Original Research

Travelling towards an Identity as skeppende beginsel in die nuwe Breytenbach-tekste

M. Sienaert
Literator | Vol 18, No 2 | a540 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/lit.v18i2.540 | © 1997 M. Sienaert | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 30 April 1997 | Published: 30 April 1997

About the author(s)

M. Sienaert, Departement Afrikaans, Universiteit van Durban-Westville, Durban, South Africa

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Abstract

Travelling towards an Identity as creative principle in new texts of Breyten Breytenbach
In three recent (unpublished) public lectures, Breyten Breytenbach uses travel as a metaphor to emphasise the importance of intellectual flexibility. By doing so he explicitly defines identity as well as the creative processes of writing and painting in terms of movement. In the context of his work, movement immediately evokes transformation, and this article explores the way in which Breytenbach's thesis - as expounded in these lectures - unfolds in two (as yet unpublished) poems which paradoxically deal with frozen, winter landscapes. The way in which different forms of movement operate as creative principles in these poems - and by extension in all his thinking - also clarifies what is meant by Breytenbach's metaphoric "Middle World" ("taalstaat"), which has repeatedly been misunderstood in the popular press.

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Crossref Citations

1. South Africa
Dorothy Driver
The Journal of Commonwealth Literature  vol: 33  issue: 3  first page: 155  year: 1998  
doi: 10.1177/002200949803300307