Summary

In this article, I consider two fairly recent English poems by Marlene van Niekerk: “Mud school” (2013) and “Fallist art (in memory of Bongani Mayosi)” (2018). Specifically, I explore the context surrounding the production of these poems, and what we can possibly glean from their limited (and not exclusively literary) reception in order to understand how this part of Van Niekerk’s (English) authorship has thus far been read in more limited ways by critics and scholars. By focusing on the epitextual responses surrounding these poems, I show how they are symptomatic of what Jahan Ramazani calls the “mimetic presuppositions” that often take shape in critical readings of postcolonial literature (2004). Considering the especially politically engaged nature of Van Niekerk’s novels in particular, I argue that the oversight of Van Niekerk’s poetry, both residing in the dearth of translation of her poetry and in the critical blind spot writ large in studies of her work in English, comes as a result of what Emma Bird (2018) calls poetry’s “distinctly peripheral position” in postcolonial literary studies – a critical lens that has in various ways directed readings of Van Niekerk’s English work.

概括

在本文中，我考虑了马琳·范·尼克尔（Marlene van Niekerk）最近写的两首英语诗：“泥学校”（Mud school）（2013年）和“名册艺术（以纪念邦加尼·马约西（Bongani Mayosi）”）（2018年）。具体来说，我探讨了这些诗歌创作的背景，以及我们可能从它们有限的（而非仅仅文学意义上的）接受中收获了什么，以便了解迄今为止如何进一步阅读范·尼克尔克（英语）著作的这一部分。评论家和学者的方式有限。通过关注围绕这些诗歌的文字表达的回应，我展示了它们是贾汉·拉马扎尼（Jahan Ramazani）所称的“模仿预设”的症状，这种模仿通常在后殖民文学的批判性阅读中得以体现（2004年）。特别是考虑到范·尼克的小说在政治上特别具有政治参与性，我认为范·尼克的诗歌受到了监督，