André Brink

A few weeks ago Nigel Beale interviewed André in our home in Cape Town.

I met Andre Brink recently at his home in Cape Town. (His lovely young wife Karina greeted me at the door and led me into his book-lined study. Before entering the house however, I encountered this in the garden:) [photo left]. Once seated we talked mostly about his life, about his father, about love and duty, justice, Apartheid, inter-racial sex, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer; his love affair with poet Ingrid Jonker, her suicide, her poem ‘Plant me a Tree,’ English as his second language, Picasso, recommended wines and staying in South Africa, despite his nephew having been shot dead by intruders last year at his home just north of Johannesburg.

To listen to the audio interview click here.

Memoir offers a textured narrative of a life less ordinary lived to the full

Review by Rob Gaylard

THE COVER photo of Brink’s autobiography shows a young, innocent-looking Brink, aged 13, bursting with pride at his first kill.

He holds a springbok between his legs; his hands grasp the fork of its horns. This is the author’s initiation into the casual violence of the hunt, part of what was expected of him as a boy, part of the price to be paid for acceptance by family, by friends, by volk.

The opening chapters evoke the world of Brink’s childhood, the various dorps in which his father served as magistrate, and the sharpness and clarity of the writing make these among the most memorable parts of the narrative.

A leitmotif running through the memoir is the gratuitous “’surplus of violence” that seems foundational to our society. The young André grows up being proud of his father, the magistrate who dispenses justice,”second only to God” – but this is the same man who, one unforgettable Saturday morning, ignores the plea of a desperate, badly beaten black man who arrives at his house, and sends him back to the police – the very people who had beaten him in the first place.

It’s the author’s first, shocking intimation of “the long, long history of excess”. For the young boy, it is perhaps the end of innocence.

The early chapters trace the conflicts that were eventually to lead Brink into open rebellion against the norms of his people.

At the time, and just as importantly, we see the incipient writer discovering the potential of words to shape and express experience. After his first exposure to English, language is no longer something to be taken for granted.

Continue reading: Memoir offers a textured narrative of a life less ordinary lived to the full

(Cape Argus, 27 April 2009)

Beauty and the Beast

Rugby. Humanity at its most barbarous and poetic. André Brink on his addiction to the game, and the woman who understood it

The Spanish corrida can be one of the most exhilarating, graceful and poetic experiences in the world to watch. But if it is done badly, if the matador takes a wrong step – or even worse, if his courage fails him – it can be appalling to watch. I remember Ingrid Jonker once described her perception by borrowing the words of D. H. Lawrence: ‘You’d better be good. If you’re not good, your love is a mess and your courage a slaughter.’ And sometimes there is a mere hairline between the love and the mess, the courage and the slaughter. This certainly goes for rugby too. Sometimes it takes scores of matches before one turns up that is so good that it compensates for all the others. Certainly, when the Super 14 (or its predecessor, the Super 12) is in progress, one good match can compensate for all the bleary-eyed disappointments accumulated during a dismal season.

If rugby is played well, few other experiences in the world can compare with its fluid beauty; there are intimations of the sublime in a really good match – whether it was the second Test of the Springboks against the French at the Stade de France in 1997, or the French against the All Blacks in their semifinal of the 1999 World Cup, or some of Argentina’s matches in the most recent World Cup; whether it was David Campese let loose like a ball of quicksilver on a wet Newlands field, or Jonah Lomu flattening the whole of the English defence as he charged across almost the full length of the field to score a try, or Brian Habana weaving his magic against a horde of opponents, or Jannie de Beer kicking five drop goals in a single match, or Joost van der Westhuizen diving for the line below the radar of an entire opposing side, or Tom van Vollenhoven at full sprint, or Sean Fitzpatrick or Colin Meads shaking off three, four, five tacklers in a surge forward, or Martin Johnson leading a stampede, or Joel Stransky landing that last drop in the final match of the ’95 World Cup, or the All Black backline in full charge, or Jaap Bekker bringing down a scrum, or Jannie Engelbrecht eluding an opponent more elegantly than Nureyev executing a pirouette, or Daniel Carter landing a penalty from a totally impossible position and in totally impossible circumstances. This, surely, must go into any definition of beauty.

(more…)

“Om kaal te loop”

In Brittanje word André P. Brink se ’n Vurk in die Pad: ’n Memoir reeds deur groot name besing, en in Suid-Afrika het dit pas die rakke getref – in Afrikaans en Engels. WILLEMIEN BRÜMMER het met dié skrywer gepraat oor weerloosheid, sy familie en Ingrid Jonker.

Want al het hy nog altyd vasberade geweier om toe te gee aan uitgewers, vriende en vreemdelinge se versoeke om ’n outobiografie te skryf, het die oomblik van waarheid tóg nou, op 73, vir hom aangebreek. Ná 23 romans, “omtrent sewe dramas, sowat 70 vertalings en nege niefiksie-boeke” het hy uiteindelik sy memoires ’n Vurk in die Pad geskryf. En soos hy (as fiksieskrywer) beken: “Gooi ’n riviervis in die see, en hy súkkel.”

Die keerpunt het gekom op daardie veelbesonge treinrit in Desember 2004 tussen Wene en Salzburg toe ’n “halsoorkop gesprek” begin het “wat nou, vier jaar later, nog nie bedaar of asem geskep het nie”. Dié rit was sy eerste ontmoeting met die pragtige Poolse Karina (32), sedert 2006 die vyfde Miesies Brink, wat hom vergesel het na ’n konferensie wat sy help reël het.

Soos altyd wanneer hy oor haar praat, kry hy ’n geluksalige gesigsuitdrukking. “Ons het twee lewens gehad wat uit sulke verskillende dele van die wêreld kom en ’n mens eenvoudig aan die praat gesit het – net om in te haal met jou verlede, dat die ander een iets meer van jou verstaan. Dit was ’n werklike ontdekkingstog sáám met die ander deur mens se herinneringe, en uiteindelik het dit my laat besluit waarom nie maar begin skryf en kyk waar ek uitkom nie?”

(more…)

The following excerpt comes from André’s introduction to Black Butterflies: Selected Poems by Ingrid Jonker, translated by Antjie Krog and André Brink:

“…And then she came in, small and quiet but tense like a coiled spring, her curly hair unruly, her dark eyes guarded but smouldering. The daughter of the would-be Chief Censor, Abraham Jonker. She was wearing tight-fitting green pants. She was smoking. Her bare feet were small and narrow and beautiful. And within a few hours the course of my life was changed utterly.”

(more…)

André and I have been abroad to attend the Salzburg Festival (visiting my family living in Austria) and to discover Poland, the country of my birth.

The travelling itself was wonderful (we were lucky to get three seats each on the KLM flights to and from Amsterdam, due to our frequent flyer status which is truly rewarding in many ways); the family welcoming; the walks along the Mattig in my tiny home village Geretsdorf in Upper Austria a real escape from the world; and Salzburg as charming as ever, but the Festspiele had some disappointments for us in store. (More on the topic to follow soon.)

(more…)

Our Salieri might not be the most famous literary feline in SA, but she is also a Cat of Letters (in spite of her namesake Salieri is female – Antonia Salieri, we insist). From very early on she expressed an interest in the written word and has mastered a few languages, the art of translation and literary criticism since she came to live with us in February this year.

Here you can see the very young Salieri already enjoying Olga Tokarczuk’s latest masterpiece in the original language Polish: Anna In w grobowcach świata (Kraków: Znak, 2006). The book is one of many myth-rewritings which form the Myth Series. Authors in the series include: Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Karen Armstrong, AS Byatt, David Grossman, Alexander McCall Smith, Victor Pelevin, Jeanette Winterson, and many others. For details see the publisher’s website: Canongate.

(more…)