In navolging van die gesprek oor metropool en provinsie wat tans op Charl-Pierre Naudé se blog gevoer word, lees ek die volgende stuk deur ene Paul Stubbs raak wat hier geplaas is. In sy aanhef vra hy die vraag: “When does poetry begin to capitulate? Turn back in on itself? When it fails to assimilate the new, the foreign, when in the words of Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, the human remains in a perpetual state of individuation; or what in this country has always been its burden, the totality of the influence of one poet: T.S. Eliot.” Na ‘n hele betoog oor Eliot en hoe inhiberend sy lang skaduwee oor die Britse digkuns val, stuit Stubbs op die volgende stelling: “It still seems self-evident to me that in trying to understand what poetry does, can and cannot do, one must draw one’s exemplar’s from as wide a range of it as possible. It sounds obvious, yet British poetry has always failed, either willingly or unwillingly, to acknowledge this sane poetic truth. But what a different outlook, approach, and reality our poetry might have had today if, notwithstanding the always trite and facile English arguments concerning translation, our main poetic influences in this country were all of a European or world variety?”
Sjoe. Die res van sy betoog is pure dinamiet. En oorredend. Sy slotsom? “The great innovative poetry of the 21st century will be forced to assimilate new religions, genetics, nanotechnologies, robotics – I hope, for its own survival, that British poetry can learn to un-rope itself from its own (always) island-bound verbiage, to become for the first time, what it has never been, in any era, a truly World poetry; for our poets to become (how Ted Hughes described Eastern European poets to be) “the most wide-awake of poets”. And then, only then, might English poetry learn to become unfamiliar again with itself.”
Die toepasbaarheid van hierdie stuk op ons eie digkuns is só voor die hand liggend dat verdere kommentaar haas onnodig is. Die feit is: Ons digkuns mag klein wees, maar hemel, gedug is sy inderdaad! Histories beskou beskik ons immers óók oor die Eliots, Audens en Larkins wat dekades lank ons totale digkuns op sleeptou kon neem; dog, hoe skitterend is ons digters nie besig om hulle daarvan los te woel nie! Die vraag bly egter staan: is die teoretiese masjinerie van ons literatore opgewasse hiervoor? Want, soos Charl-Pierre Naudé dit stel in die slotsin van sy essay oor eietydse poësie: ” (Die) digter woon in opwindende tye. Al wat hy kortkom is ‘n opwindende leser.”
Nou ja, toe. Net vir vandag: Maak of jy mal is en doen alles.
Mooi bly.
LE