Ekstratekstuele relasies van 'spieël' in die poësie van Breyten Breytenbach

Abstract

Extra-textual relations in the poetry of Breyten Breytenbach are regarded as having the same importance as intra-textual relations. Focusing on extra-textual relations, references to “mirror” show non-literary extra-textual relations to the “mirror mind” of Buddhism. This relation is constituted by literary extra-textual relations between four analysed poems. All other references to “mirror” in the oeuvre are listed for comparison in this framework. The Buddhist principle of unity underlying this poetry becomes a textual strategy. The reader is guided towards a reading process in which no single poem is to be considered as a bearer of the full meaning. Interrelated with all other poems in the oeuvre, each single poem is only an aspect, a flowing image, in the “mirror mind” of this poetry.