Op soek na die paradys: paradigma-ondermyning as leesstrategie toegepas op ‘Vrees van die arbeider’ (Heilige beeste) deur DJ. Opperman

Abstract

In this article the author examines a key convention of the love lyric, namely the 'realisation' of the beloved through poetic articulation, by which the illusion of a ‘unity of the spirit’ between the lovers is created. In this regard the Afrikaans love lyric in general, and the love poems of Opperman in particular, generate a secondary convention in terms of which the Genesis myth is transformed to a paradigm for the quest for spiritual unity as directly related to a "... collective yearning for a vanished time of happiness ..." (Turner, 1978:24), that is an idyllic pastoral existence before the advent of Afrikaner urbanization in the thirties and forties. In this regard the poet Totius’s Trekkerswee forms the ideological base for a perception of the city as a ‘grysland’ (literally 'grey country') in direct opposition to a perception of the farm as a 'paradise' in the sense that it represents a "vanished time of happiness" (Turner, 1978:24). Taking this paradigm as a point of departure, the author deconstructs a well-known Opperman poem, revealing its underlying ideological base, and presenting an interpretation which differs radically from the traditional.