Abstract
The purpose of this article is to analyse the use of spatial elements in the two “Irish diaries” of Karel Schoeman – Berig uit die vreemde: ’n Ierse dagboek (1966) (Report from afar: An Irish diary) and Van ’n verre eiland: ’n Tweede Ierse dagboek (1968) (Of a distant island: A second Irish diary) – by comparing them to the descriptions of the same elements in the book by Ria Winters, Reise met Schoeman: In die voetspore van die skrywer (2020) (Travels with Schoeman: In the footsteps of the author).
Karel Schoeman travelled to Ireland in 1961 to enter the noviciate to become a monk. He lived in Killarney and Galway, both on the southwestern side of Ireland, among mountains and rivers that make this area particularly beautiful. It was Schoeman’s descriptions of this area and his exceptional observations of nature and buildings that motivated Ria Winters, in 2018, after Schoeman’s death in 2017, to undertake a trip to Ireland with the aim of visiting the places that Schoeman described in his Irish diaries. After her visit, she documented her experiences, and the book was published in 2020.
In this article we examine the spatial depiction of specific elements in both authors’ books, with the aim of determining how the same spatial elements are described in the context of the time that passed between the writing of the two works. Schoeman’s two books are filled with historical descriptions of Ireland, distinctive observations about buildings and nature, and comments about the people he came into contact with during his stay. Only those places and buildings that Winters visited in Ireland, specifically because Schoeman described them in his Irish diaries, were chosen for discussion in this article.
The research question is, therefore, “How different or similar are the spatial descriptions of the places in Ireland that both Schoeman and Winters visited?”. The question was investigated by first undertaking a study of spatial and spatiotemporal elements in the context of literature. The influence of time difference and passage of time in the context of this article was studied. Then, we investigated whether there was a noticeable difference in the descriptions of these spaces in the two authors’ books. Finally, we determined the extent to which the passage of time – in this case the time between 1961 up to and including the publication of Winters’ book in 2020 – influenced her spatial depiction.
This research took place from an explanatory, constructivist paradigm, and was carried out as investigative research using a comparative research method. This approach meant we could search the text for patterns and similarities, which we used to organise and analyse the data, and from which we made inferences regarding the research objective.
The spatial theories of Ryan (2014) and Kort (2004) were used to create a framework to analyse certain spatial aspects in the books. The framework was supplemented by the spatial elements used by Lefebvre (1991), Bachelard (1963), Bakhtin (1982) and Harvey (1994; 2004), with the aim of obtaining a complete view of how spatial elements are used in the text. Based on these theories, spatial and temporal aspects were divided into three categories to create the framework according to which the texts were analysed, namely:
- The space where the narrative takes place;
- The space as depicted by the author in the narrative; and
- The space as the reader of the narrative experiences it.
The above three categories were used to analyse and compare the following spatial elements in the books by Winters and Schoeman:
- Killarney (Cill Airne) and various places in Killarney, which include Muckross House – a mansion in Killarney which is currently a museum; Muckross Abbey or the old Friary House, a ruin outside Killarney; and the New Noviciate and the Killarney church, where Schoeman started his training in 1961. Schoeman describes Killarney as a quiet stone town without neon lights and advertising; Winters experienced Killarney as a busy tourist town full of billboards. Schoeman describes Muckross House as an old house, while Winters describes it as an enormous, showy mansion. According to Schoeman, the Old Noviciate is a modest stone building, while Winters describes it as an impressive building. Schoeman describes the New Noviciate as a stone mass; Winters describes it as a large, powerful building.
- Both authors describe Galway (Gaillimh), where Schoeman lived before returning to South Africa in 1964, as an old-fashioned city with shabby houses and neglected paths. According to Winters, the commercial growth of Galway has made it a fair crowded with tourists and, as a result, her description of contemporary Galway is somewhat negative.
- Schoeman noticed the many other colours of Ireland between the green and grey, the fields with sheep and cattle and the whitewashed thatched farmhouses. We extracted the words house, houses, roads, streets and lanes, as spatial elements, from the texts and analysed them to compare how Winters experienced these elements in contrast to the way Schoeman described and experienced them in 1961, up to and including 1964.
From the comparison it seems clear that Schoeman experienced Ireland as idyllic, which was possibly inspired by his spiritual growth during those years. Despite the influence that Ireland’s difficult political history had on the houses and other buildings, Schoeman experienced Ireland as “a particular beauty”, though sometimes “primitive and dilapidated”. Winters’ experience and rendering of the space is characterised by homesickness, and she was markedly influenced by a search for Schoeman’s Ireland, and a search for Schoeman himself; hence, her sadness during the visit to Muckross Abbey, her emotional experience at the yew tree, and her negative portrayal of Galway as a tourist town. Although the environments left the same impression on both authors (the hazy mountains, the meadows, the gardens and plants), in contrast to Schoeman’s description, Winters indicates the influence of the economic boom and the growing tourism mindset, which she experienced as negative. The influence of the passage of time (57 years) and the socio-economic progress is clear in the two texts, while Winters’ emotional search was found to influence her experiences and her descriptions of the spatial elements Schoeman described.
Keywords: abstract space; comparative investigation; concrete space; Irish diaries; literary space; Reise met Schoeman; Karel Schoeman; space; spatial elements; Ria Winters
This article’s featured image is a combination of the following book covers: Reise met Schoeman by Ria Winters (Protea Boekhuis, 2020) and Berig uit die vreemde: ’n Ierse dagboek (Human & Rousseau, 1966) and Van ’n verre eiland: ’n Tweede Ierse dagboek (Human & Rousseau, 1968) by Karel Schoeman.