Die allotropie van gevormde literatuur in die poësie van T.T. Cloete : ’n ondersoek van die ideolektiese “omzetting” van Nederlandse tekste

Abstract

English: The basic proposition of this study was to determine the extent to which the canon of Dutch literature determines the poetological nature and idiolect of the poet T.T. Cloete. In Cloete's poetry the recycling or idiolectical transformation of texts from the Dutch literary tradition can be clearly demonstrated. The complex relationship between originality and derivation, source and repetition which is implied by recycling is the matrix of postmodernism. The imbricated schools of thought used in this approach to Cloete's ouevre fall within the realm of postmodernism with the emphasis on the transgression of boundaries. The question raised is therefore how the interference of texts affects the nature of such transgressions of boundaries. The idiolectical transformation of Dutch texts and Cloete's poetry involves a dialectic between tradition and originality, because transformation implies a play in which established literature is emulated, taken up and transformed into new forms. This textual practice clearly demonstrated Cloete's loom to the more extensive elder tradition consummates and extends the relatively small Afrikaans tradition. Cloete's critical appraised of the tradition is linked to the principle of the transgression of boundaries. This transgression of boundaries is accomplished by the crossing of national, temporal, language and cultural boundaries, and by the deconstruction of boundaries between textuality and sexuality, literature and politics. Cloete's strategy therefore involves a transgression of demarcated boundaries in order to determine a distinctive place and value within a broader tradition and to determine his direction as a poet. The outcome of this reflection on poetry is a collection of normative pronouncements on those characteristics which the poet deems essential for the literary text and its realisation, namely a unique pattern of communication, or idiolect. These findings confirm the first aim of the study. The second aim was to explore the manner in which Cloete's poetics manifests itself versexternal ( explicit and implicit) and idiolectically versinternal, and to indicate the interactional views on the poetry of Cloete, Nijhoff and Leopold. The contours of these theories are views on the origins of poetry, a world view and a theory of objectivity. The nub of the shared views centres on the concept of the wilfulness of language which is linked synchronically to the so-called autonomistic poetics of the Utrecht model. The heart of this poetics is that it is the task of the poet to produce poems in as skilled a manner that they can stand on their own, having no relationship with the poet. A further important aim of this thesis was to focus on exemplary texts as transformational products. In the course of the study it was demonstrated that the idiolectal transformation of Dutch texts in Cloete's poetry can, apart from the poetic niveau, be pinpointed on the conceptual and formal level of language. The play of texts often showed that the realisation of the text as transformational product is largely located in the reader. It is demonstrated that those views which Cloete shares with Nijhoff and Leopold manifest themselves in his poetry. In addition it is shown that Cloete relies on the Dutch literary tradition with regard to transcriptions and conceptual elements such as occurrences (the travel code and the notion of play), figure (the wanderer, the figure of the poet in the frame, the woman as figure of the muse and symbol of the poet or the creative process) and time-space ( the geocentric orientation in which the Divine presence is discovered). Where relevant, formal language elements were actualised. The hypothesis that Cloete's poetry should be approached as a continuous game is confirmed by this study. The allotropy of "existing literature" is therefore also a poetic and language game, a referential game which corresponds with Cloete's theoretical view that poetry is a game of creativity which displays two invariables: an interlinking of inspiration and technique. This play with linguistic signs involves the reader in the dynamic activity of the lytic impulse in poetry. At the same time it reflects a play of power relations aimed at determining a unique place in the canon. The conclusion of this wide-ranging investigation is that Cloete, owing to numerous correspondences at poetological, conceptual and formal language level, forms part of a broad literary tradition which transgresses national, language and temporal boundaries. Through the process of allotropy of established literature, he actualises the broader tradition in an African/ Afrikaans context and, in so doing, broadens the Afrikaans literary tradition.