Carrol Clarkson, Spui25: "Wisselbare Woorde"

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Op Vrydagmiddag 17 Junie 2016 het Ena Jansen afskeid geneem as bijzonder hoogleraar van die Suid-Afrikaanse letterkunde aan die Universiteit van Amsterdam. Sy het ’n aantal vriende en kollega’s gevra om op Vrydagoggend deel te neem aan ‘n simposium by die akademies-kulturele ruimte Spui25. Elkeen het ongeveer 10 minute lank oor ’n onderwerp gepraat wat verband hou met Ena se belangstelling in die uitbeelding van huisbediendes in die literatuur.

Hieronder is Carrol Clarkson se toespraak by die geleentheid:


Bijna Familie: Valedictory Symposium for Ena Jansen, University of Amsterdam, 17 June 2016

“Wisselbare Woorde”, Carrol Clarkson

Lieve Ena,

Toen je me vroeg om vandaag te spreken, wist ik niet of ik dat in het Nederlands zou doen, of in het Engels. . . of zelfs in het Afrikaans. Maar mijn praatje gaat over “words of true exchange, wisselbare woorde”, zoals het personage, Magda, uit de roman In the Heart of the Country het stelt, en dus spreek ik in het Nederlands, én in het Engels, én in het Afrikaans. Ik spreek nog steeds een “wankel-Nederlands”. . . ik ga ermee aan de slag, maar dan wel vooral in het Afrikaans, en in het Engels.

Ek sal baie stadig praat sodat almal my mooi kan verstaan. Ek wil net iets aan almal verduidelik: as ek en Ena saam praat is dit ’n mengsel van Engels en Afrikaans en Nederlands. Ons begin in Engels, dan switch ons oor na Nederlands (want dis goed vir my oefening) en dan praat ons Afrikaans, maar eers ná ons poeding geëet het ... of ten minste: só het Ena dit aan my voorgestel die eerste dag wat ons mekaar in Amsterdam ontmoet het.

The title of this paper, “Wisselbare Woorde” comes from JM Coetzee’s novel, In the Heart of the Country.

Magda, the protagonist, is speaking to Anna, her servant, before going to bed. Anna is unresponsive to Magda’s hectoring and mordantly self-reflexive harangue.

“This is not going to be a dialogue, thank God”, says Magda, “I can stretch my wings and fly where I will.” In the Ravan edition of In the Heart of the Country (published in South Africa in 1978), Magda’s monologue ranges feverishly across different linguistic and cultural registers, and slashes back and forth between English and Afrikaans:

Energy is eternal delight, I could have been another person, ek kon heeltemal anders gewees het. I could have burned my way out of this prison, my tongue is forked with fire, verstaan jy, ek kan met ’n tong van vuur praat, but it has all been turned uselessly inward, nutteloos, what sounds to you like rage is only the crackling of the fire within, ek is nooit regtig kwaad met jou gewees nie, I have never learned the speech of men, ek wou slegs praat, ek het nooit geleer hoe ’n mens met ’n ander mens praat nie. It has always been that the word has come down to me and I have passed it on. I have never known words of true exchange, wisselbare woorde, Anna. Woorde wat ek aan jou kan gee kan jy nie teruggee nie. Hulle is woorde sonder waarde. Verstaan jy? No value.

                                (Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country, § 203, p 101.)

For a brief moment at least, we might be attracted to Magda’s claim to stretch her wings and fly where she will, a revelry in the autonomy of self-expression, without the constraints of a speaking to.  Yet, as in much of Coetzee’s writing, Magda’s supposedly free speech becomes an inner polemic, with the recognition that an inability to encounter Anna in a reciprocal language, in “wisselbare woorde,” paradoxically pre-empts the possibility of creative self-expression, of radiating out from a reciprocal place in language from the site of name, a name free of a master-slave relation in apartheid South Africa. “’Sê vir my, Anna,” Magda continues, “’hoe noem jy my? Hoe heet ek? [. . .] Hoe noem jy my in jou gedagtes?” And Anna replies, “Mies?” and then a little later, “Mies Magda?” Magda tries to coax Anna into calling her by name:

“Ja; of sommer net Magda, nè. Magda is mos die naam waarmee ek gedoop is, nie Mies Magda. Sou dit nie snaaks klink as die predikant die kinders so doop - Mies Magda, Baas Johannes, ensovoorts? [. . .] Kan jy Magda sê? Kom, sê vir my Magda.”

“Nee mies, kan nie.”

“Magda. Dis eenvoudig. Nou ja, môreaand probeer ons weer, dan sien ons of jy Magda kan sê.” [. . .]

“Nag mies.”

      (Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country, §203, p 102).

This passage in Coetzee’s novel provokes further thought about an ethics of address: a tension between freedom of expression and responsibility to the other, a tension between inherited and creative uses of language. But at the same time these tensions inaugurate the possibility self-expression, of a signifying agency.

Ena Jansen’s book, Soos familie, it seems to me, engages with these questions, not only at the level of ideas and themes in South African literature, but as a performative and self-reflexive staging of the very ideas it speaks about. So that in encountering Ena’s words, one has the sense that (to rephrase Magda’s speech), this is going to be a dialogue, thank God; one that draws English and Afrikaans literatures into ground-breaking conversations about racial, social, historical, and cultural contiguities in ways that have not been thought through in quite this way before.

What strikes me about Ena’s book is its relentless self-questioning of its own modes of, and relationships between: speaking to, and speaking for, and speaking of. That is to say, an unswerving responsiveness and commitment to the other is at the core of a work that often reads as the most intimate journey of self-discovery. This commitment to the other radically enables the act of self-expression. Here is the dedication in the book’s Acknowledgements:

Ek dra Soos familie op aan Nomahobe Cecilia Magadlela. Sedert 1989, vyf en twintig jaar lank al, is ons betrokke by mekaar se lewens. Hierdie verbintenis en haar persoonlike lewensverhaal wat afspeel tussen Cofimvaba in die Oos-Kaap en Melville in Johannesburg, het my oë geopen vir enersyds die vindingrykheid waarmee kanse aangegryp word en andersyds die geweldige spanning waaronder vroue soos sy leef.

(Jansen, Soos familie, 7)

One source of inspiration for the book, Ena goes on to say, was the invitation to write about “huisbediendes as Afrikaanse herinneringsplek” (Soos familie, 8), which brought her research home to a family archive: her own grandmother’s photo album. And certainly, these “herinneringsplekke”-these sites of memory-are evoked with courageous frankness, and in a language that does not lose sight of a question that forms the ethical substrate of the book: “Die ingewikkelde verhouding tussen feit en fiksie en veral die vraag wie wel of nié namens ‘die ander’ mag of kan praat en skryf” (Jansen, Soos familie, 14).

En dus, ten slotte, wil ek baie dankie sê, Ena, vir jóu wisselbare woorde waarin ons almal vandag deelneem. Ek was ’n student in jou “Afrikaans en Nederlands”-lesings by die Universiteit van die Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in die jare tagtig. Dit is regtig vir my ’n eer om hier vandag as spreker te wees: jy is een van die mense wat my oë geopen het, en wat dit moontlik gemaak het dat ek ook ’n loopbaan in letterkunde kon volg.

Works Cited

Coetzee, J.M. In the Heart of the Country. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1978.

Jansen, Ena. Soos familie: Stedelike huiswerkers in Suid-Afrikaanse tekste. Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis, 2015.

Picture Credit (for the PowerPoint slides)

Clarkson, Stephen, and Clarkson, Christopher. Karoo Image. Based on a photograph by Rob Southey.

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