Ingrid Jonker. Black Butterflies: Selected Poems. (Translated
by André Brink and Antjie Krog)Human &
Rousseau, 2007.
Reviewer: Joan Hambidge
I.
Years ago I read an
interview in which the renowned poet, James Dickey, admits succinctly that he
finds Sylvia Plath’s poems pathetic. How dare he! I thought indignantly at the
time.
Lorelei-Jonker has been
known to make an impression on many young Afrikaans readers, and even more so,
on many young poets. Amongst others, she had had a great influence on Johann de
Lange’s Waterwoestyn. For years I’ve been teaching a psychoanalytic
course entitled ‘The Poem as Wound’ on the poetry of Jonker and Plath. At the
back of my mind was the poet Johan van Wyk’s view that Jonker’s dates of birth
and death formed the Jonker-text. Through the years she had gained god-like
status in Afrikaans after Mandela read ‘Die kind’ in parliament. Jonker has
also been immortalised in documentaries – her poems being read aloud
sensitively and beautifully by Antjie Krog.
I am now where Dickey
found himself with Plath in the Eighties. I can’t any more. I have supervised
the final dissertation on the archetypes in the work of Jonker, Sylvia Plath
and Anne Sexton. What is Jonker? What is myth? Where, damn it, is the text?
Very reluctantly I started reading this collection. However, is has been
done so astoundingly well by Brink, a novelist who in his day had tried his
hand at committing a few poems, and Krog, a foremost poet. On the back cover
Mandela is quoted as saying that Jonker had been poet as well as South African,
artist as well as human being. Amid despair, she celebrated hope and new
possibilities.
Few poets do a good job
at translation. Johann de Lange is an exception: he proved his talent for
translation with his recent collection of translations of Wilma Stockenström
poems. Like the translations of Stockenström, lines such as ‘I shall tell him
that you have not died’ (p. 86) give new
life to Jonker in this translation by two sensitive readers: one who’ve known
her personally; the other one who’ve seen and admits her influence.
As would have been
expected, the true Afrikaans sensibility of Jonker could not be translated.
Because of this, ‘code switching’ takes place. The following poem, for example,
carries both English and Afrikaans in its innards:
Two hearts
Two hearts I have
the one pumps blood
and the other really
looks like
an appelliefiekosie
or a
paddatjie (p. 111)
The strong sexual
innuendo would have been lost had ‘frog’ been used. Some words and concepts
remain untranslatable. ( And ‘paddatjie’ is not, by the way, a word to describe
a girl’s secret little place; it’s ‘parratjie’, if I remember correctly.)
Some Jonker poems are
easier to translate; others, especially the ones about love and death, move
into a dark unconscious space that does not surrender easily to the translated
word.
The collection contains
an extremely revealing and sensitive essay written by Brink about their stormy
relationship and Jonker’s youth. This doomed relationship led to one of the most
creative unions in Afrikaans, although the personal distress – especially
Brink’s – has never fully been quantified. Ted Hughes could only silence the
rumours after Birthday Letters presented his side of the story. Sylvia
Plath is not seen as an angel anymore, indeed, Janet Malcolm shows in The
Silent Woman that Plath is not viewed in a singular sense – there exists
different versions of her – like a matryoshka doll.
Brink tells of Jonker’s
relationships with Jack Cope, Uys Krige and others. He tells of the abortion
that would remain with her for the rest of her life, especially seen against
the background of her life-long sense of rejection and abandonment.
How ironic when she
writes: ‘To stow myself away like a secret / in a sleep of lambs and of cuttings’
(‘L’art poetique’, p. 94), this while being continuously kept awake by all
these interpretations, films, translations and analyses. She shares the fate of
James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Lady Di: people keep on projecting themselves
onto these figures and turn them into symbols.
‘Kantelson’ becomes
‘Tilting Sun’ (beautiful!) and there are several troves for poetry enthusiasts
. One would have expected to find the original Afrikaans poem next to the
English version in order to compare the two. (Obviously, the collection was
meant for an overseas audience.)
The poems have been
superbly translated. The introduction is startlingly honest and all of my
resistances and moans have been demolished by Brink’s contribution. I’m seeing
Jonker with new eyes. The introduction points to her obsession with mirrors; to
writing as reconfirmation. As a matter of fact, one could buy the collection
just for the insightful essay. (In less flattering terms, I could have thought
about Jonker as a borderline disorder personality type.)
Rightly, Brink point out
the shortcomings in past translations of
Jonker done by Plomer and Cope. Brink and Krog could also count on Ingrid de
Kok’s advice.
II.
There are remarkable
poems in this selection and to transport a poem from one language to another,
from one chora (in Kristeva’s definition), is a difficult task. But the
translators convinced me:
Bitter-berry daybreak
Bitter-berry daybreak
bitter-berry sun
a mirror has broken
between me and him…
My personal favourites
are:
“My embrace redoubled me”
(p. 114), “Lullaby for the beloved” (p. 115), and of course: “The child who
was shot dead by soldiers in Nyanga” (p. 85).
A lecturer in modern
poetry could design a course on the exemplary work done by translators from
Afrikaans to English. Johann de Lange’s recent translations of Wilma
Stockenström’s poetry entitled The wisdom
of water with the
Jonker-translations would be essential texts.
I recommend this
selection for all Anglophone readers. There are apt footnotes for the non-Afrikaans
reader, but obviously we all understand the word “bokkie” or “meidjie”, nie
waar nie?
Don’t sleep
Don’t sleep, look!
Behind the curtains the
day begins to dance
With a peacock feather in
its hat (p. 63)
[This review has previously been
published in Scrutiny 2: Issues in
English Studies in Southern Africa, Volume 13, Issue 2, 2008.]