Ingrid Jonker: to Escape from the Concealing Image
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Ingrid Jonker: To Escape from the Concealing Image Lesley Marx, July 2019 “She was difficult and complicated, but enchanting.” Suzanne Fox1 Opdrag (1999) In his eloquent homage to Ingrid Jonker, Jack Cope writes that “[n]o group or category, no academically cold classification can be fitted to her. Ingrid Jonker escapes from the concealing image and will not be taken possession of or harnessed to any creed or cause save those of poetry and life”(1966, 12). But of course the attempt has been made to harness her, attempts rapidly accelerated after Nelson Mandela’s landmark tribute to her during his inaugural address to the first democratic South African parliament in 1994: The time will come when our nation will honour the memory of all the sons, the daughters, the mothers, the fathers, the youth and the children who, by their thoughts and deeds, gave us the right to assert with pride that we are South Africans, that we are Africans and that we are citizens of the world. 1 The certainties that come with age tell me that among these we shall find an Afrikaner woman who transcended a particular experience and became a South African, an African and a citizen of the world. Her name is Ingrid Jonker. She was both a poet and a South African. She was both an Afrikaner and an African. She was both an artist and a human being. In the midst of despair, she celebrated hope. Confronted with death, she asserted the beauty of life. In the dark days when all seemed hopeless in our country, when many refused to hear her resonant voice, she took her own life. To her and others like her, we owe a debt to life itself. To her and others like her, we owe a commitment to the poor, the oppressed, the wretched and the despised. (http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/1994/940524_sona.htm Accessed April, 2019) Mandela’s tribute offers an image of someone who encompassed several identities, personal, artistic and political, although the poem he chose to read signalled the centrality of the political and his description of her suicide implies that this was an action born of political despair.2 In the sardonic asssessment of Ryk Hattingh and Jana Cilliers’ complex, layered dramatic monologue Opdrag, Jonker was “[v]olksbesit in die ancien regime en nou, danksy Nelson Mandela, volksbesit in die nuwe bestel” (1999, 16).3 The title of the play, Opdrag, translates variously as ‘assignment,’ ‘mission,’ ‘mandate’ or ‘dedication’ and Hattingh proceeds to dramatise two quests: how to open up new possibilites for the actor, Jana Cilliers; and how to “stage” Ingrid Jonker. The play starts with Jana thinking of her past performances and how she wants to explore other possibilities. Her thoughts fold, with a cryptic blend of fascination, scepticism and delicacy, into the last words that Ingrid Jonker wrote in her diary: Nou soek ek nie meer na nice scripts nie. Ek gaan nou begin doen wat ek wil doen. Daar’s ’n verskil. ’n Goeie script sit jou daar, en jy kan nie sê nee, eintlik het ek iets anders in gedagte gehad nie. Sien. Ek wil op ’n plek wees waar ek kan beweeg. ’n Stukkie tyd, ’n spasie waarbinne ek iets kan doen, iets kan mooi maak. Vir myself. Om lekker te voel daaroor. In jou stilte. Weggebêre. Blykbaar was haar laaste woorde in ’n dagboek of ’n ding: stilte stilte stilte. As jy ’n ding drie keer sê. Hoe dit dan ernstig klink. Asof jy dit regtig bedoel. Maar so op die papier… Stilte stilte stilte… (1).4 The play is notable for several reasons: at one level a reflexive exploration of how to narrate and perform the life and art of Jonker the poet and Cilliers the actress, the play speculates with wit and irony on whether a film should be made about Jonker, or an opera or, in a comic eureka moment, a multimedia production. While the life of Cilliers is deftly woven into the play, it also offers several astute comments on the fate of Jonker and the ways in which her multiple selves have been harnessed. It lists, for example a catalogue of epithets and one-liners used to describe her by those who moved in her world and have recorded their memories: “…die kinders het wild grootgeword by die ouma/sy’t ’n bietjie ’n moeder uit almal gemaak/die vader was 2 taamlik bars teenoor hulle/…kon nooit genoeg liefde vind nie... uitstekende moeder/onprakties heerlik onprakties… (10-11). Then there is the satirical account of who donated how much to the Ingrid Jonker Prize after her death, intimating the economic value of her memory: “…Jack Cope, R14… Veertien rand. Veertien? Hoekom nie tien of vyftien nie? Veertien is mos nie ’n getal nie. Onafgerond… Uys Krige R48…Agt en veertig! ’n Ewe niksseggende getal. Hierdie twee mense in haar lewe, mentors, rolmodelle…Mans…Veertien. Agt en veertig…” (15). Through a variety of mood shifts and scattered images of Jonker’s life the sustained quest of the play balances on two concepts “to do something” or to “create” something with the poet’s life: “Tussen doen en skep” (1). The former suggests an instrumental approach, the latter a more complex evolution that must engage with the subject intimately and innovatively, recalling Coleridge’s lines on the secondary imagination, an echo of the primary: “It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re- create….It is essentially vital even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead” (1817;1975: 167). The ultimate goal of the play “is om by haar uit te kom. By haar.” This objective is “[n]ie so maklik nie” (3) and yet, by the end of the play, with its tentative, “Mens sou iets oor haar kan doen,” (21) a great deal has already been done and also, we might add, created. We have not only learned something about Jonker, but this knowledge has been framed by a sophisticated awareness of its own mediation and partiality. On the one hand, something new has been added to what may be accomplished on stage for and by an actor; the theatre has been refreshed. On the other, ways of seeing Ingrid Jonker have been challenged and revitalised. So, for example, even as the references to, and recitals of, Jonker’s poetry remind us of her considerable gift, the play eschews sentimentalising her. Two instances are especially striking. Firstly, there is a segue from a description of the prophetic power of “Die Kind” in that moment of Mandela’s reading of the poem (an appropriate climax, Jana/the speaker/the actor proposes, for a theatrical presentation of Jonker’s life and work), to a caustic reminder of Jonker’s own controversial motherhood. Die Kind…Die gedig, sou jy kon sê, wat haar famous gemaak het. Die Kind wat ‘n man geword het en…deur Afrika trek. En die man word ’n reus wat deur die wêreld reis. En dan die punchline: Sonder ’n pas. Profeties, om die minste te se… Want hier is die kind skielik teenwoordig in die parlement. Op die lippe van ‘n man met messiasstatus onder die reuse. Jy sou Die Kind tot laaste bêre. As encore selfs. Jy sou… As jy nie geweet het nie. Ek praat nou van haar kind, van Simone. As jy nie geweet het Ingrid Jonker het ‘n dogter gehad nie. As jy nie geweet het sy het geslaap toe mammie besluit het sy wil nie meer leef nie en die water ingevaar… What a way to wake up! Nou weet jy dit… en jy het self kinders, en jy kyk so mooi na hulle en jy’t nie tyd om te soek na nuwe definisies vir die liefde nie. Poetiese verklarings vir hierdie verlange van jou nie. Nie tyd om emosionele besluite te neem oor jouself nie. Madame… kan nie help om kwaad te word nie. Vir haar en haar opgefokte lewe. Al daai selfsug, ydelheid… Al haar shit. (16) The perspective on Jonker in this passage is marked by critical distance and a truculent pragmatism, effectively underscored by the language mixing that refuses a stable linguistic evocation of its subject.5 3 The second moment in Opdrag that eradicates sentimentality is the climax finally selected by the speaker/actor/playwright. It offers the provocative suggestion that Jonker’s prophesying of her own death, especially in “Ontvlugting,” found its realisation in her death as performance. After wondering what Jonker would have written today had she not “walked into the sea,” the speaker/actor suggests that, under the sign of prophecy, the desire for death enabled the poem, that writing and dying inhabit each other: Sou sy geskryf het wat sy geskryf het as sy nie in die see ingeloop het nie? … Die god wat jou geskep het uit die wind sodat my smart in jou volmaaktheid vind: My lyk lê uitgespoel in wier en gras op al die plekke waar ons eenmaal was Een van die eertse gedigte wat sy geskryf het. Amazing, sy het haar eie dood voorspel. Die daad by die woord gevoeg. My lyk lê uitgespoel in wier en gras op al die plekke waar ons eenmaal was Jy skryf dit neer want jy het dit kwansuis sien gebeur. En ’n paar jaar later loop jy in die see in en… jy verdrink en… jou lyk spoel uit… Miskien nou nie letterlik gedrapeer in seewier nie, maar naby genoeg. Dis performance. Jy kyk, jy skryf neer, en jy perform dit. Dis wat dit is. En Madame KAN perform.