Journal Southern African studies the view from Makana Island

generalizing of some of the earlier or later poems. For instance: Particularly in a single cell but even in the sections the religious sense asserts itself; perhaps a childhood habit of nightly prayers the accessibility of Bibles, or awareness of the proximity of death: and, of course, it is a currencypietistic expressions can purchase favours and it is a way of suggesting reformation (which can procure promotion); and the resort of the weak is to invoke divine revenge against a rampaging injustice; but in the grey silence of the empty afternoons it is not uncommon to find oneself talking to God. It is not, I think, a faultless poem ('grey' silence, 'empty' afternoon), though as always it is intelligent and sensitive (I never doubt Brutus's considerable intelligence or his sensitivity) but it comes close to the true voice of feeling. As in Zwelonke, the groundswell of tragic feeling is there, even when obscured by clumsy writing and stale images. What is happening is too terrible for the empty gestures of absurdists; this is the destruction of real people, not of theatrical shadows, but-heriocally-they refuse to accept their own destruction. They go out shouting or singing or silently, not whimpering. In a strange way, one does not feel pity for them, because they have made their choices and are suffering out of will, not passivity. When Dennis Brutus forgets the large gestures and the striving for the large image, and relies on his own natural, sombre, dark voice, he writes poems of considerable power. I think I can best explain what I mean by a 'groundswell of tragic feeling' in Zwelonke's book and Brutus's poems by contrasting them with Quentin Jacobsen's Solitary in Johannesburg. I have already written about this book, and re-reading it for this essay has confirmed an earlier opinion. What is deeply disturbing about Jacobsen's view of things is suggested best, I think, by these two quotations: This content downloaded from 207.46.13.75 on Sat, 03 Sep 2016 04:29:38 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

African studies · Archaeology · Ethnology · Geography · Political science · Prison · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · History · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture

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