Abstract
This article focuses on the representation of trauma in the poetry of selected Afrikaans poets and attempts to describe the ways in which trauma is processed through creative activity. All people suffer trauma, but whereas many people write about their traumatic experiences in diaries or elsewhere in a documentary style, creative writers like poets engage with the traumatic content in a more profound way. By means of artistic and poetic strategies and techniques they objectify the trauma and thus create an artistic text. Such a text may succeed in transcending the initial trauma to become a more universal statement of suffering. One has to bear in mind that not all trauma leads to good writing and that not all writing is instrumental in overcoming trauma, but it seems as if writing can be valuable in healing processes.
Victims of intense trauma or violence experience extreme disorientation. They feel as if their world has collapsed, as if it has become a meaningless, chaotic and indifferent place in which nothing seems to matter (Caruth 1996:4). A person’s use of language can be affected by trauma, so that it lacks logic and meaning. Many clinical psychologists and even psychiatrists believe that if a traumatised person can be helped to reorganise disrupted thought processes through the use of language, be it through reconstructing a coherent narrative about the self or by expressing their emotions in poetry, a healing process can begin (Van der Merwe and Wolfswinkel 2002:v; Ester, Van der Merwe and Mulder 2012). Writing apparently helps a person to reconnect with societal structures and a sense of “normality” in a process which Julia Kristeva describes as the “sublimatory powers of cultural activity” (Smith 1998:6).
It is necessary to delimit the scope of this article as it borders on vast areas of research. These include the extensive number of studies on the complexity of trauma and trauma as a psychological, emotional and social phenomenon, as well as work done on the relation between trauma and literature. This is merely a preliminary study of manifestations of trauma in selected Afrikaans poetry. Only relevant theoretical insights into trauma are mentioned and the discussion of poems is confined to the work of a small number of poets. The focus is not on trauma as a phenomenon but on representations of trauma in poetry. Reference is made to Julia Kristeva’s views on poetic language (Smith 1998:17), Freud’s distinction between grief and melancholia and Todorov’s (1999) idea that people should eventually be allowed to move beyond their traumatic experience.
The article cites poets who speak out about the role trauma plays in their work. It proceeds to examine recent developments in literary theory in which the focus is redirected from intellectual analysis and deconstruction to a more humane approach (for instance the eudaimonic turn and posthumanism).
Introductory remarks about older Afrikaans poets, including prominent ones such as N.P. Van Wyk Louw and D.J. Opperman, are followed by a cursory discussion of two young poets, Ronelda S. Kamfer and Jolyn Phillips. Both Louw and Opperman write about trauma in an indirect and sophisticated way using metaphor, allusion and even humour in complex poetic structures. Kamfer, on the other hand, expresses negative memories directly in a strong, decisive voice and Phillips reformulates her identity in terms of a cultural heritage and a language all but lost to her.
Three other poets are discussed in more detail. Sheila Cussons is well known as a poet who expresses her suffering in terms of her Catholic faith. She was maimed in an accident when a gas stove exploded, resulting in the loss of one leg and several fingers as well as a badly scarred face. With her profound sense of mysticism she identifies with other people who have suffered burns and even with the suffering of Christ Himself. In the poem “Christ of the burnt men” the poet describes a longstanding relationship with Christ and how in the moments of her worst suffering she realises that such a state of utter helplessness is needed for her to fully understand Christ’s sacrifice.
Joan Hambidge’s oeuvre as a whole bears witness to a life of repeated trauma, but this article focuses specifically on the volume Konfessies, kaarte en konterfeitsels (Confessions, cards and counterfeits), in which the poet writes about her mother’s death. It seems to her that her life has changed irrevocably and she experiences a sense of identification with her mother like never before. She analyses their relationship repeatedly and from all angles; she revisits events, interactions and conversations with her mother as if the analyses might reveal a way to make peace with the loss of the mother.
T.T. Cloete was severely handicapped after contracting polio as a young man. He moved with difficulty and experienced periods of intense rheumatic pain. In all his books of poetry he writes frankly about his crooked body and his laborious movements, sometimes with wry humour and sometimes in a deeply religious way. He also identifies with various other artists who were physically unattractive or handicapped, for instance Toulouse-Lautrec, Saint-Saëns and Beethoven. He is often concerned with shape and structure as forms of beauty, but he also writes about disfigurement and deformity. To him any form created by God is what it should be and as such it is meaningful and pleasing.
For him the death of his wife Anna is the most intense trauma of his life and he writes about her to give expression to his grief. He wrote letters to her starting on the day she became ill, letters she never read but which he kept on writing until his own death. The article examines selected poems: two about Anna’s clothes from which she has disappeared, others about retracing all the journeys and excursions he and Anna undertook, re-experiencing all the things they had done together, because only by grieving deeply and fully could he adequately pay tribute to their love.
In the last part of the article the poems in the collection Maskers en mure (Masks and walls), compiled by Hugo and De Jongh, are discussed. This collection consists of poems written in 2020–2021 during the Covid lockdown. Different poets focus on different aspects of the pandemic and the article attempts to describe the spectrum of approaches as well as the spectrum of emotions experienced during these trying months.
The article concludes by summarising all the different ways in which the different poets interact with trauma and attempt to find relief by writing and expressing their innermost thoughts or their worst fears. These include intellectual distancing or philosophical musing, fitting trauma into a religious or ideological mould, analysing the source of the trauma from as many angles as possible, reporting objectively on the origin of trauma, or immersing oneself in the trauma and finding relief in writing as such, creating something beautiful from all the grief and suffering, so that the creative activity transcends the emotion and can eventually be treasured by readers.
Keywords: Afrikaans poetry; TT Cloete; collective trauma; coping; Covid pandemic; Sheila Cussons; Joan Hambidge; lockdown; personal trauma; processing trauma; trauma
Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans:
Die kuns van die onvoltooide: die verwerking van trauma in die poësie