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NP van Wyk Louw: Opstelle vir 'n oorgangstyd ('n voorwoord)

NP van Wyk Louw (1906-1970)

Ná die verskyning van Van Wyk Louw - 'n Lewensverhaal het meningsverskil oor bepaalde aspekte daarvan ontstaan. Onder meer is aangevoer dat Sheila Cussons (wat nie met my wou praat nie) 'n groter rol in Louw se Amsterdamse jare gespeel het, en ook dat ek negatiewe eienskappe en optredes van hom nie sterk genoeg stel nie, al is dit nie verswyg nie. Ek begin sy lewensverhaal met die oordeel van Karel Schoeman dat Louw "een van die min figure van wêreldformaat is" wat die land nog opgelewer het. Van só 'n mens lê jy nie die klem op sy swakhede nie, maar op sy betekenis vir die Afrikaanse letterkunde, die Afrikaanse gemeenskap, die hele Suid-Afrikaanse samelewing. Wat hy oor nasionalismes, taalbewegings, klein volke en tale skryf, bly aktueel. My bedoeling met die boek was om die lewensverhaal van 'n interessante man, 'n groot digter en denker, so waarheidsgetrou en ewewigtig as moontlik te vertel.

NP van Wyk Louw is the only Afrikaans writer whose work has been awarded the Hertzog Prize, the most prestigious Afrikaans literary prize, five times. This is an indication of his stature in the Afrikaans cultural community. Karel Schoeman called him South Africa's greatest poet and one of the few world-renowned figures the country has ever produced. The historian Hermann Giliomee believes that Louw's equal as author of essays on cultural politics has not been seen in this country yet. Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw, born on 11 June 1906, was the second of four sons of Bismarck von Moltke Louw (1874-1949), a lawyer of Sutherland, and Martha Hendrina Johanna Frederika (Poppie) van Wyk (1882-1970). The youngest son was the poet WEG Louw (1913-1980). Their home language and the colloquial language was Afrikaans, but early on Louw became acquainted with English and Dutch. The Dutch Statenbijbel ("State Bible") and the Dutch hymn book were still in use in the church and in households, and his grandfather Van Wyk was able to pray in almost flawless Dutch. Louw later said he remembered that, by analogy of the hymn book, he wrote two lines in very poor Dutch. Even before he was eight years old, Louw felt that what he wanted to do above all was to write poetry. English was the language of instruction when Louw started school in 1911. He regularly visited the town library and from his tenth year consulted the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The well-equipped library housed only English books, apart from WJ Conradie's Kinderbybel ("Children's Bible"). Louw "devoured" history books and literary works. In December 1920, the Louw family relocated to Cape Town. Louw attended the South African College School (SACS), and after finishing school he enrolled at the University of Cape Town, majoring in Latin, German, Dutch and Afrikaans. Next, he completed a master's degree in German and, after teaching for a year in the small Eastern Cape village of Steynsburg, completed a BEd degree. In 1930, Louw was appointed as a lecturer in the bilingual Faculty of Education at UCT, and in the same year he married Joan Wessels (1906-1975). By 1930 some of Louw's poems had been published in the Kwartaalblad, but his first manuscript for a volume of poetry had been rejected for publication by a literary critic. This criticism was such a blow to Louw's confidence that he temporarily stopped writing poetry. When his youngest brother, Gladstone, set eyes on those poems, he realised their value. After four years, Louw started to write again. His debut poetry collection, Alleenspraak ("Monologue"), was published in 1935. Even before the publication of Alleenspraak, Louw, as a public intellectual, started to write more and more about matters affecting Afrikaans and the Afrikaner. From 1935, he started writing about Afrikaans authors and their national aspiration. For Louw, politics was an essential aspect of the language struggle, but for a national movement by the people it was, in his view, merely a technical means to achieve a set goal. Without the creation of a meaningful literature, the language movement and the accompanying political movement would have made no sense. His articles were collected in the volumes Berigte te velde ("Reports from the field") and Lojale verset ("Loyal resistance") in 1939. The latter includes the well-known slogan that revolt is as essential to a nation as loyalty. It is not really dangerous when a rebellion fails; what is dangerous is that an entire generation might pass without protest. These two volumes had a major influence on the intellectual life of Afrikaners. Some of Louw's major nationalistic poems were included in his second anthology, Die halwe kring ("The half-circle"; 1937), and in his choral drama Die dieper reg ("The deeper right"; 1938), which has a nation's right to continued existence as theme. The Dutch-born HA Mulder was of the opinion that the volume Die halwe kring ranks with the major Dutch lyrical collections of poems as their equal. It was awarded the Hertzog Prize. His following works, Raka (1941) and Gestaltes en diere ("Figures and animals"; 1942), were received very well and are regarded as high points of Afrikaans poetry. Literary critics such as AP Grové highlight the spectacular development of Louw's poetry since Alleenspraak. In the 1940s, he started writing his verse drama Germanicus as well (1956; in 1960 it was awarded the Hertzog Prize) and later he also wrote several radio dramas. Since 1937, Truida Pohl had been an inspiration in his life. They were married in 1941 after his divorce from his first wife. Two children were born of this marriage: Reinet (1946) and Peter (1950). During the 1940s, Louw wrote numerous literary articles; he and Truida worked for Afrikaans radio, and, together with his brother Gladstone, they founded the literary journal Standpunte ("Points of view"), in which he also published articles. Although he later became an outspoken critic of apartheid, in 1946 he pointed out the powerlessness into which Afrikaners and English speakers would sink and the danger of cultural suicide that could result if liberal principles were introduced unqualifiedly in South Africa. In 1948, the Rijksuniversiteit of Utrecht awarded him an honorary doctorate to acknowledge the interest in and great appreciation of the Dutch humanities for the developments in the latest Afrikaans literature, of which, the commendation read, he was the leader and symbol. In 1949, Louw accepted an appointment as professor in "Zuidafrikaanse taal- en letterkunde" (South African language and literature) at the Gemeentelijke Universiteit of Amsterdam. His wife and children could not leave with him, and while on his own in Amsterdam a love affair developed between him and the poet Sheila Cussons. This relationship was not always close, but for Louw it was a creative stimulus. Without Sheila Cussons many of the poems in Nuwe verse ("New poems"; 1954) and Tristia (1962) would never have been written. During his years in Amsterdam, he also wrote the series "Die oop gesprek" ("The open conversation"), which appeared in the popular weekly Die Huisgenoot from 20 July 1951 until 18 December 1953. Many of the essays in that magazine dealt with literary themes, the most influential of which being the series "Die 'mens' agter die boek" ("The 'person' behind the book"). They were aimed at psychologism in literary views and criticism. In "Kultuur en krisis" ("Culture and crisis"), he explains the crises that can befall a nation. The first is that of physical annihilation; the second, the crisis of despair. This latter crisis occurs when many members of a community feel that it is not worthwhile to continue as a group with its own language. Finally there is an ethical crisis, which entails the belief that mere survival is preferable to survival in justice. The articles in Die Huisgenoot and other essays were published in 1955 under the title Maskers van die erns ("Masks of earnestness") and in 1958 in three further volumes: Swaarte- en ligpunte ("Centres of gravity and luminosity"), 'n Wêreld deur glas ("A world through glass) and Liberale nasionalisme ("Liberal nationalism"). The first-mentioned and Die mens agter die boek (1956) formed part of the collection of critical prose and essays that earned him the Hertzog prize in 1958. Louw received this news in June 1958, shortly before he departed for South Africa to take up the position of head of the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1962, Tristia was published. This title refers to a volume by the Roman poet Ovid, written during his exile. Gerrit Olivier points out what he called the unbelievably complex richness of Louw's Tristia. According to Grové, Tristia contains some of the most mature and profound poems in Afrikaans. His inaugural address at Wits, "Oor moeilike literatuur: die 'verwysingsmoeilikheid'" ("On difficult literature: the problem of reference") in 1959 is virtually a theoretical guide to Tristia. The volume was awarded the Hertzog prize for poetry in 1965. In his address of commendation at the award ceremony, TT Cloete stated that with Tristia Louw's mastery as poet, which again and again proved to be surprising, once again took a new direction. He added that Louw remained, together with much younger poets, one of the "youngest" poets in the country. Cloete referred to the work of the new literary generation: the authors of the 1960s ("die Sestigers"). Louw went to great lengths to combat misconceptions about prose and innovation. His articles are contained in Vernuwing in die prosa ("Renewal in our prose"; 1961). Etienne Leroux stated that Louw's treatment of his first books was an incentive for him to continue his writing. In 1965, Louw stepped into the breach for another poet of the 1960s, Breyten Breytenbach. The government had refused a visa for Breyten's wife, Yolande, to visit South Africa because she was born Vietnamese. In a letter to a newspaper Louw criticised the government "as an Afrikaner", but also on behalf of the Afrikaans literature, which, he said, had its own honour and dignity. He was pained and ashamed because the Afrikaans nationalism in which he grew up and in which he hoped to die was, for him, the greatest movement in our history and a sign of growth, of an increasingly full life. Had this, he asked, turned into a petrified ideology that officials could measure with a carpenter's rule? Louw wrote various pieces for special occasions. The most controversial was Die pluimsaad waai ver ("The plume seeds are blown far"), which was performed during the Republic Festival in 1966. It starts with the question of what a nation is. In Pluimsaad all those who in the Anglo-Boer War participated on the side of the Free State belonged to the Free State Afrikaners. They included, apart from the Afrikaners, also English speakers, Cape rebels, Dutchmen and coloured people. The literary critic Merwe Scholtz regarded the drama as a "broad democratic definition of the Afrikaner nation". The performance elicited much criticism in 1966 - in a Republic Festival speech from the Prime Minister, Dr HF Verwoerd, as well. Most of the letters to newspapers were pro-Louw, however, and some important personages came to his defence. On 13 November 1961, Louw had a serious heart attack and from then on suffered heart trouble. Early on the morning of 18 June 1970 he died - a week after his 64th birthday and three weeks after the death of his eldest brother, Koos, to whom he was very close. Their mother, the 88-year-old Poppie, who was bedridden after a stroke, died on 28 July. Louw remains relevant in the literary and cultural life of South Africa. His works remain alive in intertextual references, citations, parodies and titles, for instance in the works of Breyten Breytenbach, Sheila Cussons, Johan van Wyk and Joan Hambidge. After 1970, "Kultuur en krisis" was a theme in the political debate. Giliomee writes that Louw's phrases regarding continued existence in justice and loyal resistance were freely used in the public debate during the 1970s - in his opinion often opportunistically. Breyten Breytenbach quoted the former phrase during his trial in 1975. Even before Breytenbach came to South Africa to establish a structure for an underground movement, certain ANC leaders informed the security police. He was arrested, and during his trial he invoked Louw in a desperate plea: "It may be paradoxical, but for me the very point was the survival of our people, survival in justice as Van Wyk Louw put it, it was about the quality and content of our civilization" [own translation]. The judge did not take any note of this. Afrikaners nowadays find themselves amidst the second kind of crisis that Louw distinguished: the crisis of despair, despair which is the result of emigration and Anglicisation, of the ideology of "transformation" and of the disregard for language rights by antagonistic authorities. In the discourse about this situation, Louw's views on such a crisis and on the response of people of culture to that crisis gain new significance and relevancy.

Creolisation and healing in van Wyk Louw's Nuwe verse (New poems) and Tristia

Hierdie artikel is ŉ poging om Van Wyk Louw se werk postkoloniaal te lees, gefokus op sy opvattings oor suiwerheid en hibriditeit in kultuur en kulturele interaksie. Ek skets eers die huidige situasie in Suid-Afrika en argumenteer dan dat die opvattings van Édouard Glissant oor kreolisering en relasionaliteit ŉ nuwe perspektief op hierdie saak kan bied. Ek ontleed Louw se vroeë en latere opvattings oor volk, kultuur en kulturele interaksie in sy opstelle voordat ek sy digterlike praktyk in sy laaste twee bundels, Nuwe verse (1954) en Tristia (1962), ondersoek. Alhoewel Louw die klem aanvanklik plaas op die volk en die letterkunde as hoogste uiting van die volk, stel hy in sy latere opstelle ŉ meer genuanseerde opvatting van kulturele interaksie en sinkretisme. In Nuwe verse ontwyk Louw die negatiewe implikasies van kolonialisme, en in Tristia in groot mate ook, hoewel hy die Europese tradisie in laasgenoemde bundel sterk ironiseer en kreoliseer. In hierdie kreolisering en in die uitreik na iets anders lê inderdaad kieme van ŉ oper, transnasionale manier van dink oor letterkundes en kulture. Empaaier wég ("Puine", Tristia, Versamelde gedigte, bl. 282)

This article is an attempt to read Van Wyk Louw's views on culture and cultural interaction in a postcolonial context of creolisation, that is, in relation to European colonisation up to the 19th century and the processes of decolonisation after the 1950s. My argument has three parts. Firstly, I show, by outlining the present situation in South Africa, the need for new thinking and then argue that Édouard Glissant's views on creolisation and relationality present such an alternative healing framework of thinking. Secondly, I analyse Louw's pleas for the decolonisation of Afrikaans literature in the 1930s. In several of his essays he argues that the people ("volk") as an organic whole is the only framework in which an authentic universal humanity can be expressed. This mystical view of a people, an aesthetic nationalism, entails purity and exclusivity and does not recognise the transnational forces of colonialism that help shape a national literature. In his later essays, in contrast to his earlier rather closed view of culture, Louw articulates a much more open view of cultural interaction and circulation as part of a broader kind of open conversation. In a later (1952) essay, "Die web" ("The web"; Louw 1986b:446 ff.), he recognises four strains in the Afrikaans tradition, also emphasising its contact with Africa, but remains blind to its eastern strain. Although Louw later writes lyrically about a sense of unification between the "lucid" ("helder") West and the "magical" Africa, he does not fully grasp the creolised nature of the Afrikaans language and its literature. Yet, in the essay "Moeilike letterkunde" ("Difficult literature", dated 1958; 1986b:357-378) Louw presents a much more open and syncretic view of cultural interaction, writing that syncretism is a central facet of modern poetry. He thinks modern culture has become a chaotic mingling of shards and fragments from across the world. Louw is describing the globalisation of our time, but can see no order in this process. In the third part of my argument, I analyse cultural interaction in Louw's last two collections, namely Nuwe verse ("New poems", 1954) and Tristia (1962). Though Nuwe verse contains important fragments from other cultures, Louw seems to be sidestepping the negative effects of colonialism. The same goes for Tristia, although he strongly ironises and creolises the European tradition in that collection. Based on this analysis, I conclude that such creolisation and reaching out to something different do indeed contain the potential for open, transnational ways of thinking about literatures and cultures - in line with Glissant's relational thinking that can cross the abysses of difference.

Loyal resistance: Dated or topical? NP van Wyk Louw in conversation with Foucault

In hierdie essay voer ek aan dat NP van Wyk Louw se 1939-konsep van "lojale verset", 'n konsep gemobiliseer in die naam van Afrikanernasionalisme, desnieteenstaande sy kritiese slaankrag vir ons tyd behou as ons dit deur die lens van Michel Foucault se begrip van "transgressie" lees. Beide "lojale verset" en "transgressie" dui op 'n vrugbare spanningsveld wat die belofte inhou van die moontlikheid van bemagtigende daadkrag selfs in 'n tyd van volslae onmag. Dit is 'n tyd van globaal verswelgende magsbewegings en korrupte lokale magskonkelary. Ek betoog dat selfs in dié tyd en in hierdie "sonderlinge plek" dit moontlik is om "hoog te kan lewe" indien dit geskied in die gees van voortdurende weerstand. Miskien ook sal ons sterwe en iewers ruggelings stort, dat hierdie helder aarde in ons verdonker word. Miskien sal niemand later mooi dinge van ons weet, en nêrens sin te kry wees in al ons stryd en leed, sal elkeen as hy magtloos naby die sterwe lê, net hierdie eensaam wete uiteindelik nog hê: dat ons nie kon gebuig word soos húl geweld dit wou, en dat ons hoog kon lewe net aan ons bloed getrou.2

In this essay, I argue that NP van Wyk Louw's 1939 concept of "loyal resistance", although a construct mobilised in the name of Afrikaner nationalism, retains critical significance for our time if read through the lens of Michel Foucault's notion of "transgression". Both "loyal resistance" and "transgression" announce a field of fruitful tension which promises the possibility of empowered action even in a time of utter impotence. Now is a time of power movements that engulf the globe and of corrupt local machinations of power. I contend that even at this historical juncture and in this "strange place", it is possible to live "highly" if one lives in the spirit of continuous resistance. Louw's own time was a time of conflicting tensions. In the 1920s and 1930s he fought for the consolidation and ennoblement of Afrikaans (during this time his volume of essays, Lojale verset, ["loyal resistance"] was written); the 1950s were a period of political self-complacency, and the 1960s a seemingly unassailable hegemony. Lojale verset, like Liberale nasionalisme ("liberal nationalism"), is an expression of Louw's central concern with the question of the continued existence of the Afrikaner people and is therefore inherently Afrikaner-centric. He was unequivocally an apartheid intellectual. In his time, Afrikaner identity was still in the making and Afrikaner nationalism not yet fully established. The 1930s were a time of unrest, white poverty and painful memories of defeat in the Anglo-Boer War. His thought is coloured by a political vacillation between, on the one hand, an unambivalent loyalty to his people and the unwavering belief in the separation of the races and, on the other hand, his resolve to tell the truth to the powers-that-be, his standing up for those wronged by the state and, on occasion, his defending segments of the broader black population. He was constantly caught in the double bind of "loyal" and "resistance". Against this backdrop, I attempt to place his notion of "loyal resistance" in critical dialogue with Foucault's understanding of the Bataillian concept of "transgression" - a concept that likewise derives its critical force from the field of tension between limit and violation or taboo and transgression. Both thinkers' primary and undisputed source of inspiration was Nietzsche. Despite their divergent historical situatedness, both were critical of critique, and both embraced the promise of the Aufklärung, as conceived by Kant, as a "critical ontology of ourselves". Both rejected self-complacency in favour of self-overcoming. I therefore contend that the two thinkers can justifiably be brought into dialogue without resorting to selective and misleading reading strategies. For Foucault, transgression is inherently about resistance to stifling limits imposed by power structures without exceeding those limits. To exceed limits would be to end existence, existence that is in itself finite. Transgression is therefore an admission that defiance would be impossible without a measure of loyalty to that which one resists. His entire intellectual, political and ethical project is devoted to finding ways in which the limits to which individuals are subjected can be resisted; to transform critique levelled in the form of an inevitable limitation into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression. Louw and Foucault find common ground in the undeniably Nietzschean belief in the empowering force of dangerous, destructive thought or critique; "thought of the limit" that saves humanity from perhaps the greatest danger to spiritual life - the snare of self-complacency and self-assured intolerance. According to Louw, "great critique" of this kind is a condemnation of one's own complicity in the sins of one's people, it is an atonement and a cleansing. Both Louw and Foucault held the conviction that although the individual is an intrinsic part of his or her own community and history, he or she has the ability to change his or her mode of belonging to that community and history. A critical ontology is therefore an analysis of the limits of one's being, not in the sense of an essential, unchanging being, but contingent, multiple and fluid ways of being human subjects. It entails a limit attitude or a historico-critical attitude that is experimental, local and specific. If we therefore reconsider "loyal resistance" from the perspective of "transgression", it appears that resistance is indubitably connected to loyalty, perhaps even impossible without it.

"The pot boils all over": NP van Wyk Louw, Johannes Degenaar and Afrikaans decolonisation

Die hoofdoel van hierdie artikel is om moontlike dekoloniale momente in NP van Wyk Louw se denke na te speur. In die eerste plek gee ek 'n kort oorsig oor die kritiese gesprek tussen Louw en Johan Degenaar, met die vraagstuk rakende die "voortbestaan" van 'n "volk" as die vernaamste fokuspunt. Ek oorweeg veral Degenaar se kritiek op Louw se nasionalistiese politieke raamwerk en die redes vir sy kritiek. Teenoor "volksnasionalisme" en ander vorme van nasionalisme as raamwerk vir politiek in Suid-Afrika stel Degenaar 'n pluralistiese model voor. In die tweede deel van die opstel, in reaksie op Degenaar se vernaamste kritiek teen Louw, probeer ek vasstel tot watter mate 'n mens Louw kan interpreteer as 'n dekoloniale denker. Weens die dramatiese omwentelinge in die "Afrikaanse volk" se politieke lot oor die loop van die twintigste eeu, staan Louw op 'n sekere manier nader aan "ons" (Afrikaanssprekendes in Suid-Afrika in 2020) as Degenaar. In hierdie gedeelte vra ek hoe ons die dekoloniale momente in Louw se denke kan herwin ter wille van die hedendaagse besinning, sonder om die apartheidsgeskiedenis te ontken. In die proses moet ons die blindekolle van Louw en van Afrikanernasionalisme deeglik verreken, maar, stel ek voor, ook soek vir produktiewe aanknopingspunte tussen Louw as proto-dekoloniale denker en die hedendaagse dekolonisasie-debatte.

The main aim of this article is to trace possible decolonial moments in the thought of NP van Wyk Louw. I know this is a controversial exercise and that it should be approached with great caution and nuance. Also, because of limited space, this remains a tentative opening up of the topic, which will, I hope, be explored further elsewhere. In the first section, "Degenaar en Louw", I introduce Louw's question about whether a small people ("volk") has the right to (continued) existence, and, if so, on what grounds. Louw initially asked this question during the 1930s - a time when "white Afrikaners" were beginning to overcome the worst effects of the "Tweede Vryheidsoorlog" (Second War of Liberation) (1899-1902) and of urbanisation. It was also a time of increasing nationalist rhetoric. On the one hand, Louw is a child of his time, and, as the philosopher Johan Degenaar shows in his critical response of 1976, Louw seems to absolutise the nationalist framework as the obvious way to order politics in South Africa. On the other hand, I show that, for his time, Louw is surprisingly open and even radical in his view of the "Afrikanervolk" (Afrikaner people) as a contingent creation whose enduring existence is by no means written in the stars, or divinely guaranteed, but dependent upon voluntary actions and certain measurable achievements. Degenaar and I find Louw's transition with regard to the highest justification of the Afrikaner's cultural survival to be very valuable. This is a transition from the inward-looking, aesthetic "achievement" of making a unique and universal contribution to global intellectual culture in and through Afrikaans, toward the outward-looking, ethical "achievement" of ensuring justice for all the other "volke" (peoples) in South Africa. Whereas Louw himself played an immeasurable role in realising the first achievement and an important role in the second as well, in so far as he cultivated radical self-critique as part of Afrikaner culture (Degenaar 1976:90), he finally could not prevent the "white Afrikaners" from failing in terms of the ethical standard he had set. I understand the decades-long maintenance and justification of the apartheid system and all its accompanying injustices to represent a moral failure of, and an existential crisis for, this group that it has barely started to confront. I believe Louw would agree with me in terms of his own response to the central question he himself posed about "voortbestaan in geregtigheid" (sustained existence in justice). Degenaar was of the opinion that Louw never was able finally to renounce a nationalist framework for conceptualising and organising South African politics - a framework Degenaar (with the benefit of hindsight) thought would inevitably lead to injustice. Degenaar consistently argues against the pitfalls of nationalist conceptions of statehood, which, after the end of apartheid, brings him in conflict with the "nation-building" rhetoric of the first democratic government led by the African National Congress - another group that has pitted nationalism (this time "African nationalism") against colonialism. In the second part of the article I show how Louw as an early or proto-decolonialist thinker, like many other African intellectuals after him, turns to a form of nationalism or "volkskap" (peoplehood) as a way of moving away from the colonial situation and mentality. Whereas there are many obvious differences between the historical situation of the Afrikaner grouping and other, especially "more indigenous", groups in South Africa, there are also some parallels in how Louw and, for example, Mignolo and Fanon attempt to address the colonial mentality and stance. All of them agree that the problematic aspects of colonialism do not end once actual military occupation and control have ended. What is often called "coloniality", or a colonial attitude and mind-set, typically prevails long after formal liberation of the colony concerned. When Louw's turn to nationalism is understood as a form of "decolonisation" or an attempt to address critically and overcome the colonial mentality, or so my argument goes, new and fresh light might be shed on his ideas. The other side of the coin is to use the Afrikaner's turn to nationalism in order to cure coloniality as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of precisely such an enterprise.

NP van Wyk Louw's ideal of justice

NP van Wyk Louw se geregtigheidbeskouings vind ten diepste neerslag in sy drama, Die dieper reg, en in sy essay, "Die ewige trek", beide in 1938 geskryf. Mens moet verby die Afrikanernasionalistiese ondertone van sy beskouings kyk om steeds waarde vir die moderne staats- en regsdenke daaruit te put. Hierdie waarde lê opgesluit in sy verwoording van die Platoniese regsidee as die nastrewenswaardige, maar onbereikbare, sneeupunt van die denke. Daar word voorgestel dat die Groot Trek Van Wyk Louw se eie toets van volstrekte regvaardigheid faal, maar dat 'n beter uitdrukking van die regsidee geleë is in die soeke van die negentiende-eeuse Voortrekkernasate na die "koningstem" in hulle demokratiese bestel. Die Suid-Afrikaanse Grondwet, 1996, is tans daardie "koningstem", en trou aan die waardes en beginsels daarvan, baan dit die weg vir uitdrukking van Van Wyk Louw se regsidee.

The concept of justice in NP van Wyk Louw's work finds its most complete expression in the drama text Die dieper reg ("the deeper justice") and in an essay entitled "Die ewige trek", both written in 1938. The strongly nationalistic tones characterising these works (1938 was the centenary year of the Great Trek), the linguistic licence he allowed himself to express his particular concept of justice and an underlying dualism in his use of a combination of the above resulted in critics' apparent struggle to acknowledge an inherent worth in Louw's view of justice as a philosophical construct. This essay seeks to present an argument for an understanding of his concept of justice in these and other works as an expression of the Platonic idea of law ("Rechtsidee"). It is proposed that the question often posed and variously answered by the politically inept Voortrekkers and their nineteenth-century descendants, namely "Who has the king's voice?", as a fundamental question of democratic statehood is a good example of an - ultimately unattainable - search for an ideal of justice, of the idea of law, that would satisfy Van Wyk Louw's concept of justice within an emerging nationhood. That search, conducted in the context of an open discourse, was just such a "powerful metaphysical instrument of the spirit" that elevated the Voortrekkers and their nineteenth-century descendantsthrough trial and error to "a higher form of humanity". The current South African Constitution is the contemporary repository of the "king's voice" and loyalty to its values and principles is fundamental to a proper understanding and expression of Van Wyk Louw's idea of law.

The deed reveals (im)morality

Van Wyk Louw se dramatiese werk word gekenmerk deur verskillende manifestasies van die daad. Die betekenisonderskeidings van doen en daad in die genoemde werke het in die verlede egter tot aansienlike kontroversie aanleiding gegee, veral in die beoordeling van die versdrama Germanicus. Die karakter Germanicus is van sogenaamde daadloosheid beskuldig. In hierdie bespreking word vier betekenisonderskeidings van die leksikale item daad binne die Germanicus-konteks ondersoek. Dit word gedoen teen die agtergrond van die feit dat dit verskillende manifestasies is van die konsep DAAD. Uit die ontleding van die voorbeeldmateriaal uit Germanicus word aangetoon dat die betekenisnuanse "moraliteit" eksplisiet of implisiet deur sekere betekenisonderskeidings van daad "gedra" word. Uiteindelik dra die komplekse verweefdheid van daad en moraliteit daartoe by dat Germanicus nie in 'n posisie was om 'n morele keuse te maak nie.

In the dramas of NP van Wyk Louw the deed manifests itself in different ways, which probably is the reason why most literary critics, after the publication of the drama Germanicus in 1956, considered the main character, Germanicus, to be very passive. Accordingly, the merits of the drama were called into question. Their criticism centred on their judgement of the nature of the concept DEED (revealed as a derived noun deed from the verb to do). Traditionally, the meaning of the Afrikaans verb doen ("to do") is regarded to be so general that its meaning can be seen as "empty". The lexical item deed ("daad"), as a noun derived from the verb to do, can therefore be judged in a similar way. In this discussion, the semantic contents of the polysemous meanings of the noun deed are examined against the background of the drama Germanicus, which was created as a conceptual blend of three different historical sources and an imagined world. A distinction is drawn between four different senses of the noun deed, typographically represented as deedª (referring to accomplished non-specific actions, frequently contrasted with the lexical item word and with the implication of a result), deed b (referring to accomplished specific actions of force with a possible victim as a result), deed c (vague non-specific physical, mental or other kinds of deed, actually denoting the concept [category] DEED) and deed d (metaphorical extensions of the lexical item deed). Against the background of the drama Germanicus the different senses of the lexical item are exemplified. According to Langacker (1990:5), one of the foundational claims of cognitive semantics is that the meaning of an expression cannot be reduced to an objective characterisation of the situation described. For that reason, the conceptualiser chooses how to construe the situation and portray it. In the context of Germanicus different characters construe the concept DEED objectively, meaning that the lexical item deed is "salient by virtue of being placed onstage as the focus of attention" (Langacker 1990:7). In this regard it is shown that the sense of deedª as an accomplished non-specific action, contrasted with the lexical item word and with the implication of a result, occurs in many conversations, specifically when Germanicus is involved. The discussion furthermore discloses that the sense of deed b (referring to accomplished specific actions of force with possible victims as a result) is mostly construed subjectively and is implicit and non-salient in certain speech acts that refer to future acts expected from Germanicus. The use of the lexical item deed in its metaphorical use is also discussed. In the discussion of the moral dimensions of the deed, the metaphor for morality is scrutinised. The moral conflict that Germanicus experiences with regard to the choices he has to make between two different kinds of expectations is viewed against the metaphor of morality. It is shown that the intricacies of instruments of the deed and moral justification, subjectively woven into the senses of specific explicit and implicit deeds, complicate the conceptualisation of the deed and morality - and in the context of the drama Germanicus they ultimately lead to the fatal choice that Germanicus makes/has to make. Finally it is shown that the conceptual relationship of the concept DEED with other prominent concepts in the drama - concepts that are intimately linked to the experience of morality - in effect discloses a conceptual morality network within the drama. In view of this conceptual network of morality, and its intertwined relationship with different manifestations of the deed in the context of the drama Germanicus, it is concluded that Germanicus was not in any position to make a moral choice.

Relativisation in the poetry of NP van Wyk Louw

Van Wyk Louw pas op verskillende maniere relativering in sy poësie toe: leksikale relativering, waar hy entiteite as klein, dun, smal, ensovoorts, dikwels met die verkleiningsuitgang -tjie beskryf (bv. klein beiteltjie), modale relativering, waar iets gekwalifiseer word met 'n modale bywoord soos mos, glo, miskien, en illokusionêre relativering deur meermale vrae te stel: retories, aan die hoorder/leser gerig, aan homself gerig. Dit lewer verskillende winste op, byvoorbeeld die voorstelling van weerloosheid teenoor bedreiging (bv. die spelende kinders teenoor Raka), die aanduiding van onsekerheid ten opsigte van groot uitdagings ("Miskien ook sal ons sterwe"), en die inkwisiteur se uitdrukking van vrees ("het hy geskree of ek?"). Relativering stel Louw nie alleen in staat om treffende kontraste te skep nie, maar ook om te kenskets en ironiseer, en op 'n wye verskeidenheid terreine korrektiewe aan te bring en nuwe perspektiewe te bied.

Van Wyk Louw's poetry is characterised by relativisation in the conventional sense of qualifying the referent as relative rather than absolute. This implies that a person or other entity is compared to an implicit norm or standard, but one that is not fully met. The use of the adjective klein ("small") serves as an example. Klein can, for instance, describe its referent as not meeting the norm of average size or extent in its particular class. This paper strives not only to identify types and instances of relativisation in Louw's poetry but, in some cases, also to offer suggestions as to what his poetic intentions are. Three types of language-based relativisation are identified in Louw's poetic oeuvre. The use of lexical items such as klein may be described as lexical relativisation. The word klein as such forms part of a semantic field that includes more specific qualifications, such as smal ("narrow"), a description of shape, and min ("few, little"), a measure of quantity. The field also extends to adjectives such as kaal ("bare") and naak ("naked"), and even to nouns such as kind ("child"), which is, after all, a small human being, and kleintjie ("kid", literally "small person or thing") bearing the same meaning. While commonly indicating smallness, the diminutive suffix can also express endearment. A few examples will shed more light on lexical relativisation in Louw's poetry. In the poem "Die beiteltjie" (p. 186)¹the beitel ("chisel") is relativised at the outset as a klein klein beiteltjie ("a small small chisel", with diminutive suffix) to support a contrast of cosmic proportions, as the chisel in the end is instrumental in splitting the entire planet in half. In the epic poem "Raka", diminutives and the word klein hint at the defencelessness of a human settlement and its women and children, and even the animals of the forest, the vissies ("little fish") and jakkalsies ("little jackals"), against the threatening figure of Raka in the background. The kleintjies ("little ones") with their bruin ogies ("little brown eyes") (p. 101) are portrayed as innocently at play in the vicinity of the settlement, but the klein kraal ("small enclosed village") (p. 117) will be left defenceless after the demise of their leader, Koki. Religious overtones are noticeable in the appreciation expressed for small, whitewashed Romanesque kerkies ("little churches") (p. 235), in contrast with a wilde kerk ("wild church") (p. 263), a Gothic cathedral that frightens the poet when the train rushes past it in the night. A second kind of relativisation may be referred to as modal, as Louw often employs modal adverbs or particles to express the contingency of the object described or the uncertainty he experiences in connection with certain issues. These include words such as miskien and dalk, which express mere possibility ("perhaps"); mos, a downtoner in the exchange of information, used by a speaker to allow for the possibility that his/her interlocutor also has some knowledge of the matter; maar, indicating mild dissatisfaction with something or some state of affairs; and the evidential glo, which abounds in the volume Tristia, in particular. The line "Die wêreld is maar soos hy is" ("the world is just the way it is"), from Louw's "Klipwerk" collection (p. 216), for instance, expresses the speaker's resignation to the fact that man is unable to exercise control over the world or life in general or, in this case, a person's ability to curb his own desires. When someone obviates the customary way of performing certain actions by following an unconventional route or short cut, this is often rationalised by the use of sommer (or sommer maar). Thus the young Ottaviano (p. 262) manages to buy artworks "sommer sonder geld" ("without bothering to pay"), and a vagrant sleeps at night "sommer in 'n sloot" ("in any old ditch") (p. 31). Mos ("as everybody knows") is used ironically in "Satang se kinders, diés mos wonderlik geseën" ("Satan's children are of course marvellously blessed") (p .204). As a modal particle, glo has the general sense of "presumably", but also, in its specialised function as an evidential, "allegedly" or "it is said that", by which a speaker indicates that he/she doesn't have first-hand information about a certain matter. The particle glo not only derives from the verb glo "to believe" but is still semantically related to it in that both the verb and the particle suggest entertaining a certain opinion about an issue, but without there being full certainty about it. In his "Ars poetica" (p. 251), Louw expresses the opinion that poetry cannot be made from literature that has already assumed its final form, therefore, in the image he uses, not from the hexagonal cell of the honeycomb, but perhaps from the honey itself: "uit heuning self glo nog" ("from honey itself (it is) perhaps still (possible)"). Light is shed on the possible meaning of the particle by a comment made by Louw himself (quoted in Steyn 1998:1030), in which he explicitly confirms the train of thought in the poem. In this case, however, he employs the verb glo ("to believe"): "Ek glo nog altyd dat ... ("I still believe that ..."), which suggests that when using the particle glo in poetic contexts he may be marking - and thereby relativising - an utterance as the expression of a personal belief or unformed idea rather than an established theoretical concept. Van Wyk Louw also relativises certainty in what might have been declarative sentences by casting them in the form of questions - not only rhetorical ones but also genuine questions. This use of questions may be termed illocutionary relativisation. In "Ballade van die bose" ("Ballad of the evil one") (p. 132) the Classical adage "Know yourself" is for instance cast in the form of a challenging question: "Het jy die spieël gesien / en ken jy jou?" ("Have you seen the mirror, and do you know yourself?"). The use of jou - which can be a reflexive as well as a personal pronoun - instead of the explicitly reflexive jouself, heightens the impact of the question by implying the need for an objective look at oneself. The role and value of human culture is brought home to the hearer/reader in Raka (p. 105) by a set of rhetorical questions, such as "Ken Raka ... ons fyn fyn net / van die woord ...?" ("Does Raka know our finely meshed net of the word?") and "Ken hy die vuurgeheim?" ("Does he know the secret of fire?"). And finally there are also questions about questions. The poet shows his dismay at the fact that no one seems to care about the desperate condition in which the country finds itself, by posing a kind of metaquestion: Is there a "gedoemde waarheid" ("doomed truth") in the air "wat niemand vra?" ("which no one asks?") (p. 168). Does the absence of questioning indicate that nobody cares about the truth any more? In sum, relativisation enables Louw not only to construct impressive contrasts, but also to characterise and ironise persons, situations and schools of thought, and to apply correctives and introduce new perspectives in a wide range of areas.

Motion verbs in Van Wyk Louw's poetry

Bewegingswerkwoorde vorm 'n semantiese klas van hulle eie. In hierdie artikel word die betekenis en metaforiese onderbou van bewegingswerkwoorde in NP van Wyk Louw se poësie ondersoek, met die kognitiewe linguistiek, waarvan die konseptuelemetafoorteorie 'n fundamentele deel vorm, as teoretiese vertrekpunt. In aansluiting by die kognitiewe linguistiek word daar aanvaar dat ons verstaan van die werklikheid onder andere nou verweef is met ons beliggaamde ervaring van beweging. Verandering as konsep vorm deel van ons verstaan van wat beweging is en die konseptuele metafoor VERANDERING IS BEWEGING onderlê dan ook metafore wat afgelei word van hierdie oerbewegingsmetafoor. Beweging (die verandering van plek) kan volgens Radden (1995:424) gekategoriseer word as één tipe verandering, saam met ander, soos verandering van tyd en verandering van toestand. Daar word aangetoon dat betekenis te voorskyn kom deur die PAD-beeldskema (soos wat Johnson en Lakoff aantoon) wat dien as vrugbare brondomein vir konseptuele metafore. Die semantiek van die mees frekwente bewegingswerkwoord in Afrikaans, (en dit is ook in Louw se poësie die mees frekwente), naamlik gaan, word eerstens ondersoek, waarna 'n reeks konseptuele metafore (VERANDERING VAN TOESTAND IS OM 'N BESTEMMING TE BEREIK, VERANDERING VAN GEESTESTOESTAND IS BEWEGING, OM GROTER INSIG TE VERKRY IS OM 'N BESTEMMING TE BEREIK, OM DOOD TE GAAN IS OM UIT TE BEWEEG, LEWE IS BEWEGING) in "Groot ode" geïdentifiseer word. From the very beginning of our life, and evermore until we die, movement keeps us in touch with our world in the most intimate and profound way. In our experience of movement, there is no radical separation of self from world. Mark Johnson, The meaning of the body Die end is bitter. En dis end. Ons was so aan die gaan gewend Dat ons gemeen het: gáán is goed. Maar elke gang word: sterf-orent. XXV. Klein variasie op die woord 'gaan'(Tristia)

Motion verbs form a semantic class of their own. In this article, the meaning extensions and metaphorical foundation of motion verbs in NP van Wyk Louw's poetry are investigated. Cognitive semantics, in which conceptual metaphor theory plays a fundamental part, is used as a theoretical point of departure. Johnson, in The body in the mind (1987), and Lakoff, in Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (1987), examine the nature of image-schematic meaning structures by looking at "the way in which our perceptual interactions and bodily movements within our environment generate these schematic structures that make it possible for us to experience, understand, and reason about our world" (Johnson 1987:19). The image schemas identified by Johnson and Lakoff are abstract and embodied, and they play an important role in the new view of a metaphor: "a pervasive principle of human understanding that underlies our vast network of interrelated literal meanings" (Johnson 1987:65). The concept of change forms part of our understanding of what movement is, and the conceptual metaphor CHANGE IS MOVEMENT underlies linguistic metaphorical expressions derived from this movement metaphor. An important image schema with motion words is the PATH schema. Lakoff (1987:275) describes the parts of the schema as SOURCE - PATH - GOAL: "Every time we move anywhere there is a place we start from, a place we wind up at, a sequence of contiguous locations connecting the starting and ending points, and a direction." Miller and Johnson-Laird write as follows about motion verbs: "If one wished to describe the most characteristically verbal of all the verbs, one would turn to the verbs of motion, the verbs that describe how people and things change their places and their orientation in space" (1976:527). In the context of Louw's poems, which form their own constructed reality, the opposite of movement - namely stillness, rest and death - is often also present. For the purposes of this analysis, an electronic corpus of Louw's poems was compiled, and word lists and Keywords-in-Context (KWIC) lines were retrieved. Statistically speaking, the word list is quite interesting. It is noteworthy that the corpus is rather small: 49 798 running words (tokens) with 7 131 types. Compared to other available Afrikaans corpora, such as the Taalkommissiekorpus, this is a really small corpus. To start the analysis, the semantics of the most frequent motion verb in Afrikaans, gaan ("to go"), was examined. The next step was to identify conceptual metaphors based on the motion verbs found in particular poems. A good example of how movement sometimes infuses a whole poem together with other concepts such as motionlessness and silence, is found in "FRAGMENTE VAN DIE TWEEDE LEWE - 1934" (Die halwe kring 1937). Motion verbs, as well as nouns and adjectives that carry suggestions of movement as their core meanings, are used copiously in this poem: gekom (came), rusteloos (restless), om en om beweeg (move round and round), roering (stirring), vaar (sail), klim (climb), (aan)spoel (wash up/ashore), beur (strain), stuwing (surging), vloed (flood), weggaan (go away), ingegaan (go in). "Groot ode" (the final poem in Louw's last volume, Tristia, 1962), is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most challenging poems in Afrikaans. The poem starts with the speaker entering a cave (probably the Cave of Almira in Spain, cf. Van Vuuren 2006:283), and moving steadily deeper into the cave - "in die dood se skeur in" (into the crevice of death).The speaker is embarking on a metaphysical quest for enlightenment, which is conceptualised as a continuous, never-ending movement by means of verbs such as sluip (moving stealthily), vaar (sail), rondwaar (wander around), val (fall), loop (walk), instort (plunge in), uitbars (burst out), uitbreek (break out), inloop (walk in). The PATH image schema (SOURCE - PATH - GOAL) underlies the metaphors identified in "Groot ode", but in the poem the destination, the end of the journey or the quest, is never the focus of the movement; there is, rather, an uncertain destination, a destination still to be reached, and this destination is not yet death. The suggestion at the end of the poem is that the speaker leaves the cave and continues his journey out to sea as a passenger on a white ship: This movement of the ship is linked to the PATH image schema, but with a destination or goal that has not yet been reached: CAVE ------->SEA PATH (WATER) In my reading of the poem the motion verbs point the way to a set of powerful conceptual metaphors that lay the cognitive basis for interpreting and comprehending some of the complex ideas in the poem. These metaphors are: The analysis illustrated that conceptual metaphor theory provides a key to unlock these underlying conceptual metaphors, thereby adding one more reading to the growing body of critical reflection on this great but elusive poem.

Presentation and positioning in Van Wyk Louw: 'n Lewensverhaal ("Van Wyk Louw: A life story") by JC Steyn

Hierdie studie is 'n kritiese lees van Steyn (1998) se alomgeprese biografie aan die hand van verskeie teoretiese raamwerke. Die skryf van 'n historiese narratief word op die spoor van narratoloë gesien as 'n onderneming met subjektiewe kante al word die historikus beperk deur geboekstaafde gebeure en "feite". Daar is reeds vroeër beweer (Van Coller 2019a) dat die skryf van geskiedenis ooreenkomste vertoon met vertaling deurdat die historikus kan vervreem of domestikeer (Venuti 1995). In die onderhawige studie word die klem egter geplaas op die skopusteorie van Christiane Nord (1991; 2006). Volgens haar uitgangspunte is vertaling funksiegedrewe en hou die vertaler voortdurend die teikenlesers in die oog wanneer die strategiese vertaalkeuses gemaak word. Die vertaler het geen vrypas om na willekeur te vertaal nie; daar is sprake van lojaliteit: teenoor die opdraggewer, die teikenleser én die bronteks. Mutatis mutandis geld dit ook die biograaf, wat gebonde is aan sy opdraggewer, die lesers vir wie die biografie bedoel is en die lewe van die persoon oor wie die biografie handel. In 'n ander studie (Van Coller 2019b) oor JC Steyn se biografieë van Piet Cillié en MER is bevind dat enkele gemanipuleerde voorstellings van dié persone waarskynlik toegeskryf kan word aan die opdraggewer, Naspers, wat noue bande met beide gehad het - veral met Cillié, een van die destydse sleutelfigure in dié organisasie. In die onderhawige studie is bevind dat veral Truida Louw (en die Louw-gesin) se betrokkenheid by hierdie biografie (as mede-opdraggewers, onderhoudvoerders en keurders) die voorstelling van Truida positief beïnvloed en dié van Sheila Cussons, haar antagonis in die vyftigerjare van die vorige eeu in Amsterdam, negatief kleur. Enkele posisioneringsteorieë word ook betrek ter steun van hierdie bevinding. Hierdie tweedelige biografie is sonder twyfel 'n baken - én een van die bestes - in Afrikaans. Desondanks toon ŉ analise daarvan dat selfs die mees volledige en wetenskaplik gedrewe vorm van geskiedskrywing nooit op volkome objektiwiteit aanspraak sal kan maak nie: geskiedskrywing bly 'n hermeneutiese proses en interpretasie is altyd subjektief.

In this article, I attempta critical reading of Steyn's widely acclaimed biography (1998, named above) by using diverse critical frameworks and theories. In accordance with views advanced in narratology, writing a historical narrative is seen as a venture that cannot escape subjectivity, despite the historicist's being bound by factual writing and oral accounts of chronicles and facts. In a previous study (Van Coller 2019a), history-writing has been compared with the process of translation because the historian also has to choose between two modes of presentation, namely foreignisation and domestication (Venutti 1995). The present study, however, focuses on another influential and important translation theory, namely the skopos theory, propounded by the German scholar Christiane Nord (1991; 2006). According to this theory, translation is function-driven and the translator has no free play in translation. The translator is bound by "loyalty" - loyalty towards the initiator who commissioned or assigned the translation (the translation brief), the target audience and the source text. It follows that any strategic choices exercised are closely related to the needs (values and knowledge) of the target audience. These insights apply mutatis mutandis to the biographer, who has the same loyalty to the initiator, his target readers and, particularly, the subject of his biography. In a recent study (Van Coller 2019b), I also reviewed Steyn's biographies of Piet Cillié, former newspaper editor (of Die Burger) and influential political analyst, and MER (Miemie Rothman), an Afrikaans journalist, writer and member of the Carnegie commission of inquiry (1929-1932) into extreme poverty among white people. The conclusion in that study was that although both biographies can be regarded as thorough, the presentation of especially Piet Cillié was skewed because key aspects of his life have been manipulated in the sense that many of his obvious shortcomings were underplayed or treated in a manner to present him in a more positive light. This could perhaps be ascribed to the fact that the Cillié biography was commissioned by Naspers (which, at the time, also paid Steyn's salary, while Cillié was one of the pivotal figures in the organisation). Likewise, MER also had close ties with Naspers. In the present study, one of the findings is that Truida Louw, widow of NP van Wyk Louw, apparently strongly influenced the Van Wyk Louw biography as she reportedly favoured Steyn as the biographer (and may therefore be viewed as co-initiator) and that she (as well as her children, Reinet and Peter) granted Steyn interviews and even had access to the biography at the manuscript stage. This involvement of the Louw family without a doubt had a bearing on the final, published version: quite a few cuts had been made in the manuscript, almost all of them aimed at improving the posture (Meizoz 2010) of Louw or Truida, although it cannot be categorically stated that all of these changes resulted from their comments. One of the most important findings of this study is that while Louw, in the main, has been represented by Steyn - notwithstanding his obvious admiration for Louw - "warts and all", the representation of other key players in this "drama" has been manipulated. The posture of Truida - in accordance with positioning theory - is extremely positive (both with reference to her illicit affair with Louw from 1936 to 1938, and during his extramarital affair with Sheila Cussons from 1950 to 1956 in Amsterdam). However, Steyn does not portray Cussons, who declined point-blank to contribute to this biography, very sympathetically. After the publication of this two-part biography, Cussons responded and refuted several claims made in the biography, particularly the assumption that her relationship with Louw had been merely a fleeting affair. According to her, it was a serious love relationship and even more profoundly a poetic one. In the interview concerned, some of the most important poems in Louw's last published volume of poems were mentioned, all of them directly related to their relationship: dedicated to Cussons, alluding to the relationship or resulting directly from their poetic interaction and cooperation. In conclusion, it can be argued that although Steyn's biography is undoubtedly a beacon in biographical writing in Afrikaans, not even this scientific and comprehensive study can lay claim to absolute objectivity. The writing of any historical account is a hermeneutical endeavour, therefore always prone to subjective elements.

NP van Wyk Louw's animals and figures: An ecocritical reading

In die digter, dramaturg en intellektueel NP van Wyk Louw (1906-1970) se werk kom heelparty verwysings na diere voor, terwyl enkele gedigte in die geheel aan een of ander dierespesie gewy word. Louw se gedigte oor diere word hoofsaaklik beskou as gedigte met een of ander simboliese betekenis, waar min aandag aan die spesifieke spesie met unieke eienskappe gegee word. Die aanwesigheid van simbolistiese en modernistiese trekke in Louw se werk het tot dié sienings bygedra. In hierdie artikel word die digter se werk teen die agtergrond van literatuur oor diere se gedrag en dierestudies gelees. Filosowe soos Martin Heidegger en Jacques Derrida het 'n belangrike bydrae tot die aard en wêreld van die dier gelewer, terwyl die Nederlands gebore Amerikaanse primatoloog Frans de Waal bevind het dat diere oor die vermoë beskik om kultuur te verwerf. Die gaping tussen mense en diere het "verklein", en gedigte soos Louw se Raka (1941) en "Die swart luiperd" in Gestaltes en diere (1942) word in hierdie artikel by 'n nuwe kyk op Louw se gedigte oor diere betrek.

In the work of the prominent Afrikaans poet, dramatist and intellectual NP van Wyk Louw (1906-1970) a number of references are made to animals in predominantly African landscapes, while a few poems are devoted entirely to some animal species or another. In his first two anthologies of poetry, animals play a minor role only, but since the publication of his epic poem Raka (1941) and the collection of poems Gestaltes en diere ["Animals and figures"] (1942), animals have been placed in the foreground in significant roles. These poems can be regarded as among the most important poems in Louw's oeuvre from an era that is often regarded as having modernist elements. The animals in Louw's poems are recognisable African species, but have only in recent years been the focus of new interpretations and further canonisation. One of Louw's most famous poems is Raka, which is the story of an imaginary ape-man who is suddenly seen by the people of a small tribe somewhere in the African tropics. Conflict is the immediate result of the introduction of this creature, who is portrayed throughout as evil and negative and who does not have the linguistic and cultural abilities of the tribe that is the object of his focus. The men, women and children of the tribe are mainly intrigued by the strong, athletic and visually and sensually pleasing visitor. The exception is a man called Koki, who takes it upon himself to warn and defend his people against the intruder. His confrontation with Raka ends in tragedy and his death, and after his death his people do not close the gate of the kraal against Raka anymore. In this article, Raka is interpreted as a primate and discussed from a new perspective about human-primate relations and animal studies in general. Louw's poems about a black leopard and whale-hunting are also discussed as examples of animal studies. From the beginning of his career, Louw's poems about animals have been read mainly as symbolising various matters and have hardly ever been seen as poems about species with unique characteristics that underline their uniqueness and being ("Dasein"). Louw's work has been interpreted as modernistic with elements of symbolism, and readers expect layers of literary interpretation to be present in his work. In recent years, modernist elements in the poet's oeuvre and the way these contribute to the discourse on animal studies have been emphasised. In this article, a number of Louw's poems about animals are discussed to show what implications they may have for ecocriticism and animal studies. The poems are read against the background of the previous reception of these poems, and literature on animals and animal behaviour is quoted to discuss the poems from a hitherto neglected point of view. Continental philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida have made important contributions in respect of nature and the world of animals and stimulated the ongoing discourse on the subject, while the Dutch-born American primatologist Frans de Waal has established empirically that animals can acquire culture. Perspectives on how close the DNA of humans is to that of primates have also served to bring humans and primates "closer" to each other. The gap between people and animals has "narrowed", which makes it possible and apposite to read Louw's poems on animals differently and in the context of animal studies. Louw had the ability to renew his oeuvre and his way of writing several times, which can be seen in the way he wrote about animals and ecological issues. He recognised the importance of environmental issues towards the end of his life, a realisation that is clearly reflected in his later work. The animal is a word, it is an appellation that men have instituted, a name they have given themselves the right and the authority to give to the living other. (Derrida 2008:23)

Plume seed blown further: Reimagining Van Wyk Louw in a Catholic context

Tot nou toe het ondersoeke oor Van Wyk Louw se nalatenskap hoofsaaklik gekonsentreer op hoe daar nog, 'n halfeeu ná sy dood, vanuit die letterkunde en ander kunsvorms met hom in gesprek getree word en hoe hy tot nou toe in sowel literêre as kulturele diskoerse opgeroep word. In dié bydrae word die aandag gevra vir 'n ruimte waar sy voortgesette teenwoordigheid na alle waarskynlikheid nie verwag word nie, te wete die geskiedenis van Afrikaans in die Katolieke Kerk. Dit gaan hier om 'n bewusmaking dat hy weliswaar ook in die geskiedenis van die Katolieke Kerk opgeroep word én in hierdie konteks 'n weg help baan het vir Afrikaans.

Research has shown that, 50 years after Van Wyk Louw's death, poets, writers and other artists who rewrite, recreate or cite his work still engage with him in literary and cultural discourses, so granting him a powerful voice even from the grave. Against this background, this Catholic speaker of Afrikaans has become very aware of a Catholic gap in these discourses. Admittedly, this gap can be attributed to a lack of knowledge about his ties with the Catholic Church in South Africa, particularly with regard to the development of an Afrikaans that reflects, expresses and propagates the Catholic Christian faith and beliefs. This contribution aims to fill that gap by drawing attention to how and why Van Wyk Louw remains a factor in a Catholic context. Terblanche (2017) cites Van Rensburg (1969), who maintained that Van Wyk Louw's Berei in die woestyn: 'n Sinne- en wa-spel ("Prepare in the desert: A senses and wagon play") reminds us, as did Die pluimsaad waai ver, to pause amid the glory in order to reflect on the forgotten things, too - and on the things that remain unsaid or concealed, even though they have not (yet) been recorded in the history of the Afrikaans language or (still) do not form part of broader or more nuanced cultural discourses, things such as the "pluimsaad" - the seed from plumes - that have been blown further and are sprouting in the Catholic Church. However, the study is not aimed at re-evaluating or deconstructing the existing literature in which a Catholic thread in his work and thought processes is analysed and/or discussed. My focus is the cultural debt the Catholic Church and especially her Afrikaans speakers owe Van Wyk Louw. Together with other prominent Afrikaans writers such as Karel Schoeman, Sheila Cussons and Martin Versveld his work created a critical awareness that a Catholic Christian faith and culture could be expressed in and through Afrikaans too. Van Wyk Louw, along with Catholic priests such as fathers Frans Claerhout (painter) and Bonaventure Hinwood (poet, also known by his pseudonym Hinwood Visser), helped to shine light on a Catholic world in a Protestant South African society in which Catholic Christians have often been labelled, stigmatised and marginalised as the "Roomse Gevaar" ("Roman [Catholic] peril"). In view of the above, my focus is that which lies beyond a critical awareness or the identification of a Catholic gap in the cultural discourse: a space in which Van Wyk Louw can be reimagined as a Catholic "place of memory". Pertinent is the viewpoint that a critical approach has two sides: on the one hand it means demystifying or deconstructing that which is not documented or left out, and, on the other, it means creating a critical awareness that there may be alternatives, and therefore a more nuanced discourse (about Van Wyk Louw's legacy). Underpinning this is Foucault's (1973) conception that every dominant view of reality is but one possibility among many others. This contribution does not intend to reject or erase the existing literary or cultural studies on Van Wyk Louw's legacy but seeks to raise awareness of a different perspective, specifically a Catholic perspective, on his legacy. To this end the study focuses on how Van Wyk Louw is still evoked by Catholics, especially when they pray in the Afrikaans he helped to create.

NP van Wyk Louw's Die pluimsaad waai ver, of Bitter begin revisited

In die annale van die Afrikaanse teatergeskiedenis beklee NP van Wyk Louw se historiese feesdrama, Die pluimsaad waai ver, of Bitter begin, wat as opdragwerk vir die Republiekfees in 1966 geskryf is, 'n besondere plek. Dié wat vertroud is met die werk en die geskiedenis daarom ken, is ook vertroud met die polemiese resepsie van hierdie werk kort ná die openingsopvoering op 25 Mei 1966 in Die Kleinteater (Pretoria) en die kritiek van die destydse Eerste Minister, dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, op Louw se uitbeelding in hierdie drama van die Afrikaner en die geskiedenis van die Anglo-Boereoorlog. In die dekades daarna het verdere polemieke rondom Louw ontstaan wat ook betrekking het op hierdie drama (onder andere die kritiek van Gerrit Olivier [1992] en Luc Renders [2002]). Teen die agtergrond van hierdie polemieke probeer ek om met ander fokuspunte iets nuuts te bring na die gesprek wat reeds in 1966 'n aanvang geneem het oor hierdie drama en waaroor gesprek na meer as vyftig jaar nog steeds moontlik is. Daar is drie aspekte wat uitstaan by 'n herbesoek aan NP van Wyk Louw se Die pluimsaad: eerstens die veelfasettigheid van die resepsie van ikoniese werke soos hierdie een binne 'n bepaalde teatertradisie, tweedens die verhouding tussen geskiedenis en die dramatiese uitbeelding/voorstelling daarvan in 'n teaterstuk, en derdens die drama se verbintenis met die tradisionele historiese geleentheidsdrama in Afrikaans.

The historical play Die pluimsaad waai ver, of Bitter begin ("The plume seeds are blown far, or Bitter beginning") by NP van Wyk Louw was commissioned for the Republic Festival of 1966 and holds a special place in the annals of Afrikaans theatre. Many who know the play and its history recall the polemical reception of the work when it was first performed on 25 May 1966 in Die Kleinteater ("The Little Theatre") in Pretoria and the then prime minister, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, criticised both Louw's portrayal of the Afrikaner and his representation of the Anglo-Boer War history in the play. In the following decades, the play elicited further controversy, especially after Gerrit Olivier's criticism of Louw's Afrikaner-nationalist beliefs and Luc Renders's negative evaluation of Louw's entire dramatic output. Against the backdrop of these polemics, I argue in this article for a new appraisal of the play based on contemporary drama and theatre approaches with regard to dramatic performance reception. The discussion stresses three notable points. The first pertains to the many forms the reception of iconic works within a specific theatre tradition can take. For example, in the Afrikaans theatre tradition there are few plays, if any, that generated such vociferous responses from such a wide range of interested persons, both in and outside the circle of theatregoers and theatre practitioners. These responses ranged from the highest political office in Afrikaner politics (Verwoerd), to established theatre practitioners and literary figures, to anonymous letters, supposedly from the public, to newspaper editors and the like. Reception of the play was characterised by conflicting opinions, emotional statements and varying critical evaluations, all of which is fertile ground for students of contemporary drama and for theatre studies concerned with the reception of plays in the wider context of their societies (see, for example, Susan Bennet's seminal study in this regard: Theatre audiences: A theory of production and reception, 1997). The second point addresses the relationship between history and its dramatic representation in a play, which in the case of Die pluimsaad waai ver also led to divergent opinions in the year of its first performance. A substantial part of the polemic generated by the play boiled down to how Louw portrayed the historical events and figures important to many Afrikaners. Today most people (including theatregoers) realise that it is not a simple matter to determine historical facts and/or truths. One's own beliefs and ideological points of view influence and determine how one interprets incidents, developments and events (for example battles or wars) in historical and fictional works. The third point deals with the fact that the play was a commissioned work, requested for an important Afrikaner-nationalist festival (1966 Republic Festival). The function and role of occasional plays during the rise and heyday of Afrikaner nationalism has yet to be investigated in depth. However, a number of theorists have indicated that the popular plays always presented Afrikaner history and the participants (for example, the generals during the Anglo-Boer War) in a highly positive fashion (see Van Heerden 2009). However, Louw stated on various occasions that he wanted to break with the tradition that deals only with the heroic and write a play that presented more realistically what actually happen in times of war, the Anglo-Boer War in particular. Although Afrikaner nationalism was at its apex (1966) when Louw wrote the play, he adopted a new perspective and seemed to have realised that the era of the heroic occasional play had passed. Although Die pluimsaad waai ver, of Bitter begin invited severe criticism on the grounds of both ideological belief and dramatic and performative shortcomings, the play provides the contemporary drama and theatre researcher with an arresting case study in Afrikaans (and South African) drama and theatre history. Revisiting the play more than fifty years after its publication becomes a more rewarding experience for the contemporary researcher when it is approached as a theatrical document rather than a play for performance. In this play, we find reflected one of the biggest polemics in respect of audience reception and one of the most detailed documentations of this reception in the Afrikaans theatre history - a rich case study for the student of theatre reception and for the Afrikaans theatre historian!

NP van Wyk Louw: To walk in the shoes of the great ...

The theme of love in Tristia by NP van Wyk Louw and his "Groot ode" as a love elegy

In hierdie artikel word verslag gelewer van 'n lesing van "Groot ode" as 'n liefdeselegie. Die aanleiding vir die ondersoek is 'n opmerking deur PG du Plessis oor Louw se eie siening van die gedig. Die lesing word geplaas teen die agtergrond van die aanvanklike resepsies van Tristia en "Groot ode" as poësie wat hoofsaaklik gemoeid is met metafisiese vraagstukke. Daarna word 'n verkenning van Tristia onderneem om liefdesgedigte wat metafories verskuil word en tussen ander gedigte in die bundel geplaas is, uit te lig. Die titel Tristia roep onvermydelik assosiasies met die klassieke wêreld op en daarom word die Romeinse liefdeselegie betrek in die interpretasie van "Groot ode". Op grond van kerneienskappe van die Romeinse liefdeselegie word liefdesmotiewe in "Groot ode" nagegaan en herinterpreteer. Dit wil voorkom asof die tema van 'n liefdesafskeid weldeeglik in die gedig aanwesig is en inderdaad die primêre aanleiding is vir die filosofiese, religieuse en etiese besinning in die gedig.

NP van Wyk Louw's Tristia was lauded as an exceptional and significant book of poetry when it was first published in 1962. Over the past more than five decades, the poems in Tristia have steadily gained in stature. The first reviews all agreed that the poems were thematically and technically complex and quite daunting to interpret, but Louw was praised for the ingenious and innovative quality of his writing. Prominent aspects of the poetry included the elegiac tone, the awareness of human fallibility and the juxtaposition of a series of motifs, such as the individual versus the masses, reality versus beauty, life versus death, the solidity of the earth versus living human flesh, intellect versus soul, mind versus body, humanity versus God. The last poem in the book, "Groot ode" ("Great ode"), has been described as the climax and the ultimate culmination of the ideas in the preceding poems. In most cases the poem has been interpreted as the poet's struggle to come to terms with his relationship to God, with human fallibility and with the limits of human existence. PG du Plessis was not only a well-known Afrikaans writer in his own right but also, for many years, a close friend of Louw. From their frequent discussions and conversations Du Plessis gained inside knowledge of Van Wyk Louw's poetry and, more specifically, of his poetical ideas. On one such occasion Louw remarked that "Groot ode" was not a metaphysical poem only, but in actual fact a lament about an imminent parting of two lovers. Du Plessis shared this knowledge with the author of this article. Rereading Tristia and "Groot ode" with this observation in mind and tracing the thematic development of especially the love motif in the poems in the first part of the volume, confirmed the prevalence of the theme of love in the volume as a whole and in "Groot ode" in particular. It seems that there are more love poems in the selection than is apparent at first sight, not only because the theme of lost love is hidden in a variety of metaphorical guises, but also because the arrangement of the poems in the volume as a whole does not foreground the love poems as a distinct category. Louw very specifically chose the title Tristia for his book of poetry and also had a quotation from Ovid's Tristia reproduced on the dust cover of the book. This undoubtedly calls forth a whole series of classical allusions. Though Ovid's Tristia does not contain love poetry but is a lamentation about his exile in Tomis at the Black Sea, he is, along with Gallus, Tibullus and Propertius, considered to be one of the great Roman love elegists. Ovid's reputation as a poet of love elegies is mainly due to his earlier work, the Amores. Apart from the technical structure of elegiac poetry in Roman times (poetry written in couplets consisting of one hexameter and one pentameter - Cupid apparently stole one foot from every second line, turning the hexameter into a pentameter),Roman love poetry is characterised by writing in the first person and addressing a beloved by a specific name or poetic pseudonym. It is mostly about a love affair that is fraught with difficulties and ends badly. Furthermore, these poems are inward-focused and centre on the poet himself, while the poet has the freedom to introduce whichever diverse material he likes into the poem. The Roman love elegy is, moreover, quite a hybrid form and has in fact taken many forms, also in the poems that, following this genre and style, were written in subsequent centuries. Various examples of poetry interacting with the Roman love elegy are referred to in the article. The article then presents a reading of "Groot ode" in which characteristics of the Roman love elegy are used as a point of departure in order to indicate that the dominant theme in the poem is that of the loss of love. The poet knows that he will have to live more soberly and that his quality of life will be sorely diminished, but he willingly carries the burden of guilt resulting from this realisation. He speaks on behalf of himself and his beloved, using the plural pronoun "we", but he still remains the central figure and determines the fields of reference and the variety of ideas in the poem. The words are his. Although all the other juxtapositions associated with Louw's oeuvre appear in "Groot ode", and the wider problematic of humankind's struggle to cope with the limitations of human existence is yet again prominent, it does seem more than likely that it is the trauma of an illicit but overwhelming love that prompts and inspires the philosophical and ethical questions in the poem.

Louw set free: A riff on a seam

NP van Wyk Louw (1906-1970) se digterlike oeuvre bestaan uit ses digbundels, vier tussen 1935 en 1942, geskryf in Suid-Afrika, en twee tydens sy verblyf in Amsterdam in die vyftigerjare, Nuwe verse (1954) en Tristia en ander verse voorspele en vlugte 1950-1957 (1962). Dié laaste twee digbundels sien ek hier as sy laatwerk (laaste werk, later in sy lewe geskryf), waarmee hy sy oeuvre afsluit (na 'n ernstige hartaanval in 1961 was hy minder gesond, en het na Tristia in 1962 - verse uit die vyftigerjare in Europa - tot met sy dood agt jaar later, nooit weer 'n digbundel gepubliseer nie). Die term "laatwerk" word nie geproblematiseer nie, slegs gebruik om te onderskei tussen sy vroeëre werk (1935-1942) en aan te dui dat dié twee bundels, hier ter sprake (1954-1962) sy digterlike oeuvre afsluit. Die term word gebruik soos in Duitse literatuurkritiek en musikologie, waar "Spätstil" (laatstyl) 'n merker is van waar werke in 'n oeuvre inpas.

The poetic oeuvre of NP van Wyk Louw (1906-1970) consists of six collections of poetry, four written in South Africa between 1935 and 1942, and two while living in Amsterdam in the Fifties: Nuwe verse [New poems] (1954) and Tristia en ander verse, voorspele en vlugte 1950-1957 [Tristia and other poems, preludes and flights 1950-1957] (1962). These two collections are viewed as his late work (last poetical works, written later in his life) that concluded his oeuvre (the poet had a serious heart attack in 1961 and never recuperated fully, nor published a poetry collection again till he died in 1970, aged 61). The term "late work" is not problematised in this essay, but merely used as a marker, to differentiate it from the earlier works (as the term "Spätwerk" is used in German literary and musicology analysis and criticism). In view of the usual close reading of his work that arose from the canonised status of the oeuvre as if it were set in stone (including my own 1989 reading in Tristia in perspektief [Tristia in perspective]), this essay is a rereading, a reading in a wider context, more open to all sides, as if for the first time, against the grain of all sedimented conceptions of his work, a reading that aims to scrape off some of the verdigris of encrusted critical perspectives, as the poet referred to critical reception in his last text, Rondom eie werk [Around my own work] (1970). The jazz term "riff" is used for the rather free associative style in the essay (repeated ostinato on various topoi around a few motifs, utilising singular words or phrases). Throughout the researcher's gaze is also following what might be identified as characteristic of Louw's later style, read with a constant eye on the intense socio-political connectedness of his later work, produced while in voluntary exile in Amsterdam.A short, under-researched poem, "Die narwal" [The narwhal] (in Tristia, p.27), offers an entry into the oeuvre, tracing his late-style technique of oblique use of single words or phrases which easily escape the reader's attention.In "Die narwal" it is the word "stoottand" that stands out, as this word does not, to my knowledge, occur elsewhere in Afrikaans; Louw's singular use of the word (eschewing the familiar word "slagtand" [canine tooth]) caught the reader's attention. It is derived from German "Stoßzahn", as used by Paul Celan in "Eingedunkelt". In Afrikaans the verb "stoot" means "to push" (and combined with "tooth" connotes violence), but in vulgar usage denotes copulation. The poet points out the narwhal's main attributes as having "speckles. :/a canine tooth or a pen". The naming of the "pen" connoting a writing instrument pushes the simple little poem into the metatextual realm, as the poet identifies himself with this singular, red-listed creature. "The narwhal" is a self-portrait of the poet: he - the poet, is "speckled" (rare, sought-after, and multi-composite), but has a tusk or horn as weapon (later revealed by researchers to be a highly sensitive tacticle organ), and lives through this "pen", his writing.The attention then shifts from this poem to a highly canonised, ostensibly simple poem, "Die beiteltjie" [The small chisel], that contains the phrase "die donker naat" [the dark seam]. The Afrikaans word "naat" is similarly nuanced and connected to vulgar usage: it could simply refer to the pleat in a garment, sewn there through use of needle and thread, but the verb from which it is derived, "naai" [to sew], likewise in vulgar usage connotes copulation. Some now-disused, racist terms in Afrikaans for miscegenation of varying degrees (going back to the 1920s and 1930s) aimed to indicate the proportion of "dark blood" mixed with "white blood" in the people concerned - through terms such as "halfnaatjie" and "kwartnaatjie". Behind all these terms involving "naat" [seam] lies the tragedy of apartheid (1948-1994). The hypothesis of this essay is that "Die beiteltjie" deals directly with this "dark seam" between races after the National Party came into power in 1948, although the poem, for whatever reason, has mostly been read as an upbeat verse, illustrating the poet's ars poetica.In "Klipwerk" (in Nuwe verse), poems containing a collection of oral traditional voices from his childhood in the remote Roggeveld area near Sutherland, it seems as if the poet is also going back to the roots of the Afrikaans language, to a time when farmers and descendants of the Khoi-San were living close to one another on the farms and in the small village of Sutherland. This is reflected especially in dance, drinking and dagga songs. It is suggested that the origins of the language lie in Khoi-San and white mouths. Finally, the absence of a precise date for the genesis of the "small chisel" poem (although narrowed down to between April 1947 and October 1949 by the dating of other poems) leaves a gap, a suture, a wound (to echo Derrida on Celan's "Schibboleth"), as it suggests that the poem was conceived around the time of 4 June 1948 when the National Party came into power, after which apartheid legislation multiplied. The essay takes as its point of departure a present of being locked-down, darkened-in, the title of Celan's 1968 poem "Eingedunkelt".

Author bibliographies, big-data networks and the position of writers such as NP van Wyk Louw in the literary canon

Die Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns het 'n projek van stapel laat loop om Hertzogpryswenners te huldig en die opstel van 'n bibliografie van die werk van en oor die skrywers is 'n belangrike aspek van elke huldigingspublikasie. Die vraag is egter of gedrukte toegewyde skrywersbibliografieë nog nut het in 'n era van elektroniese databasisse, en indien wel hoe die samestelling van die bibliografie vir gebruikers die beste waarde kan ontsluit. Hierdie bydrae neem die bibliografie wat Francis Galloway en Alwyn Roux vir die huldigingspublikasie van die skrywer Breyten Breytenbach saamgestel het as aanknoping en probeer verskillende argumentslyne saamtrek ten einde 'n saak vir die waarde van gedrukte skrywersbibliografieë vir onder meer die kritiese navorsingsgemeenskap uit te maak: 'n argument, eerstens, vir die bruikbaarheid van 'n gedrukte bibliografie om met 'n oogopslag 'n oorsig te bied oor die kreatiewe uitset van 'n skrywer, die akademiese resepsie daarvan en kreatiewe respons daarop plus die ontvangs van die skrywerskap in die openbare sfeer; tweedens, vir die moontlikheid om inligting en verwysings op 'n diskriminatiewe wyse byeen te bring om skoon datastelle beskikbaar te stel vir navorsers binne die konteks van die sisteemnavorsing en grootdataverwerking wat toenemend die reël in die digitale geesteswetenskappe raak; en, derdens, vir die bruikbaarheid van die gestandaardiseerde inligting van skrywersbibliografieë binne die kritiese kanonstudies met die oog op die ondersteuning van waarde-aansprake rondom die statuur en invloed van skrywers en hulle posisie in die kanon, in hierdie geval spesifiek dié van NP van Wyk Louw, wie se posisie in die kanon rondom die eeuwending betwis geraak het.

The Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns ("South African Academy of Arts and Science") initiated a project to commemorate, through a series of publications in their honour, writers who have won the Hertzog Prize, considered the most prestigious Afrikaans literary prize. A dedicated bibliography of the writings of each author and responses to his or her oeuvre form an integral part of each publication. It is easy to see the potential value for the literary research community of a collected set of resources about important Afrikaans authors. A pivotal question, however, is whether printed author bibliographies can still be justified in an era of electronic databases and search engines, especially since those databases are constantly updated and expanded, while printed bibliographies are usually outdated the moment that they appear on the shelves. Moreover, if there is such justification, the question then becomes how to compile and structure the bibliographic references best to serve the needs of users. This essay takes as its point of departure one of the bibliographies in the Hertzog Prize winner series, namely the one compiled for the publication Breyten Breytenbach: Woordenaar woordnar ("Breyten Breytenbach: Worder, word jester") on the celebrated Afrikaans poet, essayist, dramatist and public figure Breyten Breytenbach. The editor of the publication, Francis Galloway, an authority on Breytenbach, and co-author Alwyn Roux compiled this bibliography. A survey of the bibliography consolidates its position as an example of a showcase bibliography, which, by means of variously structured categories and subcategories, serves to highlight the achievements and influence of the author at national and sometimes international level. From this starting point, the essay, along various lines, argues for the need and uses of specialised printed author bibliographies in the field of literary research and criticism. Research in the field of critical study of literary canon formation informs the first line of argument. The essay proposes that well-constructed dedicated author bibliographies should be able to provide more information at a glance than just the classic differentiation between primary and secondary sources, between the creative and reflective output of the author and the academic responses to the oeuvre. With regard to the primary resources, author bibliographies, in addition to distinguishing genres of creative output, may include information about subsequent editions, translations, collections and anthologies, and about texts of reflective prose and poetics by the author. Secondary resources, in turn, may be refined to reflect categories for research publications and publications aimed at literary education. In the first subcategory belong books and monographs, literary histories that devote attention to the oeuvre, master's and doctoral studies, essay reviews and articles in academic journals covering various aspects of the literary output, published conference proceedings and lecture series about the author's output. In the second subcategory belong curricula, published study guides and general anthologies intended for students. Furthermore, it is possible in showcase type bibliographies to provide information about the public profile, general literary appeal and cultural influence of the author by likewise differentiating between primary and secondary sources. In this case, primary resources would categorise references to articles, essays, news reports, letters, public addresses and public performances of the creative output in addition to intertextual responses by authors in the field and other creatives, through adaptation, reworking, et cetera, of the author's output. The second category would include references to media reviews as well as general media responses, reports, interviews, polemics and other mentions in the press and on the Internet. From the foregoing, and from available literature on literary networking, follows the second line of argument, which proposes that well-constructed Afrikaans author bibliographies may yield reliable clean data sets upon which literary researchers in the rapidly transforming digital humanities increasingly rely. At present, researchers in the field of necessity mostly still have to compile their own databases and data sets in order to chart complex relationships among specific stakeholders in the literary canon and to answer targeted questions about them. Literary critics working within the framework of literary networks (literary canons), for their part, increasingly require the statistics obtained from big-data analyses to substantiate their value claims about specific writers in the canon. However, the essay argues that, especially in the case of authors such as NP van Wyk Louw and others whose careers partially or fully predate the advent of connected electronic library systems and databases, non-specialised electronic databases are inadequate and of themselves do not exemplify usable data sets unless they have been cleaned up properly. Specifically, findings presented in the essay caution against accepting statistics yielded by mentions counters in general databases at face value, and indiscriminately using these to substantiate value claims. More generally, the findings presented caution against the use of limited data sets to draw generalised conclusions about the stature and position of authors in the literary canon. It is argued that comprehensive author bibliographies can obviate reliance on limited data sets. The third line of argument presented in this essay initially follows the discourse that developed in the influential NP van Wyk Louw commemorative lecture series around the reappraisal of the stature and legacy of Van Wyk Louw in the years preceding and following the centenary, in 2006, of his birth. The main objective of this enquiry was to attain an understanding of the strategies that literary critics at the time employed when offering correctives to the sometimes harsh criticism levelled at the author since the 1990s. What has emerged from this enquiry is evidence of a developing sense among leading Afrikaans literary critics of the complexity of the dynamics of stature and position in the literary canon, the sheer number of factors involved in an appraisal, and the role of time scale. In view of what has been said above, the argument presented here draws on two key matters that have emerged. They are, firstly, the understanding that the appraisal of stature requires a longitudinal view of the legacy of an author, measured along a complex array of achievements, and, secondly, acceptance of the idea of a stable core for an author's stature, which consists of the accumulated evidence about the academic involvement with his or her legacy over the long term. Such a stable core is an aspect of legacy that seems unaffected by the fluctuations of public appeal and influences, and may be established more readily from curated showcase author bibliographies. In conclusion, based on this idea of a stable core with regard to stature, the essay presents a provisional glimpse of the stature and influence of some key authors in the Afrikaans literary canon from a longitudinal perspective on various types of academic response to their oeuvres and the mentions they have received in the public media. It ventures the view that, when taking into account a greater number of factors over a longer period, Van Wyk Louw, fifty years after his death, still occupies a central position in the Afrikaans literary canon - even in the face of still compromised data sets. However, properly constructed research with cleaned-up data sets would be required to verify the relative positions of important authors in the canon.

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