Principales indicadores utilizados en la CNTR

Grove draws from Bosman and has parallels to his short fiction in her unremitting eye for the foibles of her small-world characters. She, perhaps, more so than De Vries and Aucamp, has removed the rustic-gilt from her protraits of the rural world and, in this regard, shares Bosman's penetration of the areas of pretence, hypocrisy, and lack of vision in the society she describes.^

What is significant about Bosman's short fiction which takes the Marico-locale as its basis is precisely the fact that Bosman's works were appearing some ten to. thirty years before the stories of these Afrikaner writers, and before the emergence of a critical tradition in Afrikaans short-prose fiction. Part of the explanation as to why this is so must lie both in the fact that Bosman was an English-speaking South African having immediate contacts with the views of liberal English-speakers, (he published in their journals, for instance), and because of his

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own highly intelligent and astute nature.

X Bosman's Place in Contemporary Literature and his links with Black South African Culture

Bosman's stories have close affinities with the traditions of both South African English and Afrikaans literature. In the case of the English tradition, as I have pointed out, BosmanTs works have acted as a kind of bridge between the literature of an older group and a new generation of writers. As regards Afrikaans literature, his fiction rather serves as the starting point to a self-critical approach to Afrikaner history and society; here Bosman was pointing the way ahead to young Afrikaner writers who would come to question through their fiction the orthodox traditions and values which Afrikanerdom had passed down to them.

The perceptiveness in Bosmanfs writings carries them beyond the years in which they were written. Both within his essays and his short fiction there is an energetic quality, a kind of exploration of area which would begin to concern writers of the next three decades in South Africa. In his short fiction Bosman shares a great deal with emergent European and American story writers of that time. There is a concern with the craft of writing, which is often treated in the subject-matter of the stories: ' Splendours from Ramoutsa', 'Mafeking Road', 'Local Colour', ‘The Selons-Rose', and ’Old Transvaal Story’ are examples of this. There is the projection of the narrator as a

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devious, playful individual, who is constantly playing with the reader's credulity: one is never quite sure when Bosman or his narrators are being serious. In short, there is a multiple layering within the fictional text which suggests the complex response to the social reality being described. If one were to think of a contemporary of Bosman's who was displaying these qualities in his fiction, then the Irish writer, Flann O'Brien, is a good example.

In his essays Bosman's statements about the need for the creation of an African consciousness and for a commitment of South Africans to the continent sound strikingly similar to utterances of black political leaders and to the writings of cultural figures such as Ezekiel Mphahlele. Consider these two examples, which could very easily be construed to be the statements of a South African black person committed to a shared community involvement in the country and continent. In an essay entitled 'Rock Paintings of the Bushman', written in 194-2, Bosman turns to the notion of patriotism:

As there is a war on today, it is perhaps not inappropriate to utter a few well-chosen remarks on patriotism. When we speak of South Africa we seem to forget that we really are dealing with some part of the actual continent of Africa. Our patriotism, at its strongest, is an emotional attachment to some section or other of the inhabitants of a certain expanse of terra firraa. But it is a patriotism that is little disturbed by an African consciousness. Our patriotism is hardly more native of the soil than is our culture: they are both exclusive and the part they exclude is Africa.

For this reason nearly all South African art and literature is, culturally, thin. To describe or depict Africa is not to convey her message. Similarly, our patriotism would be greatly strengthened if it were to undergo a genuinely

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African orientation; if we grew to accept the fact that Africa is different, and that we are part of her wonders. In his essay, ’London', Bosman wrote: 'As is well known, I don’t believe that there is anything that Europe can teach us. Rather do I believe that Africa has a vast amount of knowledge to

83 impart to a cocksure, because decaying, Europe.’

In Bosman’s life and in his works there is often a fascinating kinship between this white English-speaking South African who regularly chose an Afrikaner milieu for his works and black South African culture. His essays indicate how very close Bosman’s thoughts on South African society and culture are to the statements and views of black South Africans committed to an open, democratic society. I have noted the interesting parallels, perhaps purely coincidental, but nevertheless not to be ignored, between Bosman's use of the Marico and his treatment of history as a kind of moral fable with the works of two black novelists, Sol Plaatje and Peter Abrahams. It is important to consider as well how the central thrust and the content of his short fiction is towards an egalitarian society. The butt of his satire is more often than not the short-sightedness either of certain of his Afrikaner characters or of their government; and, this myopia is often intimately bound up with a failure to relate on equal and decent terms with their black countrymen. Bosman's short fiction points to the roots of the breakdown in social relations between black and white in South Africa, and in so doing suggests a way out of the terrible impasse which had been reached during the final years of his l i f e . ^

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XI Conclusion

In the case of Herman Bosman, there was a close, if not inseparable, link between his life on the one hand, and his essays, novels, and his short fiction on the other. In this study of his short fiction there has been a deliberate blending of all of these elements. Bosman’s reputation as one of South Africa's best writers is correctly made to rest, by most critical observers of his work, largely upon his short fiction. Most critical assessments of his short"fiction conclude with glowing terms of praise for a masterly writer, who maintained a deftness of touch and a fine sense of humour throughout his short-prose oeuvre. This conclusion is no different. Bosman certainly is an author of the highest quality. His stories are among the very best produced in South Africa. Where this conclusion departs from the established norm is that I feel Bosman’s short fiction must not simply be seen as humorous, well-wrought, and inventive products of a skilful writer, but also must be regarded as some of the finest, pioneering analyses of South African society in fictional form. Bosman's particular use of a rural setting, local forms of language, backwoods narrators, and traditional tales have worked together to create a distinctive - one is tempted to say, unique - kind of South African short fiction which has a significance and a life far beyond the years in which the stories were written. One has to recall that along with the literary excellence of Bosman’s short fiction there is an underlying commitment to the country and

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indeed, to the continent. His short fiction displays a concern with the overriding national issues of South Africa; issues which themselves are of major significance to the wider African

society.

Herman Bosman is a particularly interesting figure in the course of South Africa literary history. He straddles the English and Afrikaans literary traditions both in his use of a particular kind of English which has close affinities with Afrikaans and with the involvement his short fiction has with the world of the Afrikaners. He also occupies a fascinating position in relation to the black South African culture. This becomes apparent not only in his statements about South African society which have marked similarities with those of black political and cultural figures, but also how he built, within his fiction, a critique of the cruel and unnecessary barriers which exist between white and black people in the country. Finally, it is worth recalling his view of South African history and how he depicted that view

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in his short fiction, as a kind of moral fable; and how this has affinity with the way in which certain black South African writers treat the past, both as a record of instances of humiliations and of proud resistance, as well as a means of directing one's present efforts for the creation of a better future.

The form of Bosman's short-prose works poses an interesting kind of bridge between more than one frame of reference. His use of story-forms which are so closely related to rural realism and an

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evooation of the past which often appears distanced from the cut and thrust of contemporary events is beguiling. Bosman*s short fiction uses traditional storytelling modes and locales - the fireside tale, for example - to make a transition from the past to the present, and often, in his most brilliant works such as 'Feat of Memory', 'Man to Man', and 'Day of Wrath', to the future•

Bosman conceived of himself neither as an author writing exclusively for English-speaking South Africans or for Afrikaners, for whites or for blacky his works incorporated and were directed at the broad South African audience. During his lifetime this kind of optimistic outlook on South African society was still a viable possibility, yet in the years which have followed his death (in 1951), the notion of a unified South Africa with a homogenous South African literary audience has become more a dream than a reality. The following chapter deals with the main body of short fiction in English by white South Africans which has been written in the new troubled era already dawning towards the end of Bosman's life. I shall begin with the background of this fiction because, although elements of it existed before this period, its full import has become increasingly apparent since 1 9 4 8.

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NOTES

1. Bosman, Herman G.: ’The Standard Theatre' an essay in A Cask of Jerepigo which is part of The Collected Works of nerman Charles Bosman (2 volumes), . compiled by Lionel Abrahams,

^uonannesburg, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1981, Vol.2, p.440). 2. Bosman, H.C.s 'A visit to the Zoo’ an essay in Cask of Jerepigo. Collected works. Vol.2, p.439*

3. Bosman,H.C.: 'Simian Civilization' an essay in A Cask of Jerepigo, Collected Works, Vol.2, p.550.

4. Abrahams, Lionel: Foreword to the Collected Works entitled, ’Bosman’s genius - the roles and the riddles’, p p . 14 & 17, Vol.1. In his essay, 'The Poetry of Elizabeth Eybers' (Trek, March 1949, pp. 26 - 27), Bosman remarks: ’...I can’t stand anything as dull as the declaration of an obvious truth: I very much prefer a lie, even.'

5. In an essay, 'A View from Within. An Afrikaner looks at Herman Bosman', W.A. De Klerk traces how the Afrikaans language and Afrikaner history impinged on Bosman's thinking and writing. (See pp. 166 - 172.) At one point De Klerk remarks: 'What was more natural than that this man, who carried in his "collective unconscious" - the special dispositions inherited from one-H ancestors - the memory of centuries of revolt, should now experience something of its pain and smart*. This essay appears in nernard Sach's memoir, Herman Charles Bosman As I Knew Him,

(Johannesburg, Dial Press, 1974, pp. 157 - 174).

6. Bosman, H.C,: ’Aspects of South African Literature' in Herman Charles Bosman - Uncollected Essays, compiled by Valerie nosenberg, (Cape Town, Timmins Publishers, 1981, p.99). This essay first appeared in the journal Trek, September 1948.

7. Ibid., p. 101.

8. Bosman, H.C.: Willemsdorp in The Collected Works. Vol.1, p. 552. The image of men taking up the Transvaal eartn anu crumbling it in their hands is poignantly used by Bosman in his story, 'Funeral Earth' (from the Unno Dust collection), wnere this action similarly evokes the bonds of men to the country. It is a significant point that the men who carry out this action in ’Funeral Earth' are both Boers and black tribesmen. Bosman points to what he feels is the fated kinship between Boer and black in this story; and this theme is repeated in many other stories, as I am about to demonstrate.

9* Biographical accounts of Bosman are given in: Abrahams, Lionel: Foreword to the The Collected Works, o p . cit., pp.1 -

19.; Blignaut, Aegidius Jean: My Friend Herman Charles Bosman, (Johannesburg, Perskor, 1980); Sachs, Bernard: Herman Charles Bosman as I Knew Him, (Johnnesburg, Dial Press, 1974); Gray, Stephen: Biograpical note on H.C. Bosman in Southern African -uiterature: an introduction. (Cape Town, David Philip, 1979); Rosenberg, Valerie: Sunflower to the Sun, (Cape Town, Human & Rousseau, 1976).

10. Bosman's geniality is attested to in every biographical record of his life. There are no accounts I have read which dispute this feature of the man.

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11. Bosman, H*C,: 'The Home-Coming1 (in the Unto Dust collection (1963) in The Collected Works, Vol.1, p. 188).

12. The essay 'Marico Revisited' appeared in South African Opinion, November 194-4-. It appears in A Cask of Jerepigo (The Collected Works, Vol.2, pp. 524- - 527).

13. See the following essays, in particular, which indicate Bosman's partiality to Shakespeare and the early American prose writers: 'Innocents Abroad', 'Humour and Wit', and 'Stephen Leacock1 (in A_ Cask of Jerepigo in The Collected Works. Vol.2, pp. 520 - 523» 589 - 592, 593 - 594-* respectively), 'The Genius of Shakespeare' and 'Edgar Allan Poe' (in the Uncollected Essays volume, op. cit.)

14-. Bosman, H.C.: 'The Genius of Shakespeare' (from South African Opinion, September 194-5* in Uncollected Essays, p.8 6). 15. Hutchings, Geoffrey: 'Herman Charles Bosman: short stories'

(in Perspectives on South African Fiction, Sarah Christie, Geoffrey Hutchings, and Don Maclennan (Johannesburg, Ad Donker, 1980, p. 85). Also, see Hutchings's article: 'A Master of Gossip. A note on Herman Bosman' (in the London Magazine Vol.10, No.9, December 1970, pp. 4-4- - 51).

In this quotation from Hutchings's essay on Bosman his notions of 'literature preceding the act of yarn-telling is suspect, as is his cavalier statement about 'a class-conscious literature like that of England' suppressing the yarn-tradition. Nevertheless, there is much of value in the parallels he draws between Bosman's use of the yarn and that in the early American prose tradition. His description of 'the great cultural cauldron of the United States' comprised of different national groups parallels, though demographically on a smaller scale, the melange of different ethnic communities and cultures in South Africa.

16. I am indebted to Stephen Gray's Introduction to his Selected Stories edition of Bosman*s work, (Cape Town, Human & Rousseau, 1 98 0), for much of the information discussed in the last page. See, Gray's Introduction, pp. 9 - 10.

17. In 1980, Ad. Donker, Johannesburg, published a selection of many of the earlier and a few more recent Ruiter stories under the title, Dead End Road.

18. Blignaut's 'Campfires' is reprinted in the Dead End Road collection of 1 9 8 0.

19. Bosman, H.C.: Preface to the collection The Hottentot's God by Blignaut (1931); reprinted in Dead End Road(1980). pp. 105 - 106

.

20. It is interesting that these five young men - Plomer, Campbell, Van der Post, Bosman, and Blignaut - chose Afrikaans titles for their two literary journals suggesting the kinship they felt as English-speaking South Africans with Afrikaner- South Africa. See, the chapter 'The Custody of History - The Touleier'in My Friend Herman Charles Bosman by Blignaut, for a first-hand account of the life and times of these endeavours op.

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21. Nkosi, Lewis: 'Herman Charles Bosman: In Search of the True Afrikaners!' (South African Authors (No. 3)» South Africa: Information and Analysis Paris, International Association of Cultural Freedom, September 1969, p. 1).

22. Blignaut, A. Jean: My Friend Herman Charles Bosman* op* cit., p. 4-1 •

23* Bosman, H.C.: 'Edgar Allan Poe' (in the .journal Trek* February 1948, and this essay appears in the Uncollected Essays* p. 97).

There is an interesting verbal parallel - and one rich in significance - between Bosman's question - 'Are we going to write English or are we going to write South African?' - and an expression of Richard Rive's, in the preface to his autobiography, Writing Black of 1981* Rive observes there: 'The title Writing Black is deliberately chosen in order to focus attention on my experiences as a South African who is still voteless because of the colour of my skin. I look forward to the day when it will not be necessary for writing in my country to be tied to ethnic labels, when the only criteria will be writing well and writing South African.' The difference between

these two statements - which were made, one at the point of South Africa's overt commitment to apartheid policies and the other, thirty three years later in the grim history of that State policy, indicate precisely how social divisions have altered the entire cultural map of South Africa, and how South African culture must now be viewed in terms of this social breakdown.

24* Ibid.* pp. 97 -98.

25. Bosman, H.C. 'Profile: Sarel Marais' (in Trek* October 1947, p. 17).

26. Bosman, H.C.: 'An Indigenous South African Culture is Unfolding' (in South African Opinion* April 1944, p. 17. This passage is also quoted in Valerie Rosenberg's Sunflower to the Sun* op. cit.* p. 1 6 8).

27. Bosman, H.C.: 'The Old Afrikaans Writers I r (in South African Opinion* January 1946, Vol.2 No. 11, p. 18).

28. Bosman, H.C. 'S.A. Novel Competition' (in South African Opinion * July 1946, Vol.3 No. 5, p. 26).

Also, see Bosman's essay 'The South African Short Story Writer', (Trek* October 1948, pp. 24 - 25),in which he strongly makes the case for an annual publication of the best new South African stories; this, in order to encourage South African short story writers.

29. Gray, Stephen: 1Bosman's Marico Allegory: a study in topicality' (in English Studies in Africa* Vol. 20, No. 2 1977, p. 83). Doris Lessing, it must be indicated, was already in exile when her first published works appeared in Britain,

30. Although Anthony Blond of London published the Unto Dust collection in 1 9 6 3, and this received favourable reveiws, as for example David Wright's reveiw in the London Magazine of July of that year, neither this collection nor any other has been issued since then in England.

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31. Bosman, H.C.: ’Splendours from Ramoutsa’ (from Mafeking Road (1947) in The Collected Works. Vol. 1, pp. 138 - 139).

32. Bosman, H.C.: ’Local Colour’ (from Selected Stories (ed. Gray) in The Collected Works, Vol. 2, p. 379). ’Local Colour’, a Voorkamer piece, appeared in The Forum in May 1950.

33. See Bosman’s own carefully noted points about the Marico history in his two essays, ’Marico Revisited’ and ’Reminiscences' (in A Cask of Jerepigo. The Collected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 524- - 532.).

34- Couzens, Tim: Introduction to Mhudi - An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago by Sol T. Plaatje,

(Johannesburg, Quagga Press, 1975, p. 14).

See, Mzilikazi’s prophetic fable in this novel, pp. 153 - 154- It is perhaps not insignificant to note that both Plaatje and Bosman shared an enormous admiration for Shakespeare, and to remark that Shakespeare's own use of history in his dramas was often closely related to a moral purpose. Plaatje translated five of Shakespeare's plays into Sechuana.

35. See Gray's paper, 'Bosnian's Marico Allegory’, loc. cit.. pp. 87 and 93.

36. Nkosi: op. cit., p. 2. In a similar vein, Geoffrey Hutchings writes of Bosman's Marico short fiction: 'It would be a mistake to see this as an attempt at a comprehensive portrait. It remains very closely bound to a small particular group in a particulr place. The farmers of the Groot Marico are a part of