Open AccessDie “ek” in (‘YK’): Die desentralisasie van die subjek in Breyten Breytenbach se digbundel (‘YK’)
Author(s) -
Lisbé Smuts
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
tydskrif vir letterkunde
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.15
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 2309-9070
pISSN - 0041-476X
DOI - 10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.46i2.3420
Subject(s) - neologism , poetry , subject (documents) , literature , philosophy , variety (cybernetics) , homogeneous , theology , art , history , linguistics , physics , computer science , artificial intelligence , library science , thermodynamics
In Breyten Breytenbach’s poetry the “I” is complex. “I” and “you”, the writer and the reader, are not represented with constituted meanings but as signifiers and as part of language production. This article reflects on the development process of the writer as the textual “I”, the “I” narrator in the poetic text – the “I” of language that is not homogeneous or constant. The text is regarded as a pluriform in dialogue (often incomplete) with a variety of texts, the writer and his text, the texts of the reader and the texts of society and history. The author discusses the decentralisation of the subject in Breytenbach’s poetry with respect to his prison collection (‘YK’), and especially the poem “nekra” (a neologism recalling “necro”).