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As one of the most influential Afrikaans poets of the Dertiger movement, N.P. van Wyk Louw’s work was influenced significantly by modernism and the ideas associated with modernity. His highly canonised poems about animals and human-animal hybrids, Raka (1941), and Die swart luiperd (“The black leopard”) published in 1942 in Gestaltes en diere (Figurations and Animals), present compelling perspectives on the position of nonhuman animals in Afrikaans modernist poetry. In Raka Louw follows the resolute but futile attempts of the culturally refined leader Koki to protect his people against the contaminating effects of the insidious ape-man, Raka. Koki becomes the bearer of Louw’s modernist ideals for the maintenance of higher values. Yet, in his representation of Raka, he preserves something of a counter-image to Koki. As a hybrid creature Raka retains the potential to disrupt teleologies and to insert radical otherness in considerations of cultural excellence. Unlike Koki, the speaker in “Die swart luiperd” plunges into the destabilising depths opened by the gaze of the animal. The encounter with the black leopard in the jungle produces a form of insanity comparable to the experience of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In “Die swart luiperd” Louw dares to break down the boundaries patrolled by Koki in Raka in an apparent rapprochement to the animal as a source of creative revitalisation and extensionof consciousness.

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Book Title: DoodmenslikBook Author: W.L. van der MerwePretoria: Protea Boekhuis, 2018. 90 pp. ISBN 978-1-4853-0895-9.

The poetry volume Mede-wete by Antjie Krog is a sustained questioning of ethical relations between self and other, an on-goingpreoccupation of Krog in both her poetry and literary non-fiction works. This review article of Mede-wete (also available as Synapse in translation from Afrikaans into English by Karen Press) traces four forms of interconnectedness or synapses that shed light on Krog’s project to establish ethical connections between the self, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, both the human and non-human other. Love and family bonds, reaching out to the cultural other, a sense of shared materiality with the environment, and, consequently, a longing for mystical unity constitute four of the synapses as announced in the title of the volume of poetry. The strength of the often challenging poetry emanates strongly from the daring use of language that includes syllable disturbances and surprising compounds. In many respects, Krog’s impressive volume belies her apparent pessimism that Afrikaans poets and writers today are little more than “thighshifters-in-flinching-language” (Synapse 113).

Book Title: Die dag is bros. Sandton City GrootdoopBook Author: Wessel PretoriusProtea Boekhuis, 2017. 137 pp. ISBN 978-1-4853-0652-8 (gedrukte boek). ISBN 978-1-4853-0653-5 (e-boek). ISBN 978-1-4853-0654-2 (ePub).

In die laaste jare van sy lewe het Hennie Aucamp met ’n soort gedrewenheid die een publikasie na die ander die lig laat sien asof hy duidelik daarvan bewus was dat sy dae min geword het vir die afhandeling van sy laaste paar skryfprojekte. Die digbundel Skulp , voorlopig laaste boek uit sy pen, word juis elders in hierdie uitgawe van T ydskrif vi r letterkunde geresenseer, maar dit is goed moontlik dat daar in sy nalatenskap nog talle manuskripte is wat met- tertyd die lig kan sien. Hoewel Aucamp enkele van sy dagboeke waaronder Gekaapt e tyd (1996) vir publikasie beskikbaar gestel het, is dit bekend dat hy sedert sy jeug getrou dagboek gehou het. Aucamp het sy dokumente noukeurig laat bewaar in die J. S. Gerickebiblioteek van die Universiteit van Stellenbosch en daar is ongetwyfeld nog baie stof wat wag op die ondernemende redakteur en navorser.

Globalisation, modernism and postmodernism in Etienne van Heerden’s In stede van die liefde (2005) In the 1990s postmodernism as a literary phenomenon led to the development of a lively literary discourse in Afrikaans. However, in contemporary narrative criticism postmodernism rarely features as a theoretical framework for studies of new Afrikaans writing. In poetry criticism postmodernism still enjoys some currency, whereas some critics hold the position that there should be stronger acknowledgement of modernist elements in the development of Afrikaans poetry. In an effort to grasp the manifestation of postmodernism in contemporary Afrikaans prose, this article focuses on globalisation and modernism as two unique challenges to thinking about postmodernism that prevail in Etienne van Heerden’s novel In stede van die liefde (In Cities of Love, 2005). The article identifies three problems in theoretical reflections about postmodernism, namely a too narrowly conceived view of postmodernism, a lack of recognition of the continuities between modernism and postmodernism, and the resulting neglect of modernism. Furthermore, the article offers a critical interrogation of globalisation in its guise as a new master narrative in the light of recent developments in the postmodern era. Through a reading of Van Heerden’s novel, the interrogation focuses on the motifs of slippage and substitution in In stede van die liefde. The representation of space in the novel includes both the urban and the rural and points to ‘glocalisation’, a term that refers to the interconnection between the local and the global. The author proposes that globalisation in the guise of a diffuse and multidimensional master narrative, produces a yearning for older master narratives leading to the reaffirmed presence of modernist elements in a manifestly postmodernist novel such as In stede van die liefde. The challenge is to acknowledge modernist elements in contemporary literature using a theoretical approach that exhaustively accounts for the link between postmodernism and globalisation – new manifestations of modernism can no longer be examined with outdated theories about modernist literature. Key words: Afrikaans narrative fiction, globalisation, local versus global, modernism and postmodernism. Article text in Afrikaans

Review article: Synapse tracing between self and other in Mede-wete by Antjie Krog (2014) The poetry volume Mede-wete by Antjie Krog is a sustained questioning of ethical relations between self and other, an on-going preoccupation of Krog in both her poetry and literary non-fiction works. This review article of Mede-wete (also available as Synapse in translation from Afrikaans into English by Karen Press) traces four forms of interconnectedness or synapses that shed light on Krog’s project to establish ethical connections between the self, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, both the human and non-human other. Love and family bonds, reaching out to the cultural other, a sense of shared materiality with the environment, and, consequently, a longing for mystical unity constitute four of the synapses as announced in the title of the volume of poetry. The strength of the often challenging poetry emanates strongly from the daring use of language that includes syllable disturbances and surprising compounds. In many respects, Krog’s impressive volume belies her apparent pessimism that Afrikaans poets and writers today are little more than “thighshifters-in-flinching-language” (Synapse 113). Keywords : Afrikaans poetry, Antjie Krog, ethics, Mede-wete, otherness.