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The Dark Stream: The Story Of Eugène N Marais
Die groot verlange bied nie net 'n fassinerende blik op een van die veelsydigste en merkwaardigste Afrikaners wat ooit geleef het nie, maar is terselfdertyd 'n panorama van 'n groot gedeelte van die Afrikaners se geskiedenis.
Teen hierdie wisselende geskiedkundige agterdoek leer ons Marais in al sy veelsydigheid ken: as strydlustige jong koerantman in die Kruger-jare; as taalstryder, digter, prosaïs wat Afrikaans as taal help vestig het; as natuurwetenskaplike, hipnotiseur, geneesheer, sielkundige, advokaat, wêreldburger, towenaar, kindervriend, wewenaar, minnaar en morfinis.
Teen hierdie wisselende geskiedkundige agterdoek leer ons Marais in al sy veelsydigheid ken: as strydlustige jong koerantman in die Kruger-jare; as taalstryder, digter, prosaïs wat Afrikaans as taal help vestig het; as natuurwetenskaplike, hipnotiseur, geneesheer, sielkundige, advokaat, wêreldburger, towenaar, kindervriend, wewenaar, minnaar en morfinis.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 16, 2009
I was actually meant to be working on my thesis when I read this (admittedly not cover to cover, but close to it!). There was just a little anecdote I needed to support an argument in my thesis, and this book would have the answer. But by the time I'd started reading about Marais - his life was fascinating! - I couldn't stop (bugger the quote, the argument, the thesis!).
Eugène Nielen Marais lived at a time when people were discovering Virginia Woolf, so his was the South African version of a writer that committed suicide in those days. His Afrikaans poetry (esp. Winternag) is considered to be the first example of good written poetry in this language. His morphine addiction was an innocent experimentation with something people would equate with nicotene now-a-days. When it became harder for him to get hold of it, once it was illegal, he tried to go cold turkey. He tried several times, but there's a lesson in this: when he was really, really clean, he managed to write "The soul of the white ant" (in English, by the way!). After that his life took a down-turn as his addiction worsened and his attempts at anything: being a lawyer, reviewing books, writing; just didn't make sense anymore. He shot himself once he realized that he couldn't detach himself from the morphine.
Eugène Nielen Marais lived at a time when people were discovering Virginia Woolf, so his was the South African version of a writer that committed suicide in those days. His Afrikaans poetry (esp. Winternag) is considered to be the first example of good written poetry in this language. His morphine addiction was an innocent experimentation with something people would equate with nicotene now-a-days. When it became harder for him to get hold of it, once it was illegal, he tried to go cold turkey. He tried several times, but there's a lesson in this: when he was really, really clean, he managed to write "The soul of the white ant" (in English, by the way!). After that his life took a down-turn as his addiction worsened and his attempts at anything: being a lawyer, reviewing books, writing; just didn't make sense anymore. He shot himself once he realized that he couldn't detach himself from the morphine.
May 15, 2018
I generally enjoy reading literary biographies, sometimes even more than reading the works of the writer or poet concerned. I enjoy reading "life and times" books because of my interest in history. But Eugene Nielen Marais is an exception to this. I have loved some of his poems since I was a romantically-minded teenager.
As a teenager my favourite poets were the romantic ones, like Keats and Shelley. But now I find that their poems that moved me so much when I was 14 or 15 do not move me so much now. They strike me as rather flat. But Marais's poems that I loved then still move me today, especially ones like Winternag and Skoppensboer. Keats's Endymion now leaves me cold, perhaps because in my youth I read into it things that weren't there, whereas the things that I read into Marais's poetry back then were actually there and are still there now. Keats was writing in England about an imagined Greece. Marais, in Winternag, was writing about the Transvaal highveld, which he knew, and where I lived.
His life and times are interesting too, because much of that history led us to where we are now in southern Africa, but that is as much the art of the biographer, who had to do the hard work of getting the details of his life, and making the times come alive.
There is also a family history reason. Though Marais himself wasn't a relative, one of his close friends and admirers, Joän Couzyn, who made a sculpture of him, was married to a relative of my wife Val.
Eugene Nielen Marais (1871-1936) was born of a Cape Dutch family in Pretoria, the capital of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR, South African Republic), the youngest of thirteen children, and the only one to be born there. Part of his schooling was with relatives in the Free State and the Cape Colony, where the new Afrikaans language was beginning to emerge from its Dutch cocoon. Eugene, however, was educated mainly in English, though he could write Dutch and speak Afrikaans.
After leaving school he returned to Pretoria and became a journalist, and while still in his teens became the editor of Land en Volk, which was run on a shoestring. Though it was written in Dutch, Marais introduced Afrikaans from time to time, and was keen on promoting Afrikaans as a literary language. He attacked the corruption of the Kruger government, which meant that Land en Volk lost lucrative government advertising, and strugged to survive. He married, but his wife died shortly after the birth of their only child, who was brought up by one of Marais's sisters.
After a few years, and partly under family pressure, he went to England to study law, that being regarded as a more respectable occupation than journalism. He was not a good student. Leon Rousseau hints, though he does not explicitly say, that Marais was influenced by the writers and artists of fin de siècle London. He also dabbled in medicine.
He was studying in the UK during the second Anglo-Boer War, and narrowly escaped being interned as an enemy alien. After completing his studies he joined an expedition to take supplies to the embattled Boer guerrillas, but before they could be delivered the war had ended.
He resumed his journalistic career in what had become the Transvaal Colony, under the restrictions of the British military occupation, and occasionally practised law. He also, like the Bohemian artists and writers in London, became addicted to drugs, first opium, and then morphine.
In 1907 he moved to the Waterberg, about 70 miles north-west of Pretoria, living as a lodger on an isolated farm, where he studied animals and insects, especially baboons and termites. He later lived in what is now Bronkhorstspruit, where he tried, not very successfully, to practise law, but his morphine addiction made this difficult.
He moved to Heidelberg, where sympathetic doctors tried to cure him, but failed. He returned to Pretoria and journalism for a while, living with friends. In 1936, after his friends had moved away, and losing his access to drugs, he committed suicide.
In reading this book, two things stand out:
1. The similarity of the corruption in the ZAR under Kruger and the RSA under Zuma.
2. The best poetry seems to have been written by drug addicts under the influence of drugs.
As a teenager my favourite poets were the romantic ones, like Keats and Shelley. But now I find that their poems that moved me so much when I was 14 or 15 do not move me so much now. They strike me as rather flat. But Marais's poems that I loved then still move me today, especially ones like Winternag and Skoppensboer. Keats's Endymion now leaves me cold, perhaps because in my youth I read into it things that weren't there, whereas the things that I read into Marais's poetry back then were actually there and are still there now. Keats was writing in England about an imagined Greece. Marais, in Winternag, was writing about the Transvaal highveld, which he knew, and where I lived.
His life and times are interesting too, because much of that history led us to where we are now in southern Africa, but that is as much the art of the biographer, who had to do the hard work of getting the details of his life, and making the times come alive.
There is also a family history reason. Though Marais himself wasn't a relative, one of his close friends and admirers, Joän Couzyn, who made a sculpture of him, was married to a relative of my wife Val.
Eugene Nielen Marais (1871-1936) was born of a Cape Dutch family in Pretoria, the capital of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR, South African Republic), the youngest of thirteen children, and the only one to be born there. Part of his schooling was with relatives in the Free State and the Cape Colony, where the new Afrikaans language was beginning to emerge from its Dutch cocoon. Eugene, however, was educated mainly in English, though he could write Dutch and speak Afrikaans.
After leaving school he returned to Pretoria and became a journalist, and while still in his teens became the editor of Land en Volk, which was run on a shoestring. Though it was written in Dutch, Marais introduced Afrikaans from time to time, and was keen on promoting Afrikaans as a literary language. He attacked the corruption of the Kruger government, which meant that Land en Volk lost lucrative government advertising, and strugged to survive. He married, but his wife died shortly after the birth of their only child, who was brought up by one of Marais's sisters.
After a few years, and partly under family pressure, he went to England to study law, that being regarded as a more respectable occupation than journalism. He was not a good student. Leon Rousseau hints, though he does not explicitly say, that Marais was influenced by the writers and artists of fin de siècle London. He also dabbled in medicine.
He was studying in the UK during the second Anglo-Boer War, and narrowly escaped being interned as an enemy alien. After completing his studies he joined an expedition to take supplies to the embattled Boer guerrillas, but before they could be delivered the war had ended.
He resumed his journalistic career in what had become the Transvaal Colony, under the restrictions of the British military occupation, and occasionally practised law. He also, like the Bohemian artists and writers in London, became addicted to drugs, first opium, and then morphine.
In 1907 he moved to the Waterberg, about 70 miles north-west of Pretoria, living as a lodger on an isolated farm, where he studied animals and insects, especially baboons and termites. He later lived in what is now Bronkhorstspruit, where he tried, not very successfully, to practise law, but his morphine addiction made this difficult.
He moved to Heidelberg, where sympathetic doctors tried to cure him, but failed. He returned to Pretoria and journalism for a while, living with friends. In 1936, after his friends had moved away, and losing his access to drugs, he committed suicide.
In reading this book, two things stand out:
1. The similarity of the corruption in the ZAR under Kruger and the RSA under Zuma.
2. The best poetry seems to have been written by drug addicts under the influence of drugs.
April 12, 2016
Ek was begeesterd nadat ek die eerste paar hoofstukke gelees het. Dit was 'n vinnige (en uiters interessante) geskiedenis oorsig. Ek meen: die strate wat aan ons bekend is, is nie net name nie, dit is vernoemings. Mnr Mears was die eienaar van die plaas Sunnyside...
Ek moet sê die res van die boek was uiters telleurstellend. Van Leon Rousseau het ek beter verwag.
Eerstens: die gebruik van anglisismes. Daar is soveel pragtige afrikaanse woorde, maar talle anglisistiese woorde word gebruik om die storie te vertel van een van die invloedrykste mense as dit kom by die vestiging van Afrikaans as 'n taal. In my mening: uiters oneerbiedig.
Tweedens: aannames wat gemaak word. Mnr Rousseau, het as uitgewer en skrywer, genoeg kennis gehad oor boeke om te weet in so tipe boek, maak mens nie aannames nie.
Derdens: Morfien het die grootste deel van Eugene se lewe 'n rol gespeel, maar was dit nodig om meer as driekwart van die boek daaraan te wy? Is dit wat hy bygedra het na die oorlog... sy skryfwerk... sy naletenskap tog nie meer belangrik nie?
Ek moet sê die res van die boek was uiters telleurstellend. Van Leon Rousseau het ek beter verwag.
Eerstens: die gebruik van anglisismes. Daar is soveel pragtige afrikaanse woorde, maar talle anglisistiese woorde word gebruik om die storie te vertel van een van die invloedrykste mense as dit kom by die vestiging van Afrikaans as 'n taal. In my mening: uiters oneerbiedig.
Tweedens: aannames wat gemaak word. Mnr Rousseau, het as uitgewer en skrywer, genoeg kennis gehad oor boeke om te weet in so tipe boek, maak mens nie aannames nie.
Derdens: Morfien het die grootste deel van Eugene se lewe 'n rol gespeel, maar was dit nodig om meer as driekwart van die boek daaraan te wy? Is dit wat hy bygedra het na die oorlog... sy skryfwerk... sy naletenskap tog nie meer belangrik nie?
December 19, 2008
the first biography i ever read ... the original afrikaner rennaissance man
May 19, 2020
Hierdie was die eerste biografie wat ek van ‘n Afrikaner gelees het, en het baie waarde toegedra tot my eie ontdekking van die Afrikaanse identiteit. Volgens die biogragie was Eugene ‘n genie, en dit was as duidelik van ‘n jong ouderdom af.
Wat opmerkend was oor sy lewe is die feit dat hy ‘n baie slegte student was, dat hy vir meer as 3 dekades aan morfine verslaaf was, en dat baie van die stories wat tot ‘n mate aan hom toegeskryf is, eintlik deur iemand anders vertel is. Wat my ook verbaas het was die feit dat hy meeste van sy skryftyd spandeer het om sensationele nuus-berigte te skryf. Hy het geen kwale daarmee gehad om “nuus” te buig en skaaf sodat dit ‘n spesifieke naratief kon volg nie.
Die feit dat hy egter een van die eerstes was wat groot(in diepte en lengte) Afrikaanse literatuur geskep het, het dit baie duidelik gemaak hoe jonk die taal eintlik is. Die feit dat die eerste Afrikaanse koerant eers in 1901 uitgekom het, het my baie verbaas.
Alhowel ‘n mens nie regtig toegelaat word om deur ‘n morele verskil van diegene wat in ‘n ander tyd geleef het kwaad te word nie was van die aksies van Eugene en die mense om hom moeilik om te vergeef.
Die skrywer van die boek was duidelik ‘n groot aanhanger van Marais se lewe en ‘n mens kan duidelik sien dat hy selfs die “sleg” in ‘n positiewe lig ten toon stel. Waar ek sou dink dat die skryf van ‘n geskiedenis meer feitelik voorgestel moet word is daar egter waarde daaraan om te weet wat die skryfwer dink en voel. Geskiedenis is nooit net ‘n versameling feite nie en om te weet hoe die skrywer voel help ‘n mens om perspektief te kry oor wat geskryf word.
Ek het die boek baie geniet en sal dit aanbeveel vir enigeen wat meer wil weet oor die Afrikaanse taal en ‘n spesifieke brokkie Afrikaanse geskiedenis.
April 8, 2013
The Dark Stream not only offers a fascinating insight into one of the most complex and outstanding Afrikaners who ever lived but is at the same time a panorama of South African history.
Rousseau's account of the life of Eugene Marais begins in the early days of Pretoria(1871) and ends three years after Hitler's rise to power. Between these two dates are sandwiched many of the great events of Afrikaner and South African history: The British occupation of Pretoria, the beginning of the Afrikaner language movement, the Jameson Raid, 'the naughty nineties'(when Marais was in London), the Boer War and its aftermath, World War I, and the rise of Afrikaner nationalism.
Against this changing canvas, Rousseau introduces the reader to Marais in all his complexity - the angry young journalist writing during Kruger's term as president, the champion of his language, the poet, the prose writer. He explores Marais's talents as naturalist, hypnotist, doctor, and psychologist. He gives us an insight into Marais as an advocate, citizen of the world, magician, and as the author of The Soul of the White Ant and The Souls of the Ape. He also takes us into Marais's life as a widower, the lover and the tragic morphine addict.
Despite its length and scope, the book never fails to grip the reader. There is tragedy, there is warmth and there is humor. Parts of the book are deeply moving, parts are shocking, but no one who has read this book will ever forget it. (back text of the book)
Rousseau's account of the life of Eugene Marais begins in the early days of Pretoria(1871) and ends three years after Hitler's rise to power. Between these two dates are sandwiched many of the great events of Afrikaner and South African history: The British occupation of Pretoria, the beginning of the Afrikaner language movement, the Jameson Raid, 'the naughty nineties'(when Marais was in London), the Boer War and its aftermath, World War I, and the rise of Afrikaner nationalism.
Against this changing canvas, Rousseau introduces the reader to Marais in all his complexity - the angry young journalist writing during Kruger's term as president, the champion of his language, the poet, the prose writer. He explores Marais's talents as naturalist, hypnotist, doctor, and psychologist. He gives us an insight into Marais as an advocate, citizen of the world, magician, and as the author of The Soul of the White Ant and The Souls of the Ape. He also takes us into Marais's life as a widower, the lover and the tragic morphine addict.
Despite its length and scope, the book never fails to grip the reader. There is tragedy, there is warmth and there is humor. Parts of the book are deeply moving, parts are shocking, but no one who has read this book will ever forget it. (back text of the book)
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews