Breyten Breytenbach Boekefees in Montagu and Bonnievale Although it looks as if we do nothing here in the country, you would do well to explore the arts activities that flourish all over rural South Africa. I am not talking about artisan claims and third rate pottery, kitsch craft and Chinese fabric posing as African curiosity. I am talking about a surge of creative expression that cannot be suppressed. From music and dancing-the-poem, to angora garments, each one so original and true to the material it is made of, that one’s hands, when holding it, deeply understands the term ‘organic’. The experience of wearing such a garment must surely gain one an understanding of the alienating effect things that are false and deceptive have on the soul. Something of one’s environment shapes the landscape of the psyche and expresses itself in art; in this case in literature. The tone of the festival events I attended in Montagu had as much of the heart as of the mind: Book lovers opening their hearts and giving of themselves with generosity and in mutual respect. The truth of the soul has a kind of ring. For me the Montagu Book Festival rang with authenticity. The scale reminded me of the first Louis Leipoldt Festival in Clanwilliam. If the drive to Montagu, through those amazing mountains, does not put one in a humbled, receptive frame of mind, there must be something deeply wrong with one. I missed several presentations, among them the sculptor Evette Weyers and Ilse Salzwedel, but also Petrovna Metelerkamp’s talk. Fortunately we manage to have lunch together. With a lifetime in publishing (Hemel en See Publishers) she always has an interesting perspective on literary matters. We are joined by Hester van der Walt (whose book Hester se Brood is my bedside companion) and Helene Lewis Opperman (whose book Britain’s Bastard Child, will soon take the South African public by storm). We share on a level that will keep me going for a long time. Daniel Hugo speaks on the translation of Omar Khayyam and the beloved words my father used to quote tumble into my mind: “Ah love would thou and I conspire, to change the sorry scheme of things entire...” The lunch in Huis Uitvlucht, the retirement home, is surreal. I salute the organisers for including this part of the community, as we all avoid acknowledging our own interdependence and mortality. Fourie Botha’s poetry book has more between the pages of “Donkerkamer” than the slightly erotic cover picture suggests. Chain smoking, broken hearted Mario d’Offizi (nicknamed ‘Bicycle’ in the army ....you work it out) speaks with unabashed honesty about his stories. Stoep Zen and Blokkies Joubert Those without hearts should be grateful if they left without listening to Anthony Osler reading from his two gems, “Stoep Zen” and “Zen Dust”. They might have had to admit to secretly harbouring hearts after all; in the words of Khayyam, “There hidden – far beneath, and long ago.” We go to the Museum Gallery in the old KWV cellar. David Kramer appears (... is it forty years ago that I first heard him sing, that tiny person with the red velskoene?) How did this man, with a Jewish name and a boyhood in Worcester, manage to grasp and articulate the spiritual diaspora of the Afrikaans speaking population in South Africa? From Lena Kleingeld’s Karoo Blues to Blokkies Joubert reminiscing about a moment when an Afrikaner man could stand tall; from the dunes at Schipskop to the ironic redemption of the neon cross on a hill? The tragedy and the comedy of three hundred years of humiliation ... it is all there. I am not the only one that wept. It is impossible to emigrate. We are doomed to love this place. Suenel Bruwer Holloway
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 17:51:16 +0000
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