A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts,
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Since Eybers went to live in Amsterdam in 1961 her poetry has always been
simultaneously published in Amsterdam and Cape Town. Nine of her sixteen collections
since she made her debut in 1936 can therefore be called "Dutch" in the sense that they
have not only been published in the Netherlands, but have also been reviewed there
extensively and very positively. She is regarded as a poet belonging to the Dutch literary
tradition, and was awarded the highest prize for Dutch literature in 1991. All of this has
happened without her losing her South African readership or status as one of the greatest
Afrikaans poets.
In this study I present an overview of the situation in Holland with regard to the scant
acceptance and Jack of knowledge of Afrikaans and of its literature at the time Eybers
went to live there. The uniqueness of her Dutch acceptance is analysed against this
background. An overview of her Dutch and South African reviews (1962-1992)clearly
shows that Dutch reviewers have always been fascinated by the fact that they can
understand her work in spite of the fact that Afrikaans is otherwise considered a language
from which texts need to be translated into Dutch in order to be readable and marketable.
Because Eybers lives in the Netherlands she shares a frame of reference with her Dutch
readers. Her language has incorporated many typical Dutch phrases, allowing her poetry
to become more accessible and familiar to Dutch readers. Basically,though, she still writes
in Afrikaans and South African readers still read and regard her as an Afrikaans poet In
her poems - which often describe her state of voluntary exile and In which memories of
the vast South African landscape are described - South African readers therefore find
much which is familiar to them. Her themes -Iove.Ionellness, ageing, death, estrangement
- are universal. In spite of this wide acceptance an in depth study or the particularities of
the Eybers Idiolect and fields of reference clearly shows that both sets of leaders are
constantly faced with quite severe comprehension problems. I therefore argue that the
work of Eybers offers a unique example of "making it strange", the element which the
Russian Formalists regarded as the essentiai difference between natural language and
poetic language. The "double world" and "go between" language of Eybers result in a
blend of intimacy and strengeness which two sets of readers experience in different ways.
I argue that particular "ungrammaticalities" make her "Dutch" volumes "doubly poetical".
Formalist, reception and semiotic theories are employed in a descriptive explanation of
the Eybers phenomenon. / Andrew Chakane 2018
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/25462 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Jansen, Ena |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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