Search

Many studies of Arthur Nortje's poetry have commented on the prevalence in his work of images of alienation, seeing this as a function either of political conditions in South Africa in his lifetime or of Nortje's exile from his home country. In this paper, I maintain that Nortje's depictions of alienation are more fundamental than suggested by earlier studies, inasmuch as his depictions point to primordial loss as constitutive of identity. I argue that because identity is posited in relation to the other, it is inescapably a function of division and displacement, and suggest that as a result of his specific history, Nortje was more directly aware of this dynamic than most. Nortje's self-reflexive awareness of the paradoxes of identity formation emerges in what I identify as symptomatic forms of communication that cut across, and mutually implicate, the life and the work. In support of my argument, the paper uses as its material two poems, one written shortly before Nortje's departure from South Africa in 1965, the other written shortly before his death in exile in 1970. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]