Abstract:
Since 1999 Cas Vos has produced three books of poetry; Vuurtong (1999), Gode van Papier (2001) and Enkeldiep (2003). These works are all written from the perspective of a particular Weltanschauung or Zeitgeist which may be defined as La joie de vivre. Joy of life manifests itself on a number of levels, including the Greek, pneuma, psuche and soma. La joie de vivre is also a crucial dimension of the gameplay that is love. Vos writes and lives love as a gift of God and identifies three stages of love, the Greek, eros, phileo and agape love. Whilst the joy of life has many sides, Vos also indicates the opposite manifestations of joie de vivre in pain, sickness, loss and death. Vos is a new inspiration in Afrikaans literature and has created an idiolectic voice which, in his own words, can be summarized as the coitus between different language signs.
