Jonker biography hailed for its scope
CLOSE on 50 years after her death, Ingrid Jonker still manages to capture the imagination. And despite the many works on her that have already been published, every new book is awaited with great enthusiasm.
The pocket-sized English biography, Ingrid Jonker, written by Professor Louise Viljoen of the department of Afrikaans and Dutch at Stellenbosch University, is no exception. And the reviews are very favourable. On the Versindaba website, Daniel Hugo has this to say about the book: “This is a wonderful book that at any time will be as good as or even better than any Kannemeyer biography five times its scope.”
Ingrid Jonker is published by Jacana in English as part of a series on famous South Africans such as Nelson Mandela. The book on Jonker is the first about a South African writer. Viljoen spent about 18 months – “in between other things” – working on the book.
“Fortunately a lot has already been written about Ingrid and I could also study the documents of Jack Cope in the National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown,” she says.
Cope was one of Jonker’s lovers. “From his diary entries it is clear that Cope truly was devastated by Ingrid’s death,” says Viljoen. His son, the writer Mike Cope, wrote long ago that the combination of sensuality, rebelliousness and early death contributed to the fact that Jonker still captures the imagination, years after walking into the sea.
“But,” says Viljoen, “if her poems were not of value, there would not have been as much interest in her even though her personal story is fascinating.”
As researcher she was careful about how she dealt with letters and diaries.
“Documents are not innocent texts. There is always a degree of self-fabrication in diaries and letters. The writer presents him/herself through his/her writing – particularly in the case of letters to a lover. One should never be seduced into thinking that a document represents the whole truth. When something is written down, it is already an interpretation of events.”
When one thinks about Jonker’s poem, Die Kind ( The Child), one also immediately recalls the reading thereof by former president Nelson Mandela during his State of the Nation address in 1994.
However, Viljoen also points out that the ANC leader, Oliver Tambo, read the poem at a conference on children in Zimbabwe in 1988. The poem was also known beyond the realm of Afrikaans in the1960s, as it was translated into languages such as Zulu and Hindi and an interview with Jonker was published in Drum magazine.
“Jack Cope also told how he had read the poem to a group of black people attending evening classes in the 1960s. The poem resonated so deeply that the women burst into tears and lined up to copy it. Although there is no doubt that Mandela contributed to exposing Ingrid Jonker’s poems to a much wider national audience, there has always been interest in her work.
“As early as the 1950s she had the reputation of an Afrikaner dissident. She is the one Afrikaans poet that even people who are not interested in poetry know about.”
The book will also be published in the US.