I
Met endnote, voetnote, erkennings of opdragte kan ‘n digter vir die speurende leser verskeie sleutels gee om die leesproses op ‘n ander baan te plaas. Verklap die digter fabrieksgeheime of wil die digter dalk die leesproses beheer? Is dit dalk “over sharing” of verraai dit iets van die metamodernisme waar tekste van verskillende lande al hoe meer verbind word?
Die bekende kritikus Yves T’Sjoen verwys na die kwessie van literêre boekhouding:
https://versindaba.co.za/2023/08/03/yves-tsjoen-cahier-van-een-lezer-9/ Besoek 12 September 2023
Daar is altyd (inter)tekste aanwesig, maar wat maak die leser met hierdie tekste en toespelings?
Uiteraard is daar ook voorbeelde van “verkeerde” aanwysings soos met T.S. Eliot se endnote in The Waste Land (1922). Moontlik net bedoel vir Ezra Pound se oë met vele debatte oor wat en waar en hoe.
A Whistling of Birds deur Isobel Dixon het sopas by Human & Rousseau verskyn. Dis hierdie digter se vyfde versameling. In die reklamebiljet word verwys na D.H. Lawrence se 1923-versameling Birds, Beasts and Flowers.
Deur die jare het hierdie leser aandagtig na haar gedigte gekyk:
http://joanhambidge.blogspot.com/search?q=isobel+dixon Besoek 13 September 2023
So klink ‘n skittervers:
Paradox
There’s no telling what
will make the heart leap, frog-
like, landing with a soggy plop.
Love startles, makes a mockery
of us, and yet we lie awake
at night and croak and croak for it.
The Tempest Prognosticator (41)
II
D.H. Lawrence het bekendheid verwerf as romanskrywer; veral as omstrede skrywer van werke soos Sons and Lovers (1913), Women in Love (1920) en Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928). Verbied, gekasty en misverstaan. Dit is eweneens opvallend hoe hy “verdwyn” het uit literatuurkompendiums saam met C.G. Jung. Ken Russell se verfilming van die bekroonde Women in Love (1969) met Alan Bates, Oliver Reed en Glenda Jackson, o.a. vang die essensie van Lawrence se siening van die liefde op.
Maar sy werk registreer ‘n baie belangrike aspek van menslike seksualiteit (en ambivalensie). In die laat -70er jare was sy werke nog in SA voorgeskryf. Hierdie “sensurering” is egter opvallend.
Daar is vele ander tekste: briewe, reisboeke, ‘n studie oor Thomas Hardy. Lawrence het meer as 800 gedigte geskryf en “Snake” was ‘n voorgeskrewe gedig (geskryf in Sicilië) in my matriekjaar in die ou Transvaal, circa 1974. Hierdie gedig het ‘n enorme invloed op my psige gehad:
Snake
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough
before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over
the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second-comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused
a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels
of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold
are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink
at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders,
and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into
that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing
himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed
in an undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
Taormina
Dixon se “Snake in the dam” (31) is ‘n antwoord op hierdie gedig in die spanning tussen man en slang; kultuur en primitiwiteit.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148471/snake-5bec57d7bfa17 Besoek 12 September 2023
III
Dixon se bundel word vergesel van illustrasies deur Douglas Robertson, ‘n bekende Skotse kunstenaar bekend vir sy werk met digters. Dit word o.a. ook opgedra aan Gus Ferguson (1940 – 2020), digter en uitgewer.
Ferguson was haar eerste uitgewer en bekend vir sy werk met Snailpress en Carapace.
En ook sy speelse, aweregse verse is onthoubaar:
On the death of an old computer;
Ascii to Ascii,
Dos to Dos.
(59)
I believe that God
encrypted the universe
for fear of hackers.
( 58)
http://joanhambidge.blogspot.com/2013/03/gus-ferguson-best-of-gus-ferguson.html 16 September 2023
Die titel van Dixon se bundel is ontleen aan Lawrence se essay, geskryf tydens die WO I, en wat ‘n impak gehad het op hierdie digter se ervaring van lockdown.
Besoek 15 September 2023
Van die gedigte word opgedra aan haar skoonvader, wyle Danie van Niekerk, uitgewer en kunskenner en aan Carole Blake, vriendin en kollega.
Beide hierdie figure word in hul afwesigheid vereer met gedigte wat die herinneringe lewend hou.
IV
Die titel aktiveer Lawrence se essay uit 1919. Dit is die eerste belangrike sleutel. In die endnote is daar vele ander verwysings vir die leser.
In ‘n endnoot skryf sy oor die gedig “Sweet Violet” oor “distant echoes” van Lawrence en Emily Dickinson.
“Nothing to Save” en “Almost!” is die twee relevante intertekste.
“There is nothing to save, now all is lost,
but a tiny core of stillness in the heart
like the eye of a violet.”
― D.H. Lawrence
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/352330-there-is-nothing-to-save-now-all-is-lost-but
Besoek 15 September 2023
Almost
Within my reach!
I could have touched!
I might have chanced that way!
Soft sauntered through the village,
Sauntered as soft away!
So unsuspected violets
Within the fields lie low,
Too late for striving fingers
That passed, an hour ago.
https://ayearwithemilydickinson.home.blog/2019/01/10/almost-emily-dickinson-on-fomo/
Besoek 15 September 2023
In Dixon se gedig word die unieke aard van hierdie blom beskryf wat eindig met:
and then the sweet elation
of the breath,
this earth-and-angel scent.
(61)
Die besoeke aan vreemde ruimtes en ‘n nostalgiese herinneringe terug aan pere en appelkose.
Ook die beskrywing van verliese in “Viper’s Bugloss” (71).
Perhaps it is the way of grief’s abatement
that I cannot mark a calender with when.
Die digter beweeg telkens tussen bekende en onbekende landskappe: Oos Kaap, Groot Karoo, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Florence, Nieu Mexiko …
Dis dan ook ‘n bundel van liminaliteite of oorgange. Wat tussen herinnering en hede bestaan en veral: wat tussen tekste en gedigte gebeur. Tussen Afrikaans en Engels. Hoe verder jy staan van jou oorsprong, hoe nader beweeg ‘n mens terug in herinneringe na die basispunt. Dit word uitstekend verwoord in “Everywhere, Apricots” (76):
A dizzy surge of jetlag, altitude, and apricots.
Die emosies is in beheer en die erudisie is ingebed in haar gedigte waar sy telkens ‘n nuwe kaleidoskopiese blik gee op vele tekste en invloede.
Vir diegene wat hou van speurtogte sal die beloning ryk wees. Ons verneem dat Yeats in ‘n stadium op Woburn Walk naby King Cross Stasie gewoon het.
V
Dit is ‘n verruklike bundel. Erudiet, maar met ‘n hartslag wat aan die keel gryp. Die leser speurende in biblioteke en via die internet, word bewus gemaak van verliese, van ‘n tyd van verandering met die wete dat belangrike boeke immer terugkeer in die tyd.
En Opperman se dictum word hier waar: sintuie is werkstuie. Sterk besinnings gedra deur konkrete beelde.
Wat staan nie alles agter ‘n gedig nie?
Die digter as argivaris; die leser as argiefmeester.
Joan Hambidge
17 September 2023