Versindaba » Blog Archive » Onderhoud met Marlene van Niekerk. Die aarde as oester en ander skryfkundes
Thursday, June 16th, 2016 | Onderhoude.
5 Kommentare op “Onderhoud met Marlene van Niekerk. Die aarde as oester en ander skryfkundes”
June 17th, 2016 at 10:04 am
Wat ‘n skitterende onderhoud, Marlene en Louis! Dit is goed om weer te bevestig: dat uitnemende poësie sal bly staan, ongeag alle aanklagte van elitisme.
Marlene, jou siening van verskeidenheid van tematiese aanbod, stem, styl en taalregister om “ongelooflike dinge” te laat gebeur,ook binne die grense van een bundel, is ‘n belangrike rigtingwyser vir enige digter, hetsy beginner of meesterdigter.
Ten slotte: die mosvarkie (wat ‘n pragtige naam!)en sy gedig is voorwaar ‘n dubbeldoor “lesing” van die aarde – kyk nou net wat ontsluit die vertaalde woord hier!
Ek sien uit na die opvolg.
Dankie vir jou positiewe terugvoer, ook oor die lesing-poem, daaroor nog die volgende: die mosvarkie kan dalk oorleef in ekstreme toestande, maar hoe, nadat Elon Musk en Nick Boström met twaalf dissipels na Mars vertrek het om aldaar verder te evolueer tot interplanetêre Faustiane, sal die miljoene mense op hierdie ondermaanse vaar as die ekosisteme toenemend ingee? As daar maar pais en vree moontlik sou wees in ‘n gehoorsaambare, permanente onaanvegbare Staat van die Natuur waarin sommige “deep ecologists” hulle voorstel die utopiese groengesinde mens passief en harmonieus kan insmelt, maar nou is dit reeds orals oorlog, en die mensdiere het nog nie verstaan dat hulle ekonomiese kompetisie om en manipulasie van natuurlike hulpbronne die leefbaarheid van die aarde toenemend vernietig nie.
Die vrede op aarde wat gemaak moet word van subtiel samehangende instabiele aardse middele (grond , water, lug) sal nie maklik gebeur nie, dis een wat moeisaam en in groot detail stukkie vir stukkie gestig sal moet word deur ysterharde onderhandelinge, want Gaia is nie ‘n homogene oorsigtelike bal nie, sy is eintlik maar ‘n paar kilometer asembare lug en ‘n beperkte aantal meters-diep beboubare grond waarvan die kwaliteite orals en op al haar plekke verskil. Die ekologie is hiperpolities, die politiek sal uiteindelik honderd persent ekologies wees.
Maar wie sal dit die sogenaamde leiers van vandag se wêreld aan die verstand kan bring? Sal die kunstenaars dit miskien kan help doen met ‘n vorm van “verligte doemprofesie” (Jean-Pierre Dupuy) http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=21129 of die opvoering van krities ingeligte scenario’s van apokalips? Nosies soos modernisme of post-modernisme of meta-modernisme verval in die lig van die hooplose horison waarteen ons reeds aanloop, die horison is nie ‘n relatiewe een nie maar die absolute grens van die aarde se draagvlak. Die tydskale van bogenoemde artistieke periodiserings en ook die gepaardgaaande soorte etos van (tegniese) emansipasie of onoordelende etiese relativisme of ‘n swaaibeweging daartussen is alreeds en finaal ingehaal deur die Groot Versnelling en die krisis van die Antroposeen – ‘n supra-temporele stratigrafiese ruimte wat eerder as ‘n moontlike keuse vir sogenaamde “betrokkenheid”, ‘n onvermydelike en radikale opdrag tot verantwoordelikheid inhou. Hoe sal skrywers daarmee omgaan as hulle nog altyd die instrumentalisering van literatuur vir die een of ander doel teengestaan het? Of is so ‘n posisie op die keper beskou die grootste skynheiligheid wat bestaan?
Die alternatief vir die verbruiks-leefstyl waarmee ons almal min of meer van kindsbeen geïndoktrineer is, sal volgens vele gevind moet word in nuwe sosiale vorme van kollaborasie en aanvaardende onderlinge ondersteuning onder die leuse “enough is as good as a feast”, (Neville Alexander). Dit sal aanneemlik gemaak moet word in plaas van die idee van wedywering om luukse, wins en sogenaamde ekonomiese “groei”. Kapitalisme is nie ‘n feit van die natuur nie, sê vele. Ook nie van die mens se natuur nie, (of wil ons soms dink h/sy is van nature gewelddadig en mededingend) “Groei” is nie onbeperk moontlik op die kloot nie. Ons word deur baie van vandag se ekonome vertel ons het nie ‘n ander keuse as om ons te onderwerp aan die sogenaamde “vrye mark” nie. Dit is natuurlik twyfelagtig en ons sal ook alternatiewe denkers moet raadpleeg, en daar is baie van hulle wat konkrete en sinnige voorstelle het in die verband. Dit sal egter baie moeilik wees om hierdie alternatiewe soort gedagtegange tuis te bring in ‘n ongelyke wêreld met ontploffende suidelike halfrond-bevolkings wat tand en klou baklei om die middelklasse te betree. Die onpopulêre feit is dat indien die hele wêreld die vlak van “ontwikkeling” sou gehad het as lande in die Noordelike halfrond, die CO2 lesings in die atmosfeer nog veel hoër as 400 ppm sou gewees het. Vgl die Keeling-kurwe: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/. Radikale ekologiese onderwys en opvoeding van jongs af is nodig.
Die ekologiese ramp het lankal reeds gebeur, mens kan dit alleen maar nugter en eerlik konfronteer, die gevolge sal vinniger op ons afkom as wat ons dink en dit is reeds besig om die armes die swaarste te tref. Werk mense hier by ons al hard genoeg oor hierdie kwessies? Is die gegewe genoegsaam sentraal in leerplanne op skole en universiteit verteenwoordig? Is daar genoeg mense wat die politici van ons land probeer bereik oor hierdie sake?
Onderstaande teks is maar eintlik ‘n uitnodiging aan iemand wat ‘n alternatiewe uitsig op die mens kan bied. Ek is geïnteresseerd in hoe so ‘n alternatief poëties verwoord sou kon word. Baie mense sal seker sê dat dit nie die taak van poësie is om “mensbeelde” te ondersoek of ‘n “nuwe mens” vermoedbaar te maak nie. Ek sal nie weet nie. Ek weet net daar is partykeer bepaalde soorte mans wat regeer en hulle maak daarvan ‘n moerse Rosatom matzoball.
By die volgende skakel kan die toepaslike foto bekyk word.
Hierdie twee handskuddende presidente
(Opgedra aan ‘n mededigter wat meen ons is almal ewe sondig en ons moenie ons owerstes spot of kritiseer nie)
Hierdie twee handskuddende presidente van dik
gestolde kerswas, byeengehou deur ‘n gedeelde
binnelont van sluheid, omnaai deur ‘n dun
diplomatieke skil, gebind in verweerde mannevel
met in hul agterban verworde parlemente,
en op die stoep miljoene onnosele armes,
lydsaam voortstrompelend in ‘n moeras
van illusie geheet “bevryding”,
of “revolusie”, hierdie twee rooidasmaaiers
genestel in konstitusies vol beloftes, hierdie hoogste
primate, met hul onnoemlike schemes,
wesens deur die humanisme beklee met vrye
wil (om verstandig, rasioneel en sagmoedig
te handel), hierdie kamtig volstrek verfyndes,
die verligting blakend in hul tand en klou,
hierdie mees komplekse organismes
met ingebou, die selfwerksame organe van hart
en lewer, ekstreem effektiewe longe, smoele,
ore, plus saal- en setel-beklewende
sitvlakke, hulle wat gas en goud laat
koevoet uit die dieptes, wat warm lug
van propaganda, diamante, elektrone
in tonnels om die aarde blaas, en niks
ontsien wat smokkel, kets, priem, klots,
raas, ontmantel, hierdie stof- en rookmakers,
vuur- en galstrooiers, koppesnellers, die plomp-
liegendste permutasies van die mensesoort
wat soos een man om sig heengryp met hulle honderd
arms, blind en slim soos die tentakels van ‘n slymswam,
na bronne van olie, kernkrag en koring –
één mag is hulle, onverdeeld,
die speerpunt van ons ondeurgrondelike
chemiese strewe na persoonlike voordeel, die essensie
van ons wil wat sy roekelose spore orals los: vervellings,
eksoskelette van ‘n giftige geskiedenis van Wonderkoppe,
Oekraïnes, Chernobyls, riviervervuiling, aardverwarming
gedra in bandopnames, sms’e, fakse, tenks, raffinaderye,
bomme en mynskagte. Hulle werk soos ’n sponsige
fungus van frases en kodes, omkoopsomme, data,
sinjale wat, beskou onder ‘n mikroskoop,
dieselfde eienskappe dra as groen bakterieë
op ‘n vrot spanspek, ‘n kil borrelende gom
wat skif na bo en vreet na onder, vanaf die hoogste
howe, tot in die bloedbedruipte onderwêreld
van bunker, binnekring, territorium –
hul bly aan die mag deur ons aangeleerde
hulpelose swye, ons wat soos ‘n teef, te veel
kere geskop as sy net uit haar hok durf kom,
nou haar bakkie hondebrokke vreet met platgetrekte
ore, verlam en neusloos agter oopgegooide
hekke. Of is ons bloot die soet kollektiewe sot
van ‘n morele bloudruk, waardeur ons hierdie uitwasse
van magswellus in ons geledere verdra
onder die sluier van Apollo, die geparfumeerde
lap wat in christelike lande “naasteliefde”
“skuldgevoel” en “vergifnis” heet?
Want as ons hul onttroon, hierdie presidente,
geestelik onthoof, of (ja, dis moontlik!), wegstem,
of hul gewoon met eerbare kritiek en argumente
uit hul sitplek probeer werk, of met spotprente
tot die gulp en boudnaat vil, of, as ons vreesloos vervul
van burgermoed hul reguit die waarheid vertel, as ons
hulle met ons jambiese hamers tot ‘n pulp sou verpletter
soos daardie girls van Pussy Riot, dan groei uit ons midde,
uit ons eie vleis, kan jy maar sê, alleen maar die volgende
volkome identiese leiersgeslag. Vanaf Jan van Riebeeck
gaan dit al so en keer op keer is ons verbyster
deur die vraatsigheid van ons eie werpsels.
Geen wonder hierdie maters bely altyd kontak,
intiem en eerstehands, met god, sy engele, sy altare.
Hulle voel sy heil in hulle lieste stamp
synde seismograwe van ons misplaaste drome
van geregtigheid. Ons wat aanvanklik warm en nat
uit broeiende magmapoele kruip en later ons aarde
kakkerlaksgewys oorwoeker, ons beleef nou
die tyd van hierdie reuse onder ons, ons eie staatmakers,
kêrels met regop nekke, veldpense, glunder-oë, soepel
bekke. Gespierd staan hulle tussen heraldiese
wiele en vlerke in die onherbergsame ruimte
van die heelal, gelouer en gelek deur falankse
kohorte wat kap, sny, grawe, roof, steel, skiet,
en die aarde, woud en see, tot die laaste
tevergeefs saamgebalde ietermagô en krimp-
vark, ja, tot in sy onderste sout maritieme huls
En hulle skúd glimlaggend, (jesus kyk
die tande) hulle skúd en skúd, tot in die skoenpunte
vergrynsd, mekaar se skoongewaste hande.
Sal ons hulle vergewe omdat óns dink húlle
dink ons weet hulle kán nie anders nie?
Sal ons elke heersende bogger tolereer wat met
ons medewete die aarde en haar armes
deur die ore naai?
Come on, sistah, let’s get a life,
ons moet ons oefen in verset,
ons moet at least ons lewe tráái
verander, let’s go talk to Thuli,
dis darem één voorbeeldige mensch
in onse vaderland,
(c) Marlene van Niekerk / Julie 2016
anton van der woude :
Ek hoop die webmeester sal hierdie kommentaar toelaat want dis lank en geïnspireerd, maar Marlene se beskrywing van haar en Anker kreatiewe skywerskursus laat my dink aan die volgende afdeling in Gaston se boek The Concept of the World from Kant to Derrida (2012) – wat my weer laat dink aan die afdelingstitel “Start with the gaps” (“gap” is écart wat omgekeerd tracé (n. f.) is in Frans*) in Gaston pragtige en interessante The Impossible Mourning of Jacques Derrida (2006); Gaston (2012:143-145) skryf (die sterretjies is my voetnote):
“Starting with the Thing
Blanchot’s opening paragraph to his 1947 essay is remarkable, not least because it begins with a thing, the writer’s pen, which is addressed by the writer. It is worth concentrating on this paragraph in some detail. Blanchot writes:
One can certainly write without asking why one writes. As a writer watches his pen form the letters, does he even have a right to lift it and say to it: “Stop! What do you know about yourself? Why are you moving forward? Why can’t you see that your ink isn’t making any marks, that although you may be moving ahead freely, you’re moving through a void, that the reason you never encounter any obstacles is that you never left the starting place? And yet you write – you write on and one, disclosing to me that I dictate to you, revealing to me what I know; as other read, they enrich you with what they take from you and give you what you teach them. Now you have done what you did not do; what you did not write has been written: you are condemned to be indelible.
Blanchot starts with a writer speaking to a thing. This strange scene follows directly after the title, “The Spiritual Animal Kingdom” – a title, as we have seen, that is itself a citation from a section of the Phenomenology that describes the disappearance of the perceived thing as the Aufhebung of world. If we take Blanchot’s opening as a gesture to the Phenomenology, he is beginning before the Aufhebung of the thing and the articulation of world as spirit. There is, as yet, no actual world. This thing, this writer’s pen, is an active thing: it appears to have its own activity. It is a question here not of the activity of the literary man, but of the writer’s pen itself: “As a writers watches his pen form letters, does he even have a right to lift it and say to it: ‘Stop!’” Blanchot suggests that if the writer is watching the pen as it writes, then we must ask: who is writing – and what is writing?
One could contrast Blanchot’s opening paragraph to Heidegger’s insistence in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics that a working pen has a readiness (Fertigkeit) to write, but it does not have itself the capacity (Fähigkeit) to write. In the midst of struggling with the problem of the comparative world of humans and animals – and we can remind ourselves that we are in the midst of Hegel’s spiritual animal kingdom – Heidegger insists that the readiness of the pen indicates a distinctly human potentiality of “making something ready in and through production.” The pen, Heideggers assumes, is always “ready for writing.” For Blanchot, on the contrary, the writer’s pen appears itself to have a kind of capacity and may also not have a constant readiness for the writers. It is a thing that is not within the control of the consciousness or will of the writer. It is a thing that resists Hegel’s narrative from his very first designations of the thing in his opening chapters in the Phenomenology on sense certainty and perception to the spiritualization of the thing in the closing sections of reason.
Blanchot begins his essay with an apostrophe to the writer’s pen. There is no sense that this pen has been personified of given anthropocentric mobility. The form of apostrophe suggests not only an address to a personified thing, but also an address to someone who is absent or dead. Blanchot’s final title for his essay will be “Literature and the Right to Death,”** and there is already a relation here to death as the possibility of language, of speaking and writing registering things that are not present before us. This address is also made in the French familiar tu: this is a familiar thing, an intimate thing; it is thing that has already moved throught the formality, hierarchy and distance of the vous, as if an address to what is absent can only be made in the intimacy of the tu.
Of course, the questions addressed to the writer’s pen are absurd, and we should not overlook the possibility that the opening of Blanchot’s essay is an oblique satire on Kojève. These questions could be taken as a series of ridiculous philosophical questions, ridiculous because they are addressed to a thing, to a pen. “What do you know about yourself?” Why don’t you see where you are going or what you are doing? The pen does not answer any of these questions. It is silent and yet is writes: “And yet you write – you write on and on.”
“Why can’t you see that your ink isn’t making any marks?” the writer asks. Blanchot links this blind forward momentum to a seemingly futile lesson: “The reason you never encounter any obstacles is that you never left your starting place.”*** This could be taken as a quasi-Hegelian lesson: recognizing the power of the negative is the only way that anything can move, can gain a forward momentum and a teleological assurance. One could counter this Hegelian interpretation of these questions about self-knowledge, orientation and direction with an unconscious, blind writing of a thing that writes without a world.****
The last part of this opening paragraph offers three condensed stages that echo the discrete world-like spheres of the Phenomenology: the relation between the pen and the writer; the relation of the thing to the reader; and, finally, the relation to the published work. Between the pen and the writer there is a relation that could be described as that of master and slave (the section of the Phenomenology that Kojève famously privileges), but is is a very equivocal relation: “I dictate,” “I know” the writer insists. At the same time, it is only through the actions of the pen that this mastery is possible: “disclosing to me,” “revealing to me.” The mastery of the writer, of the world that his writing will create, is dependent on the capricious thing-as-pen.
The relation between the thing-as-pen and the reader is also equivocal: “as other read, they enrich you with what they take from you and give you what you teach them.” Readers are enriched by the labour of the pen. This enrichment is a form of taking: the readers take and they gain. More enigmatically, they also give something back, but they only give back what the pen has taught them. The reader takes and adds to the labour of the pen and gives back, but only gives what he or she has already received. This contradictory and disorientating sense of taking as a giving and giving as receiving indicate that Blanchot is already straining and exceeding the inversions and reversals of the controlled negations that drive the Hegelian dialectic.
In the final stage of this paragraph, which begins with a very Hegelian “now,”***** the writing of the pen has, despite itself, been fixed by the published work: “what you did not write has been written: you are condemned to be indelible.” This determination and dispossession of the thing is the equivocal advent of the literary work. Later in the essay, Blanchot will identify “the Thing itself” (la Chose même) as a key aspect of the idealization of the literary work. As he observes, for those who follow Hegel, the spiritualization of the thing announces “the spiritual truth” of the literary work and “the World as it is sketched out in the work.””
* translate.google.co.za: “Dessin reprenant les lignes principales d’un plan. – ‘Le tracé d’un jardin.’”
** Ek sien hierdie titel van Blanchot natuurlik ook in die lig van daardie hoendervleisgeeënde krimpvarkie in Derrida se teks “What is poetry?”, d.w.s die krimpvarkie op ’n sekere kruisweg so besig om oor die snelweg (“autoroute”) te loop en wat, as hy die gevaar hoor nader kom, homself oprol en sy penne wys, oftewel soos Derrida (1995:299) dit o.a. stel, daardie “‘demon of the heart’ [that] never gathers itself together, rather it loses itself and gets off the track (delirium or mania), it exposes itself to chance, it would rather let itself be torn to pieces by what bears down upon it”. Dit is natuurlik een van Derrida se eindelose ‘metafore’, of voor-beelde, vir wat hy o.a. skrif (“writing”) in die algemeen noem, oftewel ‘wat plaas-vind’, d.w.s wat mens ‘wat daar staan’ of ‘om te wees’ kan noem, d.w.s. ook ’n sekere geheim … (wat jou in die gesig staar … sien dat dit nie gesien word nie … )
*** Derrida se lesing van Husserl se oeuvre, en dus spesifiek ook Husserl “The Origin of Geometry”, plaas hierdie stelling natuurlik in ’n asemrowende lig. Derrida (2003:178) sluit sy verhandeling (mémoire in Frans) gedoen in 1953/54 en wat getiteld is “The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy” af deur Husserl aan te haal uit ŉ gesprek met sy suster vanaf sy siekbed kort voor sy dood: “Just when I am getting to the end and when everything is finished for me, I know that I must start everything again from the beginning […]”.
**** Derrida (1989:12) dui in Of Spirit: Heidegger and the question op die drie “guiding theses” wat Heidegger se Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics rig wat behels: “the stone is without world (weltlos), the animal is poor in world (weltarm), man is world-forming (weltbildend)”. Vergelyk ook Claire Colebrook se artikel “Archiviolithic: The Anthropocene and the Hetero-Archive” (2014). Sy (2014:37-38) skryf byvoorbeeld:
““In many ways this is what the concept of the anthropocene opens: how might this world (our world) be viewed without humans? First, our traces on the earth would be marks that there had been some event, but not what that event was or meant. All our traces (literary and otherwise) would remain but without human context or concept. The archive would be a dead letter (which is also to say that it would be maximally alive, not reduced to any given context or ethos). […]”
Colebrook se 2016 artikel “The Play of the World: The End, the Great Outdoors, the Outside, Alterity and the Real” is ook baie goed ek aktueel.
***** Vergelyk Gaston (2007:130-133) se bespreking van Hegel wat geskryf het “To the question: ‘What is now [was ist das Jetzt?], let us answer, e.g. ‘Now is Night’ [das Jetzt ist die Nacht].” in die afdeling “Writing the truth” in sy boek Starting with Derrida: Plato, Aristotle and Hegel. Dit is baie snaaks. Die volgende afdeling is dus seker nie verniet getiteld “Language save us” nie.
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