Introduction [to the book

Wright, Laurence

Title: Introduction [to the book "Scatter the Shrilling Bones" by Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana]
Creator: Wright, Laurence
Date Issued: 2003
Date: 2003
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: vital:7056
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007417
Description: preprint
Description: Scatter the Shrilling Bones by Sithembele Xhegwana comprises an ordered sequence of poems that conveys a journey both literal and spiritual. Revisitation is the organizing principle of the collection – the return to rural sources and origins by a consciousness estranged and illumined by modernity (cf. ‘The Return’). Underlying the collection is the theme of the night journey, whose archetype in western culture is Odysseus’ descent to the underworld – a pattern identified as such in the concluding essay ‘Starting from my Place: Notes on an Aesthetic’. The underworld here is literally the return to the home territory – a journey from Cape Town to the rural Eastern Cape – but also a revisiting of the mental world of traditional Africa: ‘Here at home, here all guilt begins’ (‘Homecoming’). The return journey is haunted by nightmare memories of mental illness, the schizophrenic episodes accompanying (or occasioned by?) the poet’s initial encounters with modernity. This illness is represented as both pathological and cultural – a price paid for challenging and rejecting the old certainties while grappling with new assumptions: “He undermines the ancestors, That’s why he suffers. Let him.” (‘To Himself’)
Format: 5 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Scatter the Shrilling Bones / by Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana
Relation: Wright, L.S. (2003) Introduction [to the book "Scatter the Shrilling Bones" by Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana]. In: Scatter the Shrilling Bones / by Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana. Lovedale Press, Alice, South Africa, pp. 4-10
Relation: Scatter the Shrilling Bones / by Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana 4 10 2003
Rights: Wright, Laurence

Hits: 789
Visitors: 845
Downloads: 96

Collections

RU Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA)

Wright, Laurence (Prof)

		Thumbnail	File	Description	Size	Format
View Details Download			SOURCEPDF	PDF	64 KB	Adobe Acrobat PDF	View Details Download

Introduction [to the book "Scatter the Shrilling Bones" by Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana]