JM Coetzee se Youth (London: Secker & Warburg, 2002, 169p) handel oor sy studentejare aan die Universiteit Kaapstad en sy verblyf in Londen as programmeerder. In Kaapstad het hy as deeltydse assistent studente in wiskunde onderrig en saans as leeskamerassistent in die biblioteek gewerk. Gedurende die vakansies het hy statistiese ontledings vir die munisipaliteit gedoen. Sy inkomste het hom in staat gestel om sy ouerhuis te ontvlug en ’n woonstel naby Mowbray-stasie te huur.
Soos in die vorige boek is hy krities oor homself en sy familie. "There is something essential he lacks." Hy lyk "odd" maar nie "eccentric" nie (p 3). "He seems dull and dependable" (p 28). "In real life all that he can do well ... is be miserable. In misery he is still top of the class ... He is at home in misery like a fish in water" (p 65). "Some of us are not built for fun" (p 77). "He has no talent for pleasure or fancy clothes. His sole talent is for misery, dull, honest misery" (p 97). "Happy people are not interesting. Better to accept the burden of unhappiness and try to turn it into something worthwhile, poetry or music or painting" (p 14). "Happiness ... teaches one nothing. Misery ... steels one for the future. Misery is a school for the soul" (p 65).
Soos op skool, woon hy op universiteit nie die klasse nie getrou by nie. Dit bring mee dat hy veral in wiskunde agter raak en dit moeilik vind om die skade te herstel. "What draws him to mathematics ... is its purity ... he has no feel for what is called the real world" (p 22). Mettertyd gee hy voorkeur aan die studie van Engels. Nog later: "With his lofty unconcern for mere living, Henry James exerts a strong pull on him" (p 67).
In sy woonstel doen hy seksuele ervaring met vroue op. In een geval lei dit tot ’n aborsie. "He sees the little creature flushed down the toilet at the Woodstock house, tumbled through the maze of sewers, tossed out at last into the shallows, blinking in the sudden sun, struggling against the wave that will carry it out into the bay" (p 35). "He has barely emerged into the world himself and already he has a death chalked up against him. How many of the other men he sees in the streets carry dead children with them like baby-shoes slung around their necks?" (p 36).
Hy bly gepreokkupeer met die strewe om ’n kunstenaar te wees. "Having mistresses is part of an artist’s life: even if he steers clear of the trap of marriage, as he will certainly do, he is going to have to find a way of living with women. Art cannot be fed on deprivation alone, on longing, loneliness. There must be intimacy, passion, love as well" (p 10). Hierdie emosies moet gekultiveer word omdat hy as digter hulle nodig het. "Suffering, madness, sex: three ways of calling down the sacred fire upon oneself" (p 66). "Only love and art are, in his opinion, worthy of giving oneself to without reserve" (p 85).
Sy politiek is verlig. "He would like to believe there is enough pity in the air for black people and their lot, enough of a desire to deal honourably with them, to make up for the cruelty of the laws ... the ground beneath his feet is soaked with blood" (p 17). Oor Sharpeville herhaal hy die geykte frase: "firing into the backs of fleeing men" (p 37). Die daaropvolgende politieke onrus laat hom besluit: "I must get out before it is too late!" (p 39). Hy wil nie uitstel totdat hy vir militêre diens opgeroep word nie. Hy het sy honneursgraad na vier studiejare verwerf. Met ?84 spaargeld vertrek hy na Londen.
"He has left South Africa for good" (p 44). "Because the country is heading for revolution" (p 45). "South Africa is a wound within him" (p 116). Oor die Hollandse setlaars: "It was never intended that they should steal the best part of Africa" (p 121). "Afrikaners have trampled on people because, they claim, they were once trampled upon" (p 100). Tog, wanneer hy Afrikaans in Engeland praat "he can feel himself relax at once as though sliding into a warm bath" (p 127). Wanneer hy ’n boek oor Suid-Afrika in die biblioteek teëkom: "It is his country, the country of his heart, that he is reading about" (p 137).
Maar hy vind gou uit: "It is not a good time to be a South African in England ... The British have had enough of the Boers and of Boer-led South Africa" (p 86-87). "Londoners recognize him at once as another of those foreigners who for daft reasons of their own choose to live where they don’t belong" (p 102-103). "The people he works with are too polite to express their opinion of foreigner visitors. Nevertheless, from certain of their silences he knows he is not wanted in their country" (p 104).
"Besides his horror of drunkenness he has a horror of physical ugliness" (p 30). Hy is ’n esteet wat ’n kunstenaar wil wees, maar Londen se "pubs" hou vir hom geen aantrekkingskrag in nie. Dans maak vir hom geen sin nie. "At the deepest level he can see no reason why people need to dance" (p 89). Hy aanvaar ’n betrekking en ondergaan opleiding as ’n programmeerder al het hy in Suid-Afrika nooit ’n rekenaar gesien nie. "He has attacks of panic" (p 47) maar is vasbeslote om suksesvol te wees. "Failing would be too much like his father" (p 47).
Hy geniet die kunsgallerye, museums, bioskope, boekwinkels, klassieke musiek en die BBC se Third Programme. My ervaring met die boekwinkel Foyles stem ooreen met syne: "Foyles ... has proved a disappointment. The boast that Foyles stocks every book in print is clearly a lie, and anyway the assistants ... don’t know where to find things. He prefers Dillons" (p 57).
Hy kom agter dat daar selfs by die koerante van gehalte vervlakking ingetree het. Hulle is "hostile ... to the life of the mind" (p 49). "Will there be a reward for us one day? Will our solitariness lift, or is the life of the mind its own reward?" (p 55). "The poems he writes are becoming not only shorter but ... less substantial too" (p 58). "The poems he writes are wry little pieces, minor in every sense" (p 59). Hy begin daaraan dink om eerder prosa te skryf.
"He has a horror of spilling mere emotion on to a page. Once it has begun to spill out he would not know how to stop it. It would be like severing an artery and watching one’s lifeblood gush out. Prose, fortunately, does not demand emotion: there is that to be said for it. Prose is like a flat, tranquil sheet of water on which one can tack about at one’s leisure, making patterns on the surface" (p 61).
Sy eerste pogings in prosa misluk omdat hulle te veel soos hy is. Hy wil dit nie in Suid-Afrika situeer nie, maar hy ken geen ander land goed genoeg nie. "Henry James shows one how to rise above mere nationality" (p 64). Dalk is dit ’n uitweg. Maar sy eksperiment slaag nie. "Getting the characters he dreams up to have supersubtle conversations is like trying to make mammals fly. For a moment or two, flapping their arms, they support themselves in thin air. Then they plunge" (p 64).
Van die Universiteit Kaapstad ontvang hy ’n studiebeurs ter waarde van ?200. Hy registreer as ’n magisterstudent in die letterkunde en begin met navorsing oor Ford Madox Ford. Met die oog hierop werk hy dikwels in die leeskamer van die British Museum. Ford ontnugter hom. Hy het vyf goeie romans geskryf, maar waarom is daar andersins "so much rubbish?" (p 136). Is Ford werklik ’n outentieke meester? "To Ford there can be no greater happiness than to pass one’s days by the side of a good woman in a sunlit house in the south of France, with an olive tree at the back door and a good vin de pays in the cellar" (p 136). Teen die einde van sy boek is sy verhandeling byna voltooi.
"Ever since he turned sixteen he has been fascinated by the beauty of women, by their air of mysterious unattainability" (p 79). Op universiteit in Kaapstad en in Engeland het hy blykbaar net heteroseksuele verhoudings gehad, met een uitsondering in Londen. "One evening he allows himself to be picked up in the street, by a man" (p 79). Hy het voor dit gewonder of hy dalk homoseksueel is. Daardie aand gebeur daar nie veel nie. "There seems to be nothing at stake: nothing to lose but nothing to win either. A game for people afraid of the big league; a game for losers" (p 79).
Hy kom uiteindelik tot die gevolgtrekking: "As a programmer he has no particular gifts" (p 151). "He has no respect for any version of thinking that can be embodied in a computer circuitry" (p 149). "He is well aware that his failure as a writer and his failure as a lover are so closely parallel that they might as well be the same thing" (p 166). "The most brutal way is to say that he is afraid: afraid of writing, afraid of women ... What is wrong with him is that he is not prepared to fail" (p 167).
Johannes Comestor