‘A deaf-aid loop is provided.’
2 Civic Theatre Subcommittee, ‘Copy for leaflet’.In 1956, Smit wrote to Neethling-Pohl about an Afrikaner volk whose art and literature were deaf to its burning human and national problems. ‘And therefore, we have no right to waste our time and energy on imaginary enemies anymore,’ he wrote:
Our fight with the English in South Africa is long past being a battle – it’s a race, a cultural race, and the best man is going to win […] if we don’t succeed in feeding and shaping the other cultural groups in our country in our image – the Bantu races included – they will do it to us. One of us will end up having to pull the other into his cultural sphere because it’s just another wishful dream to think that so many different cultures and forms of life living next to and mixed in with each other could coexist indefinitely. And while we still have so little of our own to dish up at this point, it seems to me the only other possibility is to then leave our European mark at least […] to dish up European culture, transformed by our own experience and thereby create the atmosphere for our own artists to work and grow.
3 ‘En daarom ook het ons geen reg meer om ons tyd en energie te verspil op denkbeeldige vyande nie. Ons stryd met die Engelse in Suid-Afrika is lankal geen geveg meer nie – dis ’n wedloop, ’n kulturele wedloop, en die beste man gaan wen […] as ons nie die ander kultuurgroepe in ons land – die bantoe-rasse ingeslote – gaan voed, gaan vorm na ons beeld nie, gaan hulle dit met ons doen. Een van ons sal op die ou end noodgedwonge die ander in sy eie kulturele sfeer moet intrek, aangesien dit nog net ’n ander wens-droom is om te dink dat soveel verskillende kulture en lewensvorme op die lange duur langs en deurmekaar kan bly bestaan. En terwyl ons nog self so min het om op hierdie stadium op te dis, lyk vir my die enigste ander moontlikheid om dan ten minste ons Europese stempel af te druk […] vir die mense Europese kultuur, deur ons eie belewing omvorm, op te dis en daarmee terselfdertyd die atmosfeer te skep vir ons eie kunstenaars om te werk en te groei.’ Smit to Neethling-Pohl, 14 February 1956.This was precisely what Smit hoped to achieve with Die Besoek. Yet where Smit’s translations served one agenda, his work as a playwright served another. As fervently nationalistic as Smit was, he was also aware of the pitfalls of nationalism, recognizing only one foundation for a ‘healthy nationalism’, namely individual responsibility:
Every individual, but especially every developed individual, is the father of his volk and therefore fully responsible for what his volk are and do. And the first duty of every developed individual is to live thoughtfully and critically, from day to day, to lead, to curse, to chastise when necessary, not to follow the group blindly and join it in playing ostrich. Because it’s all well and good to be patient and tolerant for the sake of solidarity, but blind solidarity is no longer solidarity – it’s
complicity. Therefore, it has now become high time for us, for me and you and all the others, to fulfil our neglected duty, to become strict and honest – even if it goes hand in hand with misunderstanding and loneliness, with spiritual exile – and to ruthlessly break open the shells within which the Afrikaner is trapped: his self-deception and selfishness, his false sense of victory and megalomania, his materialistic complacency, to name a few. And especially to teach him once again respect for the humanity of others, the only way he will regain respect for his own humanity. For long enough we have been blinded by beautiful ideologies and utopian religions, have trampled and humiliated the people around us because our eyes were focused on mirages in the distance.
4 ‘Elke individu, maar veral elke ontwikkelde individu, is die vader van sy volk en daarom ten volle verantwoordelik vir wat sy volk is en doen. En die eerste plig van elke ontwikkelde individu is om denkend en krities te leef, van dag tot dag, om te lei, te vloek, te kasty as dit nodig is, maar nié om blindelings saam met die groep te loop en saam met hom volstruis te speel nie. Want dis alles goed en wel om geduldig en lydsaam te wees om die samehorigheidsontwil, maar blinde samehorigheid is geen samehorigheid meer nie – dis aandadigheid. Daarom het dit nou hoog tyd geword vir ons, vir mý en jóú en al die ander, om ons versuimde plig na te kom, om streng en eerlik te word – selfs al sou dit met onbegrip gepaard gaan en met eensaamheid, met geestelike ballingskap – en die doppe waarin die Afrikaanse mens gevange sit: sy selfbedrog en selfsug, sy valse oorwinningsroes en grootheidswaan, sy materiële gemaksug, om maar enkeles te noem, genadeloos oop te breek. En hom veral weer eerbied vir die menslikheid van andere te leer, die enigste waardeur hy weer die eerbied vir sy eie menslikheid sal terugvind. Want lank genoeg het ons ons laat verblind deur mooi ideologieë en utopiese godsdienste, het ons die mense om ons vertrap en verneder omdat ons oë in die verte op hersenskimme gerig was.’ Ibid. Emphasis in the original.‘Acts of translation add to our means; we come to incarnate alternative energies and resources of feeling’, George Steiner writes in his influential
After Babel.5 George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 315–6. ‘But we may be mastered and made lame by what we have imported.’
For Smit, these words may ring true in more than one sense. The difficulties he faced as a writer were intimately connected with his success as a translator. As Smit had predicted, answering his own clarion call made his road as a playwright exceedingly lonely. On top of that, he had not only offered state-funded theatres a steady stream of Afrikaans translations of established works in the Western theatre canon, he had also facilitated the illusion that these plays were original Afrikaans works. Little demand remained for his original Afrikaans dramas that challenged and offended the Afrikaner establishment. Smit’s strategy had backfired spectacularly. Instead of translation paving the way for his plays, it provided Afrikaans theatres with a convenient way to avoid them.
~
Figure 8: Bartho Smit in his office at Nasionale Pers, 1967.