Charl-Pierre Naudé Inisiasie
Dit was op een van daardie dae wanneer,
so meen sommige mense, niks gebeur nie.
Niks het op die hoewe beweeg nie
behalwe onbespeurbaar, die aarde.
In die verte was die smeulende geweerlope
van ’n steengroef se gruishope.
Ek onthou hoe helder die venster
se skaduwee op die vloer lê;
die beklemmende slaap daarna:
realiteit en droom is twee emmers
van dieselfde waterdraer.
In die middag en my droom se gedeelde halflig
moes ek heidense maskers aanpas,
oorspronklikes van my eie vervalste gesig.
Die kussing se rooster was in my gesig afgedruk soos vlerke,
toe ek wakker skrik en vaskyk teen my muurplakkaat
van ’n Afrika-gesig met diep inisiasiemerke.
Dit gedicht was onderdeel van een tijdens Poetry International 2000
georganiseerd ‘vertaalproject’, waarin verschillende Nederlandstalige
auteurs een aantal gedichten van
Charl-Pierre Naudé
uit het afrikaans vertaalden. De gedichten en hun vertalingen verschenen in
december 2000 in literair tijdschrift Tirade.
Vertaling door Willem van Toorn
© 2001 Charl-Pierre Naudé / De Gekooide Roos
Over Charl-Pierre Naudé
NOTES TOWARDS A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
I was born end 1958 in a small town in the heartland of the Eastern Cape — a half-fish with a
sixties hairstyle, two years too early. I suppose I could not wait to argue with my parents.
I grew up in East London, a wind-swept coastal town built on the bones of the
Xhosa empire and the broken dreams of the Great Depression — and prone to religious revivals,
which didn't seem to help.
I went to Stellenbosch University to study Philosophy and Classics, then spent
the eighties "underground" running away from the South African Defence Force that kept on calling
me up to fight a civil war — not an unusual fate for someone of my generation in South Africa. Die
Nomadiese Oomblik was published by Tafelberg in 1995 — and awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize in
1997.
I was made a poet by the melancholic ambiguity of Cape Town and the Eastern
Cape. But Is came to Johannesburg at the beginning of the nineties to be swept away by the current
of change and to be poisoned by all the metals in the ground here. As a journalist I made a name
of sorts as film analyst.
Being a poet in a country with nine languages and several immigrant ones while
half of the population cannot read, is like putting holy communion on the tongues of a many-headed
monster, with one small piece of bread. Already I have only one hand left. It is this hand I call
Afrikaans, no matter how much it changes.