Die spieël as blinde mond: die poësie van Breyten Breytenbach

Abstract

The mirror as blind mouth: The poetry of Breyten Breytenbach

The representation of reality, the word and the relationship between signifier and signified is the main theme of this article. In the poetry of the Afrikaans poet, Breyten Breytenbach, representation and “reality” are concerns constantly reflected on. The poem “drome is ook wonde” (“dreams are wounds as well”) can be read as a central “ars poetica” of Breytenbach’s work. Although it is a love poem it can also be read as literary theory, but not the same kind of theory as in, for example, Horace’s or Alexander Pope’s work. The poem discussed in this article does not deal with poetry as such, and what poetry should attempt to do; it is a presentation, the poetics being its representation. Breytenbach theorises an “epistemology of reading” in which the intuitive faculty of the reader – more than the cognitive – will guide the creation of meaning, and where the signifying value of the metaphor is beyond logical meaning. With the awareness of the impossibility of portraying reality by means of the poetic word, the mirror and mirror image acquire a meaningful function. For Leonardo (see Gombrich, 1986:5) the mirror was the painter’s master; the artist is the maker of mirrors, and then also the maker of dreams. The creation of a second reality, however, has boundaries because of the limitation of the poet’s medium. The creation then becomes more meaningful than the imitation, the presentation than the representation. After the analysis of Breytenbach’s poem one may come to the same conclusion as Lyotard (1984:81) concerning postmodern aesthetics which “ … allows the unpresentable to be put forward only as the missing contents; but the form … continues to offer to the reader … matter for solace and pleasure”.