Uys Krige

Mattheus Uys Krige (4 February 1910 – 10 August 1987) was a South African writer of novels, short stories, poems and plays in Afrikaans and English.

Life

Uys Krige was born in Bontebokskloof (near Swellendam) in the Cape Province and educated at the University of Stellenbosch.

From 1931 to 1935 Krige lived in France and Spain as a tutor to the daughters of Roy and Mary Campbell and acquired fluency in French and Spanish. Whilst in France he played rugby for a team in Toulon, was a swimming coach on the Côte d'Azur, wrote poems and penned freelance articles for the Afrikaans press.[1]^:32 He returned to South Africa in 1935 and began a writing career as a reporter for the Rand Daily Mail.[2]

Unlike the Campbells, who supported the Nationalists, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Krige campaigned passionately for the Republican side.[3] He wrote the Hymn of the Fascist Bombers in 1937, which elicited vehement condemnations from both extreme Afrikaner nationalists and from the Catholic Church in South Africa, which opposed the Republican side due to the anti-Catholic religious persecution being perpetrated by the Republican forces (see Red Terror (Spain).[1]^:33–36

During World War II, Krige was a war correspondent with the South African Army during the North African Campaign. Captured at the Battle of Tobruk in 1941, he was sent to a POW camp in Fascist Italy from which he escaped two years later. He returned to South Africa after learning to speak fluent Italian.[4] After the ultra-nationalist and White Supremacist National Party took power over South Africa in 1948, Krige actively campaigned against the efforts of the new government to disenfranchise Coloured voters.[1]^:36–37 Krige is counted among the so-called Dertigers ("writers of the thirties"). He co-edited The Penguin Book of South African Verse (1968) with Jack Cope.[5]

In his later life, Krige served as a mentor to fellow Afrikaner poet Ingrid Jonker and played a major role in her transformation from the dutiful daughter of a ruling-party MP into a vocal critic of the ruling National Party and its policies of both literary censorship and apartheid. When Jonker committed suicide by drowning in 1965, Krige spoke at her secular funeral.

Uys Krige died near Hermanus in the Cape Province in 1987, aged 77.[4]

Afrikaans translations

According to Jack Cope, Krige's linguistic and literary talent combined with his passion for modern French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese literature made him the principal translator from Romance languages into Afrikaans during the 20th century. Krige has therefore had a considerable influence on all subsequent Afrikaans literature.[1]^:38

Uys Krige translated many of the works of William Shakespeare from Elizabethan English into Afrikaans. He also translated works by Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Lope de Vega and Juan Ramón Jiménez from Spanish, works by Baudelaire, François Villon, Jacques Prévert, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Éluard from French, and the poems of Salvatore Quasimodo and Giuseppe Ungaretti from Italian.[1]^:37–38

His encounter with Latin American poetry while stationed in Cairo during World War II also led him to translate the poetry of Jacinto Fombona-Pachano, Jose Ramon Heredia, Vicente Huidobro, Jorge Carrera Andrade, Nicolas Guillen, Cesar Vallejo, Jorge de Lima and Manuel Bandeira into Afrikaans from both Spanish and Portuguese.[1]^:38

Legacy

In 1994, Uys Krige's granddaughter, Lida Orffer was murdered with her family at their home in Stellenbosch. The murderer was found to be a Black South African drifter whom the Orffer family had given his first real job. The murder of the Orffer family, which came within weeks of the free elections that toppled the ruling National Party and ended apartheid, horrified the town of Stellenbosch and made many local residents question whether Nelson Mandela's promise of a "rainbow nation" was truly possible.[6]

In 2010, a collection of Uys Krige's letters from France and Spain was published by Hemel & See Boeke under the title Briewe van Uys Krige uit Frankryk en Spanje.

In the 2011 Ingrid Jonker biopic Black Butterflies, Uys Krige is portrayed by actor Graham Clarke.

Bibliography

All publications are in Afrikaans unless otherwise noted. The English translation[1]^:38 is given in brackets.

• Collected poems:
  • Kentering (Change), 1935
  • Rooidag (Red day), 1940
  • Oorlogsgedigte (War poems), 1942
  • Hart sonder hawe (Heart without harbour), 1949
  • Ballade van die groot begeer (Ballad of the great desire), 1960
  • Vooraand (The evening before), 1964
• Novels:
  • Die palmboom (The palm tree), 1940
  • The dream and the desert (in English), 1953
• Travelogues and war correspondence:
  • The way out (in English), 1946
  • Sol y sombra, 1948 (Sun and Shade), with illustrations by his brother François
  • Ver in die wêreld (Far in the world), 1951
  • Sout van die aarde (Salt of the earth), 1961
• Plays:
  • Magdalena Retief, 1938
  • Die goue kring (The golden circle), 1956
• One-act plays:
  • Die wit muur (The white wall), 1940
  • Alle paaie gaan na Rome (All roads lead to Rome), 1949
  • Die sluipskutter, 1951 (translated by the author as "The sniper" in 1962)

References

1. Cope, Jack, The Adversary Within, Dissident Writers in Afrikaans, David Philip, Cape Town 1982
2. Uys Krige, 1910–1987 at stellenboschwriters.com
3. Nasson, Bill, South Africa at War 1939-1945, Jacana Media, Auckland Park 2012, p.17
4. Uys Krige monograph at Encyclopædia Britannica online
5. Loader, Catharina Bitter-sweet entrapment: A bird’s eye view of some prominent themes in South African literature at University of Vienna
6. A small town in South Africa The Independent, 31 March 1995. Retrieved 26 June 2020