Versamelde Gedigte

by Ingrid Jonker

Ingrid Jonker se lewe is ’n verhaal wat steeds nie net die verbeelding aangryp nie, maar lesers ook fassineer. Bewyse van haar uitsonderlike skryftalent, haar verbeelding en realiteit, en die interessante en onstuimige draaie wat haar lewenspad geneem het word in elke gedig bespeur. op elke poësieliefhebber se rak.

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Jonker (pronounced yän`ker) grew up with her mother, grandmother and older sister, Anna. Her father, Abraham, never wanted to believe that she was his daughter and that Beatrice (Ingrid’s mother) had had an affair. Unfortunately, Beatrice was fairly unstable emotionally and although she was taken up in a mental institution, she died of cancer when Jonker was 11 years old. At the time, the women had moved from the family farm to Strand and from there to Gordonsbaai, where the girls were attending school. Their father came to fetch them and they had to leave their beloved grandmother behind for a stepmother.

After matriculating at an English high school, Jonker got married to Pieter Venter in 1956. Their daughter, Simone, was born the following year. In 1961 the marriage ended in divorce. By this time Jonker’s debut Ontvlugting had already appeared in print. In 1963 Rook en Oker appeared and she was awarded the Afrikaans Imprint Book Trade prize for it. Jonker used the prize money to travel overseas, but this ended in disaster. She met up with her then-lover, André P. Brink, in Barcelona. By the time they went to Paris, the relationship had become a see-saw of fighting and making up. She ended up at a mental institution there and was sent back to South Africa. Her other lover, Jack Cope, had gotten wind of Brink and didn’t want to pursue his relationship with her any further either.

Jonker couldn’t find work and was even trying to sell the rights of some of her poetry in order to feed herself and Simone. This, in addition to the political turmoil apartheid South Africa was in at the time, added to her emotional distress and she committed suicide by drowning in the ocean at Three Anchor Bay.

Jack Cope was instrumental in having the remainder of her poetry published as Kantelson in 1966. Other than a couple of short stories, Jonker was also the author of a drama entitled Seun na my hart.

Reviews

[Kimberly Uys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Met hoë verwagtinge het ek die digbundel op bladsy 15 oopgeslaan en begin lees aan “Dwaling”- die eerste gedig wat in die bundel verskyn. Sonder huiwering kan ek verseker dat hierdie digteres ń enorme impak op my liefde vir poësie gemaak het. Haar skryfkuns verleen vlerke aan my siel. Hierdie bundel bevat van die bekendste Afrikaanse gedigte (insluitend Bitterbessie Dagbreek, Ontvlugting en Die Kind wat Doodgeskiet is deur Soldate by Nyanga).
Alhoewel ek- as individu- nie al Ingrid Jonker se gedigte ten volle verstaan nie, voel ek ń konneksie met háár deur die skryfstyl en kreatiewe gebruik van woorde wat in die verskeie gedigte gevind word.
Hierdie is definitief nie die laaste keer wat ek die woorde van Ingrid Jonker gaan inneem nie.
Die Versamelde Werke bevat al Ingrid Jonker se digbundels (Ontvlugting, Rook en Oker, Kantelson) asook haar jeugwerke. Ontvlugting, sowel as Rook en Oker, is albei voor haar dood gepubliseer. Kantelson is slegs ná haar dood gepubliseer.
Ek beveel hierdie bundel aan vir énige individu wat ń liefde vir letterkunde en poësie het!

Ingrid Jonker is ń ikoon wat se legende verewig is deur haar digkuns!

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mixed bag, it is hard to deny that this work has dated to a degree that makes it unlikely to recover its former popularity. Nevertheless, nice poems are included which reward the visitor and I suggest that my second hand copy with its tattered dust cover and fading pages, passed from hand to hand outside the gaze of the casual public like samizdat literature in soviet era Russia, could be described in the same way as a very old and worn teddy bear for which the correct term is "much loved." It is a pity that none of these poems seem to be accessible on the net via Google, or in the usual poetry sites. I wonder are there copyright issues?

A few poems were aimed at the apartheid regime of South Africa, for which the most effective rebuke was often mockery. Johanesburg I and II could easily be recycled to comment on current issues in Western capitalism. The first descibes how today's "pillars of a Christian state" conveniently overlook the wild conditions under which they fought and cheated their way to wealth as "lordly anarchs of the veld".

Along the Rand in eighty-five
Fortunes were founded overnight,
And mansions rose among the rocks
To blaze with girls and light;

In champagne baths men sluiced their skins
Grimy with auriferous dust,
The oiled and scented, fought to enjoy
What young men must;

Took opportunities to cheat,
Or meet the ost expensive whore,
And conjured up with cards and dice
New orgies from veins of ore;

Greybeards who now look back
To the old days
Find little in the past to blame
And much to praise -

Riding bareback under stars
As lardly anarchs of the veld,
Venison feasts and tribal wars,
Free cruelty and cartridge belt;

Pioneers, O pioneers,
Grey pillars of a Christian state,
Respectability has turned
Swashbuckler prim and scamp sedate;

Prospecting in the brain's recesses
Seek now the nuggets of your prime,
And sift the gold dust of your dreams
From drifted sands of time.

Johannesburg II is more hard hitting but perhaps too lengthy to type it out here. There are also a selection of very appealing nature poems reflecting on South African scenes. This is followed by Poems of Japan, which are quite playful, but perhaps tending to stereotype for a Western readership. A lengthy poem about "Captain Maru" reads like a Boys Own story for younger readers to be honest, with references to Shoguns and sea voyages,

... Maru, with cuture at his elbow like a wine,
The dictator as host, open but reserved,
Maru to a lady presenting a gift
Tied with white and scarlet, the perfect samurai
With a pattern of blossoms on his sword.
Maru being boyish with a boy, astute,
Learning to treat women in the Western way,
Maru at the self possessed narrowing his eyes -
Could the young resist? The voyage is begun.

The twin screws of ambition drive the hull
And Maru heads the table and the ship,
The abbot of its drilled, monastic life.
With much to teach and learn, he shows
That Maru is commander of himself.
...
Fresh from the bath, to chant the classics,
A deep chested dirge, a stylized howl,
And later silence, to exercise his soul...

...Maru has a week
Before he sails again, and so he turns
Takes train to a quiet place on the coast,
For Maru is of course a family man
And skipper of an ever growing crew
Of little Marus full of national pride.
There only in the evening, on a terrace by the sea,
Is Maru tender, like a girl with dolls
Handling his babies, whose little gowns
Are wreathed already with the blossoming sword.

They don't write 'em like that any more! The Aburaya is more sophisticated but no less caricatured: clever writing and wordplay in the service of no particular end.

A hare lipped hag beneath an ancent gable
Where the phoenix and the peony have yielded to the spider and the bat,
Puts by her broom of twigs, stands up as straight as she is able,
Sniffs, is swallowed by a cave-like doorway, and is followed by the cat.
...

One family has lived here since pre-processional days,
Buddhists of the Zen sect, splitting meditative hairs,
Pleased to be obsequious when the building was too small,
And now it is too big content to stare at a blank wall,
Ready for the retinues of emperors or nobody at all,
...

Remaining poems seem to have an English setting and are whimsical and lightweight. I only paused over one for its social comment, which remains topical:

Vagabond Love

The made love under bridges, lacking beds,
And engines whistled them a bridal song,
A sudden bull's-eye showed them touching heads,
Policemen told them they were doing wrong;
And when they slept on seats in public gardens
Told them, "Commit no nuisance in the park" ;
The beggars, begging the policemen's pardon,
Said they thought as it was after dark -

At this the law grew angry and declared
Outlaws who outrage bye-laws are the devil;
At this the lovers only stood and stared,
As well they might, for they had meant no evil;
"Move on", the law said. To avoid a scene
They moved. And thus we keep our cities clean.

I suppose I shouldn't cite entire poems in a review, but if I don't will they not be lost forever?

[Con Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great new reprint.