Memory, history and oblivion in Horrelpoot by Eben Venter

Abstract

“Horrelpoot” by Eben Venter joins the ranks of other postapartheid Afrikaans literature that reflects different sides of memory, history and guilt. This article explores the different constructs of memory – laced with rich Jungian archetypal images – that are portrayed in “Horrelpoot”. Drawing on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, “Horrelpoot” sketches the protagonist, Marlouw’s journey from the West (Australia) to the “dark” continent (Africa), and his ancestral farm, “Ouplaas” in South Africa. The article elaborates on Marlouw’s journey, which, at a deeper level, is nothing but a Jungian journey towards individuation, a journey into the deepest and archaic level of his own psyche. In the final instance, “Horrelpoot” reminds us that in a century of forgetting, memory persists, and that Marlouw’s journey could be a collective one which may guide white South Africans to face their own deep and dark past and the horror that lies at the bottom of their history.