A Study of Roy Campbell as a South African modernist poet Alannah Birch Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of D.Litt University of the Western Cape May 2013 Supervisor: Prof. A.N. Parr Abstract Roy Campbell was once a key figure in the South African literary canon. In recent years, his poetry has faded from view and only intermittent studies of his work have appeared. However, as the canon of South African literature is redefined, I argue it is fruitful to consider Campbell and his work in a different light. This thesis aims to re-read both the legend of the literary personality of Roy Campbell, and his prose and poetry written during the period of “high” modernism in England (the 1920s and 1930s), more closely in relation to modernist concerns about language, meaning, selfhood and community. It argues that his notorious, purportedly colonial, “hypermasculine” personae, and his poetic and personal explorations of “selfhood”, offer him a point of reference in a rapidly changing literary and social environment. Campbell lived between South Africa and England, and later Provence and Spain, and this displacement resonated with the modernist theme of “exile” as a necessary condition for the artist. I will suggest that, like the Oxford dandies whom he befriended, Campbell’s masculinist self-styling was a reaction against a particular set of patriarchal traditions, both English and colonial South African, to which he was the putative heir. His poetry reflects his interest in the theme of the “outsider” as belonging to a certain masculinist literary “tradition”. But he also transforms this theme in accordance with a “modernist” sensibility. Keywords: Roy Campbell Wyndham Lewis Voorslag Modernism South African literature Mithraism Spanish Civil War Dandyism Bullfighting Poetry Declaration I declare that “A study of Roy Campbell as a South African modernist poet” is my own work, that it has not been submitted before for any other degree or examination in any other university, and that all the sources I have used or quoted have been acknowledged and referenced in full. Signed: ___________ Date: _____________ Contents Acknowledgements i Preface ii Introduction 1 Chapter One: On the Literary Personality of Roy Campbell 22 Chapter Two: Literary issues and networks in Campbell’s early prose works 58 Chapter Three: The Flaming Terrapin as modernist ‘epic’ 109 Chapter Four: Adamastor. Assertion and ambivalence in the modernist South African lyric 137 Chapter Five: Flowering Reeds, Mithraic Emblems and the Mediterranean turn 172 Conclusion: Roy Campbell and modernism 212 Appendix 1: Poems 223 Bibliography 226 Acknowledgements This thesis began as part of a broader research project on “South African Modernism and Nationbuilding, 1900 – 1950”, which was funded by the NRF in 2003 and 2004, and involved Peter Merrington and Peter Kohler of the UWC English Department. I acknowledge the financial support of the NRF for the preliminary research work done on the project. The Andrew Mellon Foundation granted me an award which gave me teaching relief for six months in 2005. A Fulbright teaching exchange with the University of Michigan in Dearborn, gave me access to the excellent resources at U.M., and to the stimulating company of colleagues there in the Gender Studies department. I am grateful to Professor Lora Lempert for her role in arranging this exchange, and for her hospitality. The University of the Western Cape granted me a six month sabbatical in 2007 and funded some teaching relief in 2010. The Ford Foundation funded a year as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in 2009, which I gratefully acknowledge. I would like to thank Premesh Lalu and other colleagues at the CHR for stimulating seminars and intellectual support during this year. Of the CHR community, Jane Taylor has been especially helpful; she has been kind enough to read draft chapters, and to offer excellent suggestions for further readings and lines of enquiry. My colleagues in the UWC English department have also been supportive, enduring presentations of draft chapters and offering helpful suggestions. In particular, I would like to thank Miki Flockemann for her imaginative and interesting input on Antony Akerman’s play, Cheryl Ann Michael and Meg van der Merwe, who have been generous with ideas, insights and books throughout the course of the project, and Fiona Moolla for kindly proofreading the final document. My warm thanks go to David Bunn for proposing Roy Campbell as my thesis topic, and for many other interests he has inspired. I have been very lucky to have two excellent supervisors. Peter Merrington’s extraordinary knowledge of South African literature and its wider context was helpful and inspiring in the early stages of the project. More recently, Tony Parr has contributed his deep knowledge of literature to it. Tony’s patience with my laborious process, his meticulous editorial eye and acute questions have kept me focussed on the task, and given me confidence in tackling it. His assistance and support have been invaluable in every way. My love and thanks to Peter and Lucy for being their inimitable selves, and to my family, Kate, Lindsay, Simon, Jane, Lexi, Pedro, Archie, Tasmin, Anya and Sophy, for all kinds of moral and practical support, including childcare. Anya Kohler’s work as an entirely overqualified “research assistant” has been stellar, and has spared me many hours of ferreting about in libraries and databases. My sister Lexi spurred my interest in the Campbells’ life in Spain, and she and her friends, Rosalina Barber in particular, helped me to gain some access and insight into it. I have had support from a number of friends throughout the writing process, but I would like to thank Lindsay Clowes in particular for her unflagging willingness to provide wise and practical advice. i Preface In September 2003 I visited my sister Lexi at her home in Sella, a small mountainside village in Spain. Sella is a hot, dusty ancient village, set mid-way up a mountain of terraced farms. These are irrigated by aquaducts dating back to Moorish times, and produce almonds, figs, grapes, and olives; the classical fruits of the dry Mediterranean. The mountain water in Sella has become a valuable commodity, and on a Sunday afternoon, you could sit on the small retaining wall on the hairpin bend of the narrow mountain road, and watch city people from nearby Alicante filling large canteens of water from the public source at the ancient Lavado. From Sella, it was a half hour drive to the coastal village of Altea. I had decided in that same year that my doctoral thesis would be on Roy Campbell, and it so happened that Altea was home to the Campbell family from 1934-1935. Lexi’s friend Rosalina Barber, an historian, a native of Altea, and a person clearly loved by all who met her, took me on a research trip around the town. Rosalina spoke Catalan, the local dialect, and with my directions to the two Campbell abodes, drawn from Peter Alexander’s biography, she strode up and down the dusty streets on the outskirts of the village, trying to match the contemporary place names to the historic ones. We spoke to a postman on a bicycle; to a man sweeping up the carob pods from his driveway, and to some of her family friends as we went by. I understood not a word, but stood back and watched. We found the Fonda Ronda, a hotel which was temporary home to the Campbells on their arrival in Altea. Then we discovered that the district borders had been changed. Nonetheless, we located the first Campbell home – a small one roomed cottage semi-detached on both sides to three others, positioned immediately in front of a chalk mine dump. The woman who opened the door told us that her husband had worked on the mine, but had developed severe lung disease, and would spend the rest of his life on a ventilator. They had lived in the house since 1952, and had not heard of the Campbells. She directed us, however, to a house on the central square belonging to Pepita la Violina – a woman who had hosted many of the artists and writers who had come to Altea over the years. Sadly, we never met Pepita. We walked over to her house, but no-one was at home. Strolling around the square, we looked over a low wall into a garden in which a group of people were chatting. Rosalina leant over the wall and enquired about Pepita. An elderly woman came over to speak to us. Rosalina explained our mission: to find out if anyone remembered a South African poet who had lived in Altea in the 1930s. “Ah Roy!” she exclaimed. “Y las dos hijas, Teresa y Anna. How are they?” Paca la Zurda, in her mid-80s at the time we met her, had been the Campbell’s maid as a girl of 15 in 1934. She had helped Mary do her hair in the mornings; she remembered Roy’s favourite food – arroz amb frisole (rice with beans). They had been the first foreigners in Altea, to her knowledge. She knew they had moved to Toledo from Altea, and she brought out a magazine with a well-known image of Roy on horseback at a festival. We chatted about the civil war in which her sweetheart, a Republican, had been killed. She remembered the Padre, Father Gregorio, who had confirmed the Campbells. Contrary to Peter Alexander, she claimed that he had not been killed by the Republicans, but had lived a long and good life.