The Great Soul, André Brink, has died leaving a rich and revered legacy as teacher, as critic, and, above all, as creative writer. Grahamstown formed the backdrop to these for a not inconsiderable time.
The Great Soul, André Brink, has died leaving a rich and revered legacy as teacher, as critic, and, above all, as creative writer. Grahamstown formed the backdrop to these for a not inconsiderable time.
Born at Vrede on May 29, 1935 (the eldest son of a magistrate father and a mother who was a writer of children’s books and teacher of English) his childhood was marked by the frequency with which his father was transferred from town to town.
He spent some time at boarding school and matriculated with the highest marks in the then Transvaal Province. By that time he had regularly been published in publications for children and had written, at the age of 13, a novel which was turned down as too risqué.
He had a brilliant career as a student at the University of Potchefstroom, majoring in both English and Afrikaans and Nederlands, with minors in French (a language he spoke fluently) and history – a subject providing the material for some of his best novels.
The two Master’s Degrees, one in Afrikaans on NP van Wyk Louw and Shakespeare and the other a trailblazer on the poetry of Guy Butler, showed his early interest and skill in both languages.
During this time he kept the pot boiling with a myriad of short stories for popular magazines under a variety of pseudonyms and by the end of the 1950s had had a play and three novels published in the traditional realistic mode of Afrikaans literature.
In these some of his great themes of the future were discernible: love; the woman as the significant other (but also as symbolic, even archetypal, figure); talented, highly individualistic men on a mission for truth and authenticity, as well as politics and the use of history to explore contemporary politics.
The telling of stories has always been central to him, which included a fascination with the way in which stories are told. By now married to Estelle Brink, a talented botanist, the couple left for France where André was to read for a Ph.D.
France proved an almost overwhelming experience of Damascene proportions: existentialism, the nouvelle roman, student unrest, the sexual revolution.
From this came his first hesitant modernist work, Caesar, a play in verse.
The rest is history: the great Sestiger was born and his clear voice became the voice of Afrikaans literature of the 1960s with works such as Lobola vir die lewe and Die ambassadeur (which gave away so much inside information on the South African embassy in Paris that it had to be moved to new premises).
It was at this moment that the great Professor Rob Antonissen, foremost literary critic and literary historian, known in Afrikaans literary circles as the Oracle of Grahamstown, asked André to come to Grahamstown.
He loved it: he earned ₤4 (R8) half of which went to paying their room and board, leaving him ₤2 with which to buy books. Always youthful looking, he was once confronted by a sales lady at the CNA bookshop who demanded to know, “Does Daddy know you spend so much on books?”
Here the legendary and inspired teacher was born, a teacher who not only had the ability to make information manageable, but also attractive, even desirable.
Brink’s teaching was not only marked with passion and inspiration, but was always informed by his extensive knowledge of literature, fine art, history and music.
He was known for his quick and ample response to any work received from students and his inspiring mentorship for postgraduates and young writers.
During this time he also became the foremost literary critic in Afrikaans and his regular and informed book reviews in the Sunday newspaper Rapport and his extensive research articles became essential reading and led to important chronicles of South African and international literature, ideas and trends.
Grahamstown was also the great literary laboratory for Brink. A hard and consistent worker, some of his very best plays and especially novels were conceived and written here.
After the “existential phase” of his writing in the 60s, his great political novels followed in the 1970s: Looking on darkness, Rumours of rain, A Dry White Season.
These works marked a new method in his writing where they were conceived and written in both Afrikaans and English, making him a truly South African writer.
It was during this time that I arrived in Grahamstown and was privileged to be, at times, privy to some of these creative bouts.
Brink did me the great honour of dedicating A Chain of Voices to me.
These works were not only concerned with politics, but came from a deep and well considered concern with the lapse of justice and truth in apartheid South Africa.
He paid a high price for this, as his mail was intercepted, his telephone tapped and he was harassed by the regime’s security police. In return he captured the imagination of the world as a talented and brave writer.
Some of the world’s greatest literary prizes and awards came his way and his beautiful home in Market Street (now the Cock House) became the a destination for some of the greatest minds of our time.
After majority rule was achieved, Brink remained a figure of conscience by speaking out against corruption.
In 1980 Brink became the head of Afrikaans and Netherlandic Studies at Rhodes University.
He introduced the course on Modern Fiction at the university in which some of the best teachers at Rhodes give an introduction to literature and world writing.
In 1990 he was appointed to the Department of English at UCT, where he also taught creative writing.
An ever evolving process, his writings became concerned with gender (as a male feminist) and with the moving to a more postmodernist aesthetic (for example in his great novel, On the Contrary).
Brink’s passing at almost 80 years of age brings to a close a great and creative oeuvre.
Dr Anton Brink, André’s eldest son and his family still live in Grahamstown and as a highly talented painter he continues the tradition of Grahamstown as a special place for some very special people.
* Tim Huisamen is Head of Afrikaans and Netherlandic Studies, School of Languages, Rhodes University
