessness”.

      I remember clearly when writing my first poems at schools, that I felt guilty about making aesthetics from something like a concern about justice. Aesthetics was something akin to adornment while justice, I thought, is “like God”. I was certain that I might one day have to repent for this adulteration. Years later it dawned on me that things are the other way round. Justice is, at its core, itself a form of aesthetic. It is precisely poetry’s way of knowing this instinctively that gives it its ethical import.        

     And in that Nietzschean undertone of the festival’s name, I sensed a pertinent retort to the charge that poetry must contribute to the world’s answers. Nietzsche was the philosopher of total hope and total hopelessness at the same time. The shape of the dance – its recurrent patterns, its concentric concerns – belies somewhat the linear hopes of the projects of modernity. Such as Marxian infused critique?

     But not the hope itself …

 

*To see the poets of the What’s Poetry? tour in Indonesia dancing on stage, go to  YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4focuvIBEuI or type in: Forum Penyair Indonesia dancing poets. Maybe all poets should put away their laptops and just circle one another like planets, while the melodies change? Mr Ko Un, you have got some competition!  

Charl-Pierre Naudé

© Versindaba  2013   

     

 

Die vraag word dikwels geopper of die liriese vers in staat is tot sosiale kommentaar en die aktualiteite wat daarmee verband hou; dikwels met ‘n gevoel van “Nee”, as gevolg van die eksplisiete geneigdheid van so ‘n betoog en die gevolglike inboet van poëtiese resonansie. Ook tydens die onlangse Dansende Digtersfees was daar ‘n besonder interessante gesprek wat onder andere oor die kwessies van morele verval en hoe dit in die digkuns reflekteer word, gehandel het.  Die vraag wat sentraal gestaan het, is hoe skryf ‘n mens ‘n liriese vers vanuit die posisie van “evil”, soos Carolyn Forché daarna verwys het. Uiteraard is Adorno se beroemde – en dikwels skeef aangehaalde – uitspraak oor Auschwitz en die onmoontlikheid van poësie onder die vergrootglas geplaas. (As voorbeeld van hoe ‘n liriese digter ‘n vers oor die “boosheid” kan pleeg, het Forché haar kragtige gedig “The Colonel” voorgehou.) Ook Dan Pagis se aangrypende gedig “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car” wat in haar bloemlesing Against Forgetting (1993: WW Norton) gevind kan word:

 

here in this carload

I am eve

with abel my son

if you see my other son

cain son of man

tell him that i

 

© Dan Pagis (Vertaal deur Stephenn Mitchell)

 

Nietemin, dié gesprek het my onwillekeurig herinner aan James Fenton (foto), loshande een van my gunsteling Britse digters. Veral vanweë sy gedig “A German Requiem”.  Hoe die skrikwekkende kwessies van ons verknoeide samelewing deur dié liriese digter hanteer word, bly vir my na soveel jare nog steeds ‘n bron van aspirasie; soos dit ook gevind kan word in die onderhoud wat Robyn Creswell verlede jaar met Fenton gevoer het vir The Paris Review, No. 96.

Maar eers, by wyse van agtergrond: James Fenton is bekend as oorlogsverslaggewer, librettis, garnaalboer, drama-kritikus, digter en ook voormalige Oxford Professor of Poetry. Die veelsydige geskakeerdheid van dié digter word goed raakgevat deur Creswell in sy openingsparagraaf: “Fenton was born in Lincoln, in northern England, in 1949. He attended the Chorister School, Durham, where he sang in the choir. He went on to read psychology, philosophy, and physiology at Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1968, he won the university’s Newdigate Prize with a sequence of sonnets and haikus on the opening of Japan. The theme was set by the prize committee, but the history of Western imperialism in Asia became one of Fenton’s abiding interests (as did questions of poetic form). Five years later, having joined the Trotskyite International Socialists, Fenton used the prize money from another poetry award to go to Cambodia. He found work as a journalist, moved to Vietnam, and reported the fall of Saigon with evident satisfaction, famously riding the first North Vietnamese tank into the compound of the presidential palace.”

Oor die kwessie van sang en die liriese toon, die volgende:

Creswell: Song has an important place in your own poetry. In your Introduction to English Poetry you write, ‘Poetry itself begins in those situations where the voice has to be raised . . . The voice is raised, and that is where poetry begins.’ What are the consequences for poetry when you think about it in this way?

Fenton: When I wrote that, I was probably thinking about my time in the rural Philippines. One of the advantages of running a prawn farm is that you meet interesting people. I knew this guy who was illiterate, but, probably by virtue of being illiterate, he had preserved the oral form of Filipino poetry, whose rules are quite complex. For example, the last word of the first line of a poem must rhyme with the penultimate syllable of the second. The whole poem is in couplets, of a sort. And this is an improvised poetry. If there was a drinking session and somebody important had arrived, this poet might be called on to ad-lib some appropriate words. The first thing he did was produce a special raised voice that went with his improvisation. It was a voice that could be heard at the back of the room. This is something that that kind of village bard has in common with the street vendor.

Creswell: You say that the raised voice, the sung word, is essential to poetry. On the other hand, there’s a long tradition that says otherwise. John Stuart Mill thought that lyric poetry is not heard, but overheard. The reader listens in on the poet talking to himself. That’s Mill’s definition of the lyric—not a raised voice, but a private one. 

Fenton: I wonder what exactly he was thinking of. Because lyric poetry is, of course, musical in origin. I do know that what happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page. When it’s a question of typography, why not? Poets have done beautiful things with typography—Apollinaire’s Calligrammes, that sort of thing. But now we are left with people who write only for the page, who feel that a poem is something very far from performance.

Maar genoeg hiervan. Gaan lees gerus die volledige onderhoud by The Paris Review; ‘n wonderlike, wydlopende gesprek oor ‘n swetterjoel aangeleenthede.

Waarop ek eintlik jou aandag wil fokus, is ‘n aantal van James Fenton se gedigte wat as voorbeeld kan dien van presies hoe ‘n liriese digter hom met eietydse tema’s kan bemoei sonder om ‘n politieke vlag (of vaandel) daaroor te laat wapper.

Hieronder volg vier voorbeelde.

***

Cambodia

 

One man shall smile one day and say goodbye. 

Two shall be left, two shall be left to die. 

One man shall give his best advice. 

Three men shall pay the price. 

 

One man shall live, live to regret. 

Four men shall meet the debt. 

 

One man shall wake from terror to his bed. 

Five men shall be dead. 

 

One man to five. A million men to one. 

And still they die. And still the war goes on. 

***

Blood and Lead 

Listen to what they did.

Don’t listen to what they said.

What was written in blood

Has been set up in lead.

 

Lead tears the heart.

Lead tears the brain.

What was written in blood

Has been set up again.

 

The heart is a drum.

The drum has a snare.

The snare is in the blood.

The blood is in the air.

 

Listen to what they did.

Listen to what’s to come.

Listen to the blood.

Listen to the drum.

***

THE SONG OF THE GENERAL

The moon is sharp on the blade.
The dew shines on the hill.
The heart bleeds dark
And my men lie still.

The heads on the palisades
Dried in the wind so black
Call out to the venturing foe:
Turn back, fool, turn back.

Here snores no feasted clown
Who has drunk disgrace with his wine.
Here drools no amorous dupe
In the lap of his concubine.

Here watches a bitter pride
In exile lonely and long.
He serves an unjust lord.
He endures a continuing wrong.

One watches. One endures
On the ramparts, on the towers,
The laughter of the stars,
The taunts of the small hours.

Who sweeps my ancestors’ graves?
Who holds the reins for my son?
Will my dog still come to my call?
Does my wife sleep alone?

I serve an unjust lord.
Exile is an early tomb.
The heart bleeds dark.
Death is a journey home.

By the bright dew on the hill,
By the sharp blade of the moon,
I shall wake my grieving men.
I shall make that journey soon. 

 

A German Requiem

 

It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.

It is not the houses. It is the spaces in between the houses.

It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.

It is not your memories which haunt you.

It is not what you have written down.

It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.

What you must go on forgetting all your life.

And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual.

You will find out that you are not alone in the enterprise.

Yesterday the very furniture seemed to reproach you.

Today you take your place in the Widow’s Shuttle.

 

The bus is waiting at the southern gate

To take you to the city of your ancestors

Which stands on the hill opposite, with gleaming pediments,

As vivid as this charming square, your home.

Are you shy? You should be. It is almost like a wedding,

The way you clasp your flowers and give a little tug at your veil. Oh,

The hideous bridesmaids, it is natural that you should resent them

Just a little, on this first day.

But that will pass, and the cemetery is not far.

Here comes the driver, flicking a toothpick into the gutter,

His tongue still searching between his teeth.

See, he has not noticed you. No one has noticed you.

It will pass, young lady, it will pass.

 

How comforting it is, once or twice a year,

To get together and forget the old times.

As on those special days, ladies and gentlemen,

When the boiled shirts gather at the graveside

And a leering waistcoast approaches the rostrum.

It is like a solemn pact between the survivors.

They mayor has signed it on behalf of the freemasonry.

The priest has sealed it on behalf of all the rest.

Nothing more need be said, and it is better that way-

 

 The better for the widow, that she should not live in fear of surprise,

The better for the young man, that he should move at liberty between the armchairs,

The better that these bent figures who flutter among the graves

Tending the nightlights and replacing the chrysanthemums

Are not ghosts,

That they shall go home.

The bus is waiting, and on the upper terraces

The workmen are dismantling the houses of the dead.

 

But when so many had died, so many and at such speed,

There were no cities waiting for the victims.

They unscrewed the name-plates from the shattered doorways

And carried them away with the coffins.

So the squares and parks were filled with the eloquence of young cemeteries:

The smell of fresh earth, the improvised crosses

And all the impossible directions in brass and enamel.

 

‘Doctor Gliedschirm, skin specialist, surgeries 14-16 hours or by appointment.’

Professor Sarnagel was buried with four degrees, two associate memberships

And instructions to tradesmen to use the back entrance.

Your uncle’s grave informed you that he lived in the third floor, left.

You were asked please to ring, and he would come down in the lift

To which one needed a key…

 

Would come down, would ever come down

With a smile like thin gruel, and never too much to say.

How he shrank through the years.

How you towered over him in the narrow cage.

How he shrinks now…

 

But come. Grief must have its term? Guilt too, then.

And it seems there is no limit to the resourcefulness of recollection.

So that a man might say and think:

When the world was at its darkest,

When the black wings passed over the rooftops,

(And who can divine His purposes?) even then

There was always, always a fire in this hearth.

You see this cupboard? A priest-hole!

And in that lumber-room whole generations have been housed and fed.

Oh, if I were to begin, if I were to begin to tell you

The half, the quarter, a mere smattering of what we went through!

 

His wife nods, and a secret smile,

Like a breeze with enough strength to carry one dry leaf

Over two pavingstones, passes from chair to chair.

Even the enquirer is charmed.

He forgets to pursue the point.

It is now what he wants to know.

It is what he wants not to know.

It is not what they say.

It is what they do not say.

© James Fenton (Uit: New Selected Poems, 2006: Penguin)

 

 

Insiggewende blog deur Billy Mills op die Guardian se boekeblad, oor hoe die besigheid van gedigte publiseer besig is om te verander. Kort aanhaling daaruit:

“So, where some see poetry as a dying art, I see it as an early and enthusiastic adopter of new technologies, partly because it has to be. Why? Well, if selling what you’re making isn’t going to make anyone rich, but you want to share it with those people who are interested, then you have to work out the cheapest way to do so. And right now it looks like that way is a mix of online, performance and print, with each supporting the other in a new model of publishing, one in which the printed collection is no longer the only accepted mode of publishing but remains a key part of the package. And given the apparent reluctance of most bookshops to stock verse, they’ll be sold mainly online and at events. It may not be big business, but that’s not what it’s setting out to be.”

Lees gerus ook die kommentaar wat op die blog volg.

Elke dag verbaas my 2 jarige seuntjie my met ʼn nuwe woord of sin.  Ek is verstom oor die aanleer van woorde by kinders in so ʼn kort tydperk.  Na 35 jaar sukkel ek maar nog soms baie om woord en beeld bymekaar te bring, of net om my gedagtes samehangend te orden.

Terwyl ek soek na inhoud luister ek na Vers en Klank op RSG en wens dat ek so iets indrukwekkend kan doen met “vers en kuns” vir Versindaba.  Daar was ʼn luisteraar wat ʼn sms gestuur het na die ateljee waarin sy sê dat dit die beste 30 minute van haar dag is.  Sjoe wat ʼn pluimpie….

Dit is werklik iets om na te streef….

Aan die anderkant van die spektrum is my 5 jarige seuntjie ook hard besig om woord en beeld bymekaar te probeer bring.  Hy wil baie graag skryf en maak nou die vorm van letters na en plaas langs mekaar om ʼn idee te probeer oordra….

Hy is ook baie geintereseerd en wil weet waar woorde vandaan kom en hoe word boeke gemaak.

Ek het toe hierdie pragtige boek (“Die land van die groot woordfabriek deur Agnes De Lestrade”) by die biblioteek opgspoor.  Ek wonder wie het dit meer geniet, ek of hy?

Intussen lees ek in n baie interessante blog inskrywing  (sien hier) van ander kunstenaars wat met gemak woord en beeld byeenbring.

Behalwe vir hierdie blog inskrywings probeer ek hard hierdie laaste tyd om op my manier dieselfde te doen.  In die volgende uistalling waarin ek deelneem en waarna ek jul almal wil nooi is:

Mash up=  Type wat Donderdag aand open by Alex Hamilton se studio in Woodstock, Kaapstad.

Ek het eergister naarstigtelik in die biblioteek gesoek na ʼn gedig wat die ‘beeld’ vir die uitstalling wat ek in my kop het in digterlike vorm te kan oordra.

Die een waarop ek besluit het is:

 On(be)eindig deur Ilse van Staden

Daar is met ons nog nie

Klaar gepraat nie

 

Mens wat woord moet word

 

Ons is nog net die begin

Of die onvervulde einde

 

In die lug laat hang

Blou vergete albasterbal

Uigeknikker die ewigheid in

Soos die onvanpaste punt

Iewers aan die einde van ʼn half voltooide sin

 

Hier volg ʼn (on)vanpaste  onderhoud aan die einde van ʼn half voltooide blog:

H: Alex, vertel ons bietjie meer van die Mash-up’s.  Wanneer het dit ontstaan en hoekom het jy besluit om hierdie Mash-ups in jou studio te hou.  Waarom noem jy dit Mash-up?

 A: : Mash-up is ʼn musiek term (think Glee J) en dit is wanneer twee liedjies bymekaar gegooi word en as een gesing word.  Die idée, om dit toe te pas op kuns, het ek gehad nadat ek weereens ʼn groep uitstalling gesien het wat so oorgekurateer was dat dit nie meer die werk kans gegee het om as idividuele stukke te kommunikeer nie, maar as een installasie werk.

Dus wil ek ʼn platvorm skep met die MASH-UP idee waar ek meer as een kunstenaar bymekaar en langs mekaar uitstal sonder dat dit ʼn ander konsep raak as wat die individuele werke weergee. Daar is altyd ʼn onderliggende ooreenkoms, maar nie tot die punt wat dit ʼn streng kuns kurator gevoel het van alles moet by alles pas nie.

 

H: Vir die volgende Mash up het jy dit onder die vaandel van “Type”.  Wat het jou laat besluit op “Type”?  Dit is ʼn term wat baie wyd is….wat beteken dit vir jou?

 

A: :”Type” het natuurlik die wonderlike twee betekenisse van “tipe” of “letter font” en hierdie is die oorkoepellende idees wat in al die kuns voorkom en die gehoor die vraag laat vra: “Wat se tipe kunsuitstalling is dit?”

Ek het ook opgemerk dat baie kunstenaars woorde of logos gebruik en dit as ʼn tema gekies.

H: Het jy eers die Kunstenaars gekies om deel te neem, of het jy eers die titel gehad en daarna die kunstenaars genader om deel te neem?

A: Ek het eers ʼn groep kunstenaars in gedagte gehad en toe gekyk na wat hulle werk in gemeen het en of dit saam sal werk. Daarna het ek die uitstalling “ontwerp” ( ha ha nie gekurateer)  om die beste voorbeelde, wat die idee weergee, van almal se werk in te sluit

H: Kom jou eie produksie elke keer tot halt terwyl hierdie uistallings aan die gang is aangesien dit in jou studio gehou word?

A: Nee! Ek het te veel werk om tot stilstand te kom. Met goeie beplanning kry ek dit reg om my aandag te skei tussen uitstalling hou en my eie werk.  Ek dink dit is omdat ek die uitstalling as ʼn uitdaging sien en dit verskriklik geniet om saam met ander kunstenaars te werk dat dit nie moeilik is om dit te organiseer nie.

H:  Nie so lank gelede het jy ‘Amper almal” by hierdie jaar se KKNK uitgestal.  Ek weet vir ʼn feit dat jy o.a vir CJ Langenhoven uitgebeeld het, maar watter ander digters/skrywers het jy ook gedoen:

A: Daar is n lys van amper 31 op my website: www.alexhamilton.co.za so gaan loer gerus.

 

H: Wat is jou gunsteling versreël?

A:“hiiiiieeeeeeee Die patatranke langs die spoorlyn, hoe seer moet hulle ore nie wees nie.” (dis die hele gedig) deur Breyten Breytenbach

Nou ja, indien jul in die omgewing is loer gerus in Donderdag-aand.

 

Die hele kwessie van hermetiese poësie is iets wat wêreldwyd in bykans alle vername digkunste weldeeglik gevestig is, terwyl dit hier by ons eintlik nog nooit inslag gevind het nie. Trouens, met die uitsondering van Gilbert Gibson, twyfel ek of daar enige Afrikaanse digter is wat as ‘hermeties’ (of te wel ‘ondeurdringbaar’) beskryf sal kan word. Heelwat verse wat as ‘hermeties’ beskryf word, is myns insiens wel ontoeganklik, dog selde hermeties.In die meeste van hierdie gevalle is dit (waarskynlik) weens onvoldoende kontekstualisering en nié as gevolg van die vers se tegniese vernuf om sy eie spore dood te vee, soos dit die geval is met Gilbert Gibson se gedigte, nie.

Nietemin. ‘n Belangrike boek oor hierdie onderwerp wat pas in Nederland verskyn het, is Paul Claus se Zwarte zon, code van de hermetische poëzie.  Op De Contrabas kon ek ‘n deeglike bespreking hieroor vind.

 

Maar eers: volgens die uitgewer, Van Tilt Uitgeverij, se liriese inligtingstuk: “Niets is zo helder en tegelijk zo duister als de zon. Het zonlicht zelf verblindt, alleen een eclips maakt het zichtbaar. Voor de hermetische poëzie geldt dezelfde paradox. Als een zwarte zon schittert haar zin pas door afwezigheid. Zwarte zon leert de lezer de geheimtaal van de hermetische poëzie lezen. Paul Claes past een nieuwe ontcijferingsmethode toe op twaalf duistere dichters: Horatius, Luis de Góngora, Willem van Swaanenburg, Gerárd de Nerval, Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Karel van de Woestijne, Wallace Stevens, André Breton, e.e. cummings en Hugo Claus. Het is een misverstand te denken dat de poëzie verdwijnt als we haar mysterie doorgronden. Integendeel, pas zo verschijnt ze in haar volle luister: als de zon na een verduistering.”

In De Contrabas se bespreking word Claus dan soos volg aangehaal: “‘Lezen is steeds ontcijferen. Wie de sleutel niet heeft, staat voor een gesloten deur. [...] Een moeilijk gedicht bestaat bij de gratie van het geheim. Het plezier van de lezer bestaat erin dat raadsel te ontsluieren […]  De Rousseau-achtige opvattingen die tegenwoordig in het literatuuronderwijs en in het cultuurbeleid opgeld doen, ontkennen deze evidenties. Iedere kleuter wordt als een kunstenaar in de dop gezien. Iedereen zou n staat zijn zonder voorkennis cultuurproducten te consumeren. Elke vorm van initiatie wordt als doctrinair, elitair en contra-emancipatorisch afgewezen. De gevolgen voor deze doorgeschoten romantiek zijn dagelijks te merken. Cultureel simplisme en pueriel populisme voeren de boventoon in de media. Alles wat niet hapklaar is, wordt gecensureerd.”

‘n Belangrike publikasie, inderdaad.

Ten slotte word Claus soos volg aangehaal: “De twintigste-eeuwse avant-garde wil de politieke revolutie ook in de poëzie doorvoeren en creeërt zo een experimentele poëzie die steeds cryptischer wordt. Vreemd genoeg verzet ze zich tegelijk ook tegen iedere inwijding van de lezer. Hermeneutisme wordt zodoende een doel op zichzelf. Wellicht is de tijd gekomen om tegenover dit anti-intellectualisme een nuchtere technische analyse van de moderne poëzie te stellen.”

Maar waarom is hermetiese digkuns dan enigsins van belang? Uiteraard ‘n vraag waarop vele antwoorde moontlik is. Persoonlik het dit vir my te make met taal-verknoeiing en –ontginning, soos met die voorbeeld van Paul Celan. (Selfs Dylan Thomas?) En tog, altyd, altyd met T.S. Eliot (selwers ‘n gedugte hermeet) se beroemde uitspraak voor oë: “Genuine poetry moves before it is understood.”

En die hermetiese digkuns se vernaamste belemmering? Seer sekerlik die gebrek aan opwindende, of avontuurlustige  lesers.

As leeslekkerte volg sommer twee gedigte deur Gilbert Gibson; albei geneem uit sy mees onlangse bundel [vii], en eweneens deur Joan Hambidge aangehaal in haar resensie oor die betrokke bundel.

*

[60]

 

in daardie film zapruder

kruip jackie in rukkerige bleek

kleure oor die kar

om dele van haar man

se brein bymekaar te maak

elkeen van haar hande

daar is net twee

van sosiale media bevry

dante is haar digter

hy verstaan haar wêreld in die motor

in daardie wêreld van liefde en chaos

soek haar hande bloed

soos hansie smal se hande soek na staal

*

[24]

 

alice oswald op my af

die geluid van ’n fiets

van ’n bui reën wat jy

voor die tyd reeds ruik

jy kan haar spore na my toe volg

soos ink na ’n inkvis verskrik

bo ’n strandmeer se oopgevoude bodem

hier sluip iets soos koue

teen my ruggraat af

haar voetval wentel

’n aasdier

om ’n dooie skaap

in die naderkom van die hoogste wuppertal

wat mits dese vir haar van nuuts af

soos ’n bliksemstraal stuur

spoorloos en indrukwekkend

daardie grens van naamloosheid

wat om my baan en daar buite

op ’n ander reis begin gaan

 

© Gilbert Gibson (Uit: [vii], 2013: Human & Rousseau)

 

 

 

Groot opgewondenheid heers in die internasionale boekgemeenskap nadat The Independent bekend gemaak het dat ‘n joernaal van W.H. Auden (foto), wat vir dekades as “verlore” geag was, inderdaad gevind is: “Auden, who died in 1973 aged 66, wrote the journal between August and November 1939. It gives an insight into the poet whose works include “Funeral Blues”, “Lullaby” and “The Unknown Citizen”. Edward Mendelson, the literary executor of Auden’s estate and an English professor at Columbia University, said: ‘The journal gives a personal sense that we don’t really have elsewhere of Auden in this hugely important era’.”

Dié joernaal gaan glo volgende maand deur Christie’s opgeveil word en die algemene verwagting is dat dit vir tussen £40,000 en £60,000 van die hand gesit sal word. Die joernaal, wat 96 bladsye beslaan, is glo  deur Auden aan sy vriend George Davis gegee waarna dit verlore geraak het.

Volgens The Independent se berig, die volgende: “It is one of only three journals that the poet is known to have kept and covers the period shortly after what he described as the ‘eleven happiest weeks of my life’ – the honeymoon period of his relationship with the American poet Chester Kallman. The frank details of his personal life are set against the build-up to the Second World War. He wrote: ‘I am happy, but in debt… I have no job. My [US] visa is out of order. There may be a war. But I have an epithalamion to write and cannot worry much’.”

Aangrypend is egter die volgende aanhaling uit die joernaal: “Woke with a headache after a night of bad dreams in which C [Kallman] was unfaithful. Paper reports German attack on Poland. Now I sit looking out over the river. Such a beautiful evening and in an hour, they say, England will be at war.”

Sjoe. Vir jou leesplesier volg een van die drie gedigte wat in die periode wat dié joernaal geskryf was, ontstaan het.

*

Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

© Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 – 1973)

 

 

Ons was nou onlangs vir twee weke in Chile. Twee weke is te min, veral as jy wyer as Santiago wil verken, maar dit is ook beter as niks. Ons het onder andere twee van Pablo Neruda se drie huise besoek. Die een in Santiago, natuurlik, want dit was net twee moltreinstasies van ons hotel af. Maar toe moes ons ongelukkig kies tussen die huise in Valparaíso en Isla Negra. Omdat ek die stad Valparaíso vir ander redes ook wou sien, en omdat Neruda se graf in Isla Negra weens die onlangse opgrawing van sy reste tans nie toeganklik is nie, het ons besluit om tevrede te wees met die huis in Valparaíso. Daar is darem ook meer aan Chile as Pablo Neruda… So lyk die huis van buite:

Dit was ‘n oorweldigende herfsoggend in Valparaíso; ons kon die see ruik en die lug was wolkloos en blou. ‘n Dag soos ‘n deining, het ek gedink, terwyl ek my verkyk het aan die honderde huisies wat huiwer teen die heuwels, na die kinders wat in die nou straatjies baljaar en die vrouens wat wasgoed ophang op balkonne. G’n wonder Neruda wou ‘n huis in hierdie lieflike stad hê nie! Vanuit sy gemakstoel, Die Wolk, of van sy eetkamertafel of bed af, sou Neruda vir ure kon kyk na die kom en gaan van getye, na die besige hawe en die Stille Oseaan.

Neruda se woonplekke was nie uitspattig nie. Wat hulle besonders maak, is hulle ligging en uitsigte; en die karakter wat Neruda se eksentrieke, selfs guitige sin vir ontwerp en versameldrang aan die interieure verleen het. Die hoogtepunt van die besoek aan die huis in Valparaíso is egter die klein, warm skryfkamer op die boonste verdieping. Hier, terwyl jy agter die skryftafel staan en oor die stad en die oseaan uitkyk, kan jy jou vir ‘n klein oomblik verbeel dit kan enigeen, ook jy, beskore wees om te skryf: ‘I am one of those who live / in the middle of the sea and close to twilight…’