Abstract
The objective of this article is to highlight and discuss certain characteristic theistic mystical aspects with reference to five poems from De Villiers’s anthology, Jerusalem tot Johannesburg. De Villiers was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, consequently the study is restricted to theistic mysticism.
Within the scope of this article, it is possible to focus only briefly on the concept of mysticism. The word mysticism is etymologically derived from the Greek word mustérion, which is related to mystes. As a noun, mustérion was used to refer to an initiate of a secret cult or mystery religion.
According to William James (2014:413), a 20th-century psychologist who did pioneering work on mysticism:
There is a verge of the mind which these things haunt; and whispers therefrom mingle with the operations of our understanding, even as the waters of the infinite ocean send their waves to break among the pebbles that lie upon our shores.
The consensus is that the concept mysticism is largely incomprehensible and escapes rigid categorisation and definitions. The mystical experience may be merely an awareness of God’s presence, or an intense ecstatic sense of being one with the divine.
Notwithstanding, a few of these definitions are quoted, for instance, the following by Carmody and Carmody (1996:10): “a direct experience of ultimate reality”.
Mystical poetry, as well as the particular poetic language utilised by authors to articulate their mystical experiences, is then examined. It is important to note that other than religious poetry, mystical poetry does not merely “talk” about religion and is not a medium for dogmatic expression. On the contrary, it is about the poet’s own personal perceptions and experiences, and the greatest challenge the mystic / poet faces, is to have to rely on language with its inadequacies to express the divine domain.
However, according to a great number of studies, a special affinity exists between mysticism and poetry, and poetry enables poets to express their transcendental experiences to a certain extent. As in poetry, mysticism requires innovative speech to reveal hidden aspects of the experience, which creates a challenge for the poet. Various literary strategies such as apophatic discourse, paradoxes, metaphors, hyperbole, and other tropes are used in order to convey something of the ineffable.
In the following section the mystical tradition in Afrikaans poetry is briefly discussed. Although there is no shortage of religious poetry in Afrikaans, this is not the case regarding mystical poetry. It can be attributed to the fact that the mystical phenomenon has not traditionally been part of the Protestant Calvinistic faith with which most Afrikaans-speaking people identify.
Having said that, the first Afrikaans example of mystical pietism can be found as early as the 1800s in diaries and journals of Trek Boer farmers’ wives who apparently practised mystical contemplation.
Academic works on Afrikaans mystical poetry comprise mainly Olivier’s D.Litt. dissertation of 1985 which deals with mystical poetry as far back as the 1920s, and Van der Berg’s Ph.D. dissertation of 2019 which covers the more contemporary mystical poetry. One of the conclusions of the last-mentioned study was that the mystical tendency in Afrikaans poetry is being continued. Furthermore, it is clear that poets have developed an interest in mystical traditions beyond the Protestant Calvinist religion, as for example the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox religions and Shamanism. Besides this, certain poems demonstrate a distinctive view of and approach to the divine, detached from any church affiliation. This article hopefully contributes to the academic corpus on mystical Afrikaans poetry.
Biographical details of the poet, I.L. de Villiers (1936–2009), are subsequently presented. He was a Dutch Reformed minister but also held secular positions. He was editor of the women’s magazine Sarie, and afterwards, even more controversial for a clergyman, chief editor of the Sunday newspaper Rapport. Moreover, he was the author of numerous articles and essays in various newspapers, journals and prose anthologies, but is remembered especially for his poetry.
Although faith is the central theme of his work, according to De Villiers himself, he is not a conventional religious poet, and he describes himself as cynical, and having an alternative kind of faith.
Jerusalem tot Johannesburg from which the analysed poems were selected, was his 35th publication and appeared in 2005, 27 years after his previous collection of poetry. This was awarded with the MNet Prize for Poetry in 2006.
Joan Hambidge describes the anthology as excellent; and Henning Snyman regards these ironic, mystical, matured, and pure verses as a culmination of De Villiers’s works. On the Protea Bookshop web page this poetry is described as mystical, expressing an interwovenness between man and God throughout the poems.
Hugo describes this poetry as a fresh breeze during a stifling time of dogma in the Dutch Reformed Church. He also points out that De Villiers had a non-protestant sense for that which is mystical as well as for Roman Catholic liturgy. Alongside Sheila Cussons, Hugo regards De Villiers as the best mystical Afrikaans poet.
The title, Jerusalem tot Johannesburg, expresses the Platonic idea of a dualistic world, as is also contained in John 17:14: “[…] and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world”. The paradoxical is one of the main characteristics of mysticism and mystical texts with “Jerusalem” being symbol of the sacred domain, and “Johannesburg” symbolizing worldly existence. In “Pa se stad” from this anthology, the poet for instance refers to himself as a stranger in Johannesburg.
The five poems are subsequently analysed and discussed with a focus on the mystical aspects. The various strategies which were employed in order to express the perceptions and experiences of the divine are highlighted. The conclusion is reached that although no ecstatic mystical encounter is described, these poems deal with man’s intense awareness of God, his effort to comprehend the divine, and his realisation of the brokenness of this worldly existence. Importantly, it is exactly this that allows him to experience God’s blessings. These verses indeed demonstrate that De Villiers had a sense and an awareness of God’s mystical presence in this life on earth.
Keywords: Afrikaans poetry; I.L. de Villiers; Jerusalem tot Johannesburg; mystical poetry; mysticism
- The featured image of this article is a combination details from the cover of Jerusalem tot Johannesburg (Tafelberg, NB Publishers).