Breyten Breytenbach Critical Essay | Critical Review by Barend J. Toerien

SOURCE: Review of nege landskappe van ons tye bemaak aan 'n beminde, in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 3, Summer 1994, pp. 622-23.

In the following review, Toerien admires Breytenbach's breadth of scope and spontaneity in nege landskappe.

In spite of—understandably—bitter renouncements of his people and country and the resultant switch to English for his prose works, Breyten Breytenbach, like many other exiled and transposed poets before him, seemingly finds it difficult to write poetry in a language other than his mother tongue. So we have in nege landskappe van ons tye bemaak aan 'n beminde (nine landscapes of our time dedicated to a loved one) a hefty volume containing a rich harvest of poems in Afrikaans and an exultant celebration of words and language.

Dedicated to the poet's Vietnamese wife, the collection is in nine sections (the Buddhist holy number of wholeness) and displays a richness of themes...
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