Song of the Broken String: After the /Xam Bushmen--Poems from a Lost Oral Tradition: 1st (First) Edition

by Stephen Watson

The /Xam Bushmen, hunters, gatherers, some poets among them, were a stone age people who survived nearly 5,000 years in the region now known as the Cape Province of South Africa. By the turn of this century they had completely disappeared, destroyed finally by the murderous European settlement of the interior. Song of the Broken String has its provenance in the oral tradition of this ancient culture. In the 1860s, a German linguist named W. H. Bleek become aware of the genocide in progress. Taking into his service three /Xam Bushmen he found working as convict laborers in a chain gang, he set about preserving a small part of their heritage. After devising a phonetic notation of the /Xam's language, he transcribed the personal narratives, songs, and folktales of these three men and translated them into English. Housed in an archive at the University of Cape Town, the 12,000 pages of the Bleek and Lloyd Collection are all that remains of this people and their language. Stephen Watson, a contemporary South African poet, has explored this archive, "re-translating" Bleek's word-for-word English prose into poems in which something of the power of those original voices lives on, however filtered through the 19th century ethnographer and the 20th century writer. The results not only offer a path into a powerful oral tradition, but also raise questions about the ways in which we listen to and "translate" cultures that are distant or lost. Song of the Broken String does not bring back the /Xam, it is not a collection of artifacts. Something survives here that is almost monumental, certainly beautiful. Stephen Watson, a contemporary South African poet and writer, has explored this archive, "re-translating" Bleek's word- for- word English prose into poems in which the power of these original voices would live on. However filtered through the 19th century ethnographer and the 20th century writer, poetry seemed the obvious form for this dialogue. The results not only offer a way into a powerful oral tradition but also raise questions about the ways in which we listen to and "translate" cultures that are distant or lost, cultures in whose fate we are somehow complicit. Song of the Broken String does not bring back the /Xam, but it makes their ghosts vital presences in our own literary tradition.

Genres: Poetry, Literature

Paperback Bunko

First published December 1, 1991

About the author

Stephen Watson was a South African poet.

Most of his poetry is about the city of Cape Town, where he lived most of his life. He was a professor in English at the University of Cape Town. He was also the Director of the Writing Centre there, and one of the founders of the Creative Writing Program.

Creatively, he believed that that poetry and literature can stand on their own and need not refer to politics, or the struggle for liberation, in order to be valid. He took a strong stand on poetic relativism, believing it was possible and desirable to differentiate between "good" and "bad" poetry - a stance that has drawn criticism.

As a literary critic, Watson suggested that "South Africa is held together by a nexus of peoples 'dreaming' each other in terms of the myths that the distance between them creates."

Watson was anchored at the University of Cape Town for most of his career. In his poetry, he was best known as a lyrical chronicler of the Cape’s natural beauty, documenting the response of the soul when surrounded by it. His intertwinedness with the landscape spilled into his prose, too: he memorably wrote about his “love affair” with the city’s mountains last year, in what might be cast as a follow-up essay to his landmark 1990 piece, “In These Mountains”. Although poetry was Watson’s chief metier, he distinguished himself as an essayist, writing on subjects near and far, as diverse as South African “black” poetry and Leonard Cohen.

In February 2006, the normally reclusive Watson made the mainstream news when, writing in New Contrast, he launched an attack on Antjie Krog, accusing her of plagiarism. He claimed that she 'lifted the entire conception of her book [the stars say 'tsau' ] from [his] Return of the Moon', and that she also plagiarised from the work of Ted Hughes. Krog strongly denied the claims.

Reviews

[autumn ☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has that amazing quality of a grandparent telling you stories on an autumn night. //Kabbo was allegedly excited for people to hear the stories of the dying /Xam bushmen, and I hope somehow he and the other contributors feel my gratitude for his imagination, creativity, and generosity despite how much they were taken advantage of.

[Joe M · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the late 1860s, a German linguist named W.H. Bleek and his sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd met with three convicted men from the /Xan (or “San”) Bushman tribe in South Africa. The /Xan were already victims at the hands of encroaching white colonialism; these men were convicted of stock theft, because their food sources were being squeezed out by colonialist settlers. Knowing that their culture would not last much longer, Bleek spent the last five years of his life interviewing these men (they are named "/Han≠Kasso", "Dia!Kwain", and "//Kabbo"), first learning and then devising a phonetic notation for their language. With Lloyd handling transcription, they filled 138 notebooks that are all that exist today to preserve the folklore, songs, and other stories that formed the /Xan’s oral tradition. When Bleek’s daughter Dorothea later traveled through the /Xan’s lands in 1910, she found “just a handful of people left here and there,” and soon afterwards, the tribe were completely extinct. From this great tragedy, South African poet and writer Stephen Watson resurrects the /Xan spirit, using the surviving narratives as his source material to carve out idiosyncratic poems that dance with life and wonder. Watson’s thorough introduction explains the history of the work and the problems he encountered in undertaking such an unusual project, but he clearly invested great care, energy, and respect into his artistic choices. He also provides additional notes explaining in greater detail the poems' themes, and in the Appendix of the book, examples of the original narratives are given for comparison. The end product is one that I think would have met the /Xan's approval. The customs, beliefs, and rituals that form the marrow of their culture come alive once more: the malevolent symbolism of lions, the antagonism between sun and moon, the calling upon certain stars for certain foods, the love of tobacco, and the “natural surrealism” imagery to be found in such poems as “Sneezing Out a Lion” and “Our Blood Makes Smoke.” Some of these poems are among the most beautiful I’ve read in a while: “Prayer to the New Moon,” “Song of the Dawn’s Heart Star,” and “A Feather Thrown into the Sky.” It is impossible not to read the title poem originating from Dia!Kwain—a heartbreaking lament from one who knows that their culture is being extinguished—and not be moved (and outraged). This, by the way, is a tangible example of the power of books…the importance of the preserved word. (originally written Sept. 29, 2008)

[Scott Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A story is like the wind, it comes floating through the air from a far-off place." These stories are a collection of prose/poetry written by three remaining members of the South African /Xam tribe - - a Bushman linguistic group speaking the click language. The stories recount the sad history of a people destined to extermination by a ruthless genocide. This history makes their stories-turned-poetry even more haunting . . . "Because the string is broken, the country feels as if it lay empty before me, our country seems as if it lay both empty before me, and dead before me."