David Attwell and Derek Attridge respond to the reviews of The Cambridge History of South African Literature

  • 1
David Attwell and Derek Attridge respond to the reviews of The Cambridge History of South African Literature.

The responses to The Cambridge History of South African Literature by LitNet’s reviewers are gratifying, and our thanks to LitNet for inviting this reply.

Andries Oliphant (read Oliphant’s review) and Linda Kwatsha (read Kwatsha’s review) certainly capture the spirit of the book. Oliphant succinctly describes the historiographical difficulties the project confronts, and explains how an accumulation of baggage has prevented South Africans from being able to approach the literary field whole, in all its multilingual magnificence. Kwatsha marks a sense of occasion when she writes, “The question of what South African literature is has been answered in this volume.” As editors we don’t have all the confidence the observation implies, but we appreciate this acknowledgement of the book’s aspiration.

Helize van Vuuren’s review (read Van Vuuren’s review), focusing (at LitNet’s request) on the coverage of Afrikaans literature, is more guarded. She does her best to be positive, recognising the historical processes that draw the literatures into a single frame, but she gives the impression of entering this world of multiplicity with misgiving. Her task is difficult: How do you exercise guardianship over the field without evoking the spectre of ethnic nationalism? Her solution is to imagine a cosmopolitan scene of reading, in which a certain professor from Beijing consults the book to get some knowledge of Afrikaans literary history, having heard of it at a summer school in The Netherlands.

On this basis she points out what she sees as inaccuracies. We are grateful to her, firstly, for pointing out our indexer’s confusion of the two Oppermans (there is no confusion in the text, note) and also two loosely phrased comments on Breytenbach (although our author on prison literature does not concede any of the points she raises). On differences of emphasis or interpretation, on the other hand, such as those she finds in references to Joubert and Brink, they were something we encouraged. There are doubtless more errors to be found, as such things are inevitable (Van Vuuren herself mixes up chapters by Daniel Roux and Michael Green), and we will ensure that future reprintings correct all those that emerge. We are relieved that in 877 pages Van Vuuren didn’t find anything more serious.

When she says there are only four single-authored chapters by specialists in Afrikaans literature, as against 26 by experts in English South African literature, Van Vuuren exaggerates: there are at least six specialists in Afrikaans literature, and of the 26 English ones at least eight are fully bilingual, and write accordingly. She detects an English bias in some of the periodisation: the date 1820, and the attention given to the Empire. We would respond by saying that if we downplayed the imposition of an imperial language and culture, we would be flying in the face of history. It is true that the book is produced in English by a global publisher based in the UK, but how else do we tell the story of South Africa’s literatures to as wide a readership as possible?

To come back to that reader in Beijing: Van Vuuren probably took her bearings from an article David Attwell wrote for Mail and Guardian, in which he mentions that in intervening editorially, we encouraged our authors to bear in mind “the Beijing reader”. Van Vuuren hazards giving this reader a name; we deliberately left him unnamed because he could be a reader anywhere in the world. The point of our evoking him was to encourage our authors to stop looking over their shoulders and being defensive, and to focus on getting the story told in the most engaging way possible. They all achieve this, in their different ways, enabling the book to realise its purpose, which self-evidently is to include, to celebrate, to honour.

 

  • 1

Kommentaar

  • It is difficult to understand how anyone can dispute the facts about Breytenbach's publishing history, as the author of "Writing in prison" seems to be doing.

    For easy verification of the facts, see Francis Galloway's Breyten Breytenbach as openbare figuur (1990), Helize van Vuuren's "Labyrinth of loneliness": Breyten Breytenbach's prison poetry (1976-1985) (2009) (http://www.letterkunde.up.ac.za/argief/46_2/04 Van Vuuren 02.pdf) and JM Coetzee's "Breyenbach and the censor" (1991).

    The facts about Breyten Breytenbach and writing in prison are these:

    1. He was allowed to write in prison as an established writer. During the period  of his incarceration (1975-1982) he produced more than four hundred poems. Those written during the period of arrest (before sentencing) were published as Voetskrif (1976). Because of the SA law which precludes prisoners publishing anything while in jail, the other four prison collections appeared in quick succession (in anti-chronological order to the time of writing, probably because the last-written poems were fresher in the ex-prisoner's mind, and therefore easier to prepare for publication by Taurus):

    Lewendood – 1985, Buffalo Bill – 1984, Eklips – 1983, ('Yk') – 1983.

    2.Skryt (published in Holland in 1972, and banned in 1975) contains strident political poems, amongst them the poem about untimely death through torture by the secret police, entitled "Brief uit die vreemde" (aan Balthazar) (directed as a letter at then prime minister  B(althazar) J Vorster). This was probably the poem which hardened Vorster, later prime minister, against any leavening of Breytenbach's initial jail sentence.

    In 1991 JM Coetzee published an article on censorship,  "Breytenbach and the Censor," (in Raritan, Vol. X. No. 4, Spring 1991, pp. 58-84) in which the following indisputable facts are spelled out around Skryt:

    "One of the major poems in Breyten Breytenbach's collection Skryt is entitled "Brief uit die vreemde aan slagter" ("Letter from Foreign Parts to Butcher"), subtitled "for Balthazar." Skryt did not appear in South Africa. First published in the Netherlands in 1972, it was banned for distribution in South Africa by the Publications Control Board. In banning it, the responsible committee singled out "Brief uit die vreemde" and the list of the names of dead persons following it, reading the poem in terms of "very strict reference" to then Prime Minister Balthazar John Vorster and interpreting its ending as an accusation against the white man and particularly the Afrikaner" (http://www.bookrags.com/criticism/breytenbach-breyten-1939-crit_10/).

  • Reageer

    Jou e-posadres sal nie gepubliseer word nie. Kommentaar is onderhewig aan moderering.


     

    Top