Andries Bezuidenhout se gedig “In Wellington brand ‘n klavier – ‘n Verleentheidsgedig” en veral die reaksie daarop, is volgens my een van die belangrikste interaksies in ‘n lang tyd op hierdie webblad. Kom ons neem die gesprek verder …
Puin en as
Alles van waarde is weerlo0s
Lucebert
In Wellington word ‘n oudste saal
brand gesteek en jy lees: De zeer oude zingt,
lê donkertyd en luister
na die dreunsang van vlamme, die gedruis
van woede wat deur ‘n petrolbom
uit hout en staal bevry is,
gesigloos,
die ouwêreldse plafon, net-net buite greep
wanneer die beendroë klavier
vlamvat, ‘n allerlaaste akkoord speel
met snare wat
pieng! pieng! en jy verbeel jou
grensdrade wat skietgee vir al die wild
om na nuwe kampe
oor te loop,
want watter sin –
hierdie vraag wat reeds ‘n antwoord is.
(c) Louis Esterhuizen / Oktober 2016
Vir Louis en Daniël Hugo, ‘n gedig deur Don McKay
SPECIFIC GRAVITIES: #76 (MARBLE)
To whom we turn to be
momentous, to be
monumental, to be
meant. As I browse
among the statues it appears
that marble is the way eternity
confers itself on breasts, it seems
that even pubic hair (David’s,
for example), if redone in fine Carrara
marble, can become a simulacrum of the absolute,
one flare of graven
everliving fire.
But then
on my way home I take
a shortcut through the graveyard
and get mixed signals from the stones.
Are these the sculpted entrances to rooms
(de lux, I guess) located elsewhere?
Or should we think of them as exits –
holes the dead fell through
which we have squared up, plugged, and,
putting the best face upon it,
polished?
And this once,
in Limerick, in a tiny tourist trap,
I came upon an egg of Connemara marble.
Heavy in the hand it was,
heavy as an egg whose embryo
foresaw its end, heavy as the one egg laid
by Schopenhauer’s chicken. The past perfect
spoke to my fingers, who had fallen for it,
hard. “See that window?
Throw me through it. NOW”
Beste Louis,
Mag ek vir jou namens baie Wellingtonners innig dankie sê vir jou huldigingsgedig wat ‘n treursang is? Jy het ‘n wysie gegee aan dit wat onthou moet word. Want die afgryse sal ons bybly.
Een van die Dietmann seuns was op skool saam met my. Sagmoedige familie…
“What have we done, what have we done?”
Dit is een van die skreiendste en pynlik treffendste slotreels van enige gedig in Afrikaans, in ‘n lang tyd. Ek lees ook die opmerkings/ debat met groeiende belangstelling.
Sjoe, Louis, benewens die woord “weerloos” in Lucebert se woorde in die motto wat my dadelik laat dink het aan ‘n strofe in Stockenström se “Die klip”, laat die laaste reël laat my dink aan Derrida se teks “Che cos’è la poesia?” (“Wat is poësie?”). Dit begin (die gekursifeerde dele het ongelukkig in die slag gebly):
“In order to respond to such a question – in two words, right? – you are asked to know how to renounce knowledge. And to know it well, without ever forgetting it: demobilize culture, but never forget in your learned ignorance what you sacrifice on the road, in crossing the road.
Who dares to ask me that? Even though it remains inapparent, since disappearing is its law, the answer sees itself (as) dictated (dictation). I am a dictation, pronounces poetry, learn me by heart, copy me down, guard and keep me, look out for me, look at me, dictated dictation, right before your eyes: soundtrack, wake, trail of light, photograph of the feast in mourning.
It sees itself, the response, dictated to be poetic, by being poetic.”
Kortom: Ons kan en moet net bly respondeer, bly maak (Grieks poiein, om te maak, skep, komponeer), en waar met woorde natuurlik gasvryer kan wees as met wapens.
Want, en nou in Stockenström se (“weerlose”) woorde, en waar ek klip lees as ‘n spoor/trace (van wat [logies*] plaasvind/sou moes plaasgevind het):
“Die klip wys sy gesig vir die wêreld.
Hy het nie hande om voor sy gesig
te hou nie, en is aangewese op my goedheid.
Wawyd wakker, maar weerloos, lê
die klip en luister of ek hom gaan kwaad doen.
Hy het nie ʼn mond om my te verwilder nie.
ʼn Mens sou dink hy is gedwee.”
Wat waardevol is mag weerloos wees, maar dit is nie gedwee nie. Of dit sou dom wees om te dink dit is gedwee. Mag ons dit nooit vergeet nie.
* Vergelyk enemyindustry – philosophy at the edge of the human
(http://enemyindustry.net/blog/?p=2720) se blog getiteld “Derrida and syntax” – dit verwys na “whether Godel’s use of numbers to code formal relations of derivability in his proof of the incompleteness of arithmetic can be generalized to logical systems which don’t ‘contain’ arithmetic” sowel as “an interesting paper by Paul Livingstone on Derrida, Priest and Godel which looks at the role of syntax in marking the undecidable elements of texts in deconstruction” en waar die skrywer sê: “Derrida’s reading of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem Mimique is central to Livingstone’s discussion”!
Hoe red mens die wiskundig uitgedaagde mens as dinge SO hiperlogies, formeel en matematies is.
Ver-woesting – deur natuurlike of menslike toedoen. Puin en as, Pompeji. Aardbewings, vulkaniese uitbarstings; Vesuvius, Wellington; klaviere, mense; musiek?